Hello to all. A Netgear R-7800 owner being used as a dumb AP. I hit a brick wall yesterday when some of my 2.4Ghz devices would not connect. Come to find that QCA9984 has a limitation of 32 clients. Well, I just finished deploying new WIFI Smart Electrical Switches throughout the house. So far the one AP has done the trick. I am asking for recommendations for a new router or AP, preferable WIFI 6 and with detachable antennas with support for 50+ clients or ... is there an easy way to extend the 32 client limitation? I look forward to your reply.
For that amount of clients it would be better to install more access points and let them share the clients. Even if some vendor advertises 1000+ simultaneous clients, interference caused by multiple clients communicating simultaneously will cause this number to be far lower.
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Have you tried to generate more than one wifi network, with a different name? Usually the limit is by wifi network. I don't know if your router supports this.
The limitation is per radio.
Correct.
How to find out -
SSH in to the router and run iw list
Look in the valid interface combinations section.
You'll see something like this (example from my 5 GHz radio - 16 maximum)...
valid interface combinations:
#{ managed, P2P-client } <= 16, #{ P2P-GO } <= 3, #{ AP } <= 16, #{ IBSS } <= 1
If you have any AP's or mesh points, they count against the total.
There is documentation in this forum how to extend the 32 client limit for ath10k-ct (afaik ath10k doesn't limit it explicitly, but you will run out of iram at some point), still airtime is limited, and beyond 32 clients (especially with older clients in the mix), you quickly run out on management frames alone.
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