1 AP, 30 clients?

[IggyTheSmidge]

Are there any APs which will reliably support 30 wireless clients?

 

I have a v. small primary school with a cabinet of laptops running CC4 (all stay in the same classroom).

Currently their (rather insane) setup is to have network cables at each desk. Network cables which, being plugged in/unplugged by 10 year olds on a regular basis, have virtually all had the clips broken off so they are forever getting disconnected.

 

The school has very little money, but could probably stretch to one decent (unmanaged) AP if it was going to be reliable.

 

Any thoughts?

 

 

Liz

[danrhodes]

30 on one might be a little slow, get two HP ProCurve Wireless Access Point 420 and splt 15 on each, should be nice and quick then!

 

D

[SimpleSi]

I use Buffalo WHR-HP-G54xxxxx APs to run 15 laptops (never tried 30 as don't have 30 laptops in any school with these) so if you buy 2 tjhey should do the job - cost £50 each

 

regards

 

Simon

[danrhodes]

I use Buffalo WHR-HP-G54xxxxx APs to run 15 laptops (never tried 30 as don't have 30 laptops in any school with these) so if you buy 2 tjhey should do the job - cost £50 each

 

regards

 

Simon

 

Yep cheap and cheerfull, they should work fine :-)

[TechSupp]

What about the Ruckus AP's that are raved about for 30?

[djm968]

In my experience to only way to reliably connect 30 devices wirelessly, is to divide the load across multiple APs and two would be my minimum recommendation.

[Pete10141748]

1 'dumb' AP to 30 clients, not a good idea.

Regardless of the AP it *will* be slow, just based on the technology at work -

54Mb connection divided by 30 laptops = 1.8Mb connection per laptop IF the signal is 100% perfect and free of degradation/noise (which it won't be, it never is).

 

Then you've got to consider that if they're used to each having a network cable running at 100Mb connection, a drop to 1.8Mb is a HELL of a drop, which in

turn will create one hell of a headache for you from all the complaining about it being so slow.

 

Get (at least) 2 WAPs, set them different channels, and set half the laptops to connect to 1 and half to connect to the other.

It'll still be a slower than using the cabling, but not quite as noticably so.

Edited May 5, 2010 by Pete10141748

[TechSupp]

Hmmm..thats something to think about, not really considered that option as I'm in the same boat, need to sort out a trolley of 30 but its the connection that will make or break their success.

[Dos_Box]

On behlaf of Mark Power who stuffed his orional reply

 

If using 802.11g then 30 - 35 clients could be connecting using Ruckus as long as the encryption is set to AES and not TKIP, this can be an unmanaged AP and then a controller could be added later to make this into a managed device with multiple AP's being used.

 

Ruckus use beamforming, which mitigates sources of interference which in turn keeps a signal to noise ratio (SNR) at a gain for clients connections resulting in much more reliable concurrent client connections.

 

If you can stretch to an 802.11n device then you could increase the performance although if you are using 10/100 switches you would experience a bottle neck at 100Mb.

 

If you wanted to test an AP then PM me and I can arrange for one to be sent out for a few days if it would help.

 

Cheers

Mark

[TechSupp]

Setting of the encryption is usefull to know. Got a price of a Ruckus AP, but glad I found out about the AES before setting them all up (once they make a decision about what they want!)