[MLB-WIRELESS] practical limit to number of clients on a sing le 802.11G AP.

[O'Brien, Michael]

The total bandwidth for G depends on whether backward compatibility with
802.11B clients is required. If its not then a greater throughput can be
achieved.

Figures I have seen are:

801.11 g only mode (54mbps) 			- 24.7 Mbps (~2980 KB/sec)
801.11 g mixed environment(54&11mbps)  	- 11.8 Mbps (~1424 KB/sec)
802.11 B (11mbps)					- 5.8  Mbps
(~700KB/sec)


If the clients are only using citrix and require an average of 24Kbps (~
3KB/sec) for screen updates then a G only mode access point could support a
huge number of clients (even working at the practical figures you have
suggested).  

However as the number of clients increases there will be contention for use
of the bandwidth and that will impact performance.  

Where in practice does the limit of clients per access point sit ?


- michael.

-----Original Message-----
From: Ryan Abbenhuys [mailto:sneeze at alphalink.com.au]
Sent: Monday, 1 March 2004 4:26 PM
To: O'Brien, Michael
Cc: melbwireless at wireless.org.au
Subject: Re: [MLB-WIRELESS] practical limit to number of clients on a
single 802.11G AP.


I don't know the total bandwidth figures for G off the top of my head, I'm
guessing around 800KB/sec. (B is around 400-450KB/sec.

You can liken AP's to old Hubs, shared bandwidth, and when they begin to
come under load performance worsens exponentially.

You can find that the person with the weakest signal will get even worse
bandwidth as everyone else will go over the top of them.

What sort of apps will be using this bandwidth?


>I am trying to gauge the number of clients that can connect to and use a
>single 802.11G AP.
>
>Clients would be normal LAN users. I am not expecting that the actual
>bandwidth would be the issue. I am guessing that as the number of clients
>increase contention for bandwidth will limit the actual throughput.
>
>Anyone got a feel/real world stats on the number of clients per AP that is
>reasonable.  When would you need to move to a second/third AP?
>
>regards,
>
>Michael OBrien
>Senior Security Consultant
>
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