IOT high client count wireless N recommendations

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
#1

Hi, Im wondering if anyone can recommend a decent openwrt compatible outdoor WAP for wireless N that can handle ~100 low bandwidth active clients.

At the moment I'm running YunCore CPE830 x2 but they fall over at around 30 -40 clients each. its not a band width issue as all clients are only communicating VIA MQTT and barely us 5% of the available bandwidth. nor is a cpu issue as it also is extremely low averaging 0.04, 0.02, 0.00 on the CPU monitor.

I think the issue is around the Radio MCU just not being able to handle a high client count and the overheads associated with a high client count.

I use these to automate alot of things in an accommodation / business setting so i need high reliability, and im looking to mesh the network , but I don't want to have to use 4 or 5 AP's becuase of the client count issue, i'd rather 2 or 3 AP's that are not going to die at 30 or 40 clients.

any recommendations and experiences with high client counts would be fantastic.

#2

Have you tried setting the minimum data rate higher? Like 12Mbps? What's probably going on is airtime and collision issues. Higher data rates means less time taken.

#3

no joy on that front. I'm fairly confident it has to do with the radio chip. i recall reading something about them being one of the key limiting factors when it comes to a lot of clients.

was kind of hoping there was someone here that has either had this problem and found a good AP for a lot of clients. or has a certain type with even 60 or 70 clients hanging off it with out any problems and could tell me its brand model number.

#4

Your device looks like a single band and single radio device.

I would suggest a recycled PC or mini PC with 1 or more PCI express wifi card/s. Remember that OpenWRT runs on x86 too. Or just run any linux distribution on that box.

#5

That's a possible solution , I was more hoping that there was a quality out door AP that could have Openwrt loaded onto it.

#6

Have you tried it? You need to adjust the basic rates and the supported rates, or use the cell density high option (maybe only snapshots) see https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/wifi/basic

Also tp-link cpe devices are supported