How many users can a wireless router support?
Trying to write a justification to use them in a classroom. Plase help - names and/or model numbers greatly appreciated.
Public Comments
1. i am using a wireless router...but i dont know details2. theoretically, they can support around 200-250, but the actual performance would suffer
3. As far as i know they can support upto 12 users.It depends on the bandwidth.
But the more users that are connected to the router the slower the connection will be.
Hope this helps
4. On a basic home wireless router it can support anywhere between 50-254 hosts based on your make and model.
If you want to restrict this number, you can do this by setting up the number of DHCP leases that can be handed out by the router. Check your product documentation as to how to do this.
5. Depends on the Router. Commercial or Consumer? 802.11g or 802.11n? MIMO or not? Mesh network or not?
Commercial routers can handle more simultaneous connections.
A MESH network has multiple routers covering a given area, allowing it to balance the number of connections between each one.
Multi In, Multi Out (MIMO) routers can handle more simultaneous requests at one time because they have multiple antennaes.
The 802.11n protocol or an "N" router usually incorporates MIMO and can actually use the reflections of the signal off of near by objects to a limited degree to help facilitate MIMO.
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BUT.. assuming you are talking about a standard, 802.11g consumer Router from Linksys, Netgear, or D-Link then I'd say,
About 10 connections. Anything over that and performance will significantly drop off. Theoretically the Router can give out all 253 of its IP addresses to other computers.. so that is the maximum that can connect.... but above about 10 simultaneous connections, the 802.11g Router with only 1 Antenna, will only be able to give each client roughly
1/10th of the 54Mbps bandwidth or roughly 5.4Mbps or 675KBps
And that's only if they are exchanging information amongst themselves. If they are all simultaneously accessing the internet. then you need to divide your internet connection roughly by 10, as well.
I'd recommend a 802.11n Router with MIMO or multi antennas. Even if the laptops are older, the "N" router should be backwards compatible with "G" wireless clients.
You'll need to throttle down the output of the router, as 802.11n has a 500 foot range, but that shouldn't be much harder then changing a setting in the configuration.
http://www.geeks.com/products_sc.asp?cat=1010
6. it depend of the subnet mask if the mask is 255.255.255.0 then the dhcp server of the router can give 256 other ip - adress 0 because http://compnetworking.about.com/od/workingwithipaddresses/g/192_168_1_0_def.htm
and 1 because it's used by your router
my router for instance refuse to let me extand the pool of ip of the dhcp server of more then 256 even with my subnet mask ar 255.255.0.0
so the limit of computer you could connect in a normal router is 254
