Wifi Suggestions - reached limit with 2.4 devices

[lj502]

So last night i was setting up a couple more ESP8266 based devices and it seems my Netgear R8000 Nighthawk X6 router will only handle 32 devices on the 2.4 channel. Most likely time for an upgrade but I have had no problems yet but now it is a must. I don't know if I should separate my network up or just add better equipment. I use...

WIred
1 Fire Tv
9 IP cameras to Blue Iris server
3 RPI's running Squeezebox players
1 Office PC general use and Squeeze Server
1 HS3 Server
2 Arduino boards

Wireless
4 Laptops
3 Fire Tv
3 RPI's wireless Squeezebox players
5 Android Tablets - HSTouch
2 Android Phones
5-7 Apple devices - Kids
5 LIFX bulbs
6 Sonoff devices
16-20 Esp8266 devices - light controllers - NodeMCU - etc..

Lots of connections but I have never had any real issues other than a reboot here and there (very random). I'm sure that this is stressing that router but it's not going to get any better (less connections).

Would just adding another access point ease the main router or is there a more advised way to tackle this?

Thanx,
John

[Wade]

Just curious, why are you not using the 5 GHz band for another 32 devices? Limited range a deal killer?

[Pete]

Many folks here utilize dedicated POE WAP's. Seems to be that Ubiquito is WAP of choice.

Here while tinkering now with Tasmota / Espurna firmware Mosquitto stuff switched them all to a newly configured for testing only OpenWRT WAP.

Still very much a la carte here using PFSense, POE WAPs and managed Gb switches. Servers (however small) are all in the same place in the house and connected to Gb Managed switches. I do have one POE connected RPi2 in the attic doing ZWave, 1-Wire sensors and SD Radio stuff.

Here no multimedia to TV stuff is using wireless...well only KODI Gb connected. Back end servers are all Gb connected. Squeezebox players are Gb or WAP connected.

TV has built in Roku these days which is Gb connected.

[lj502]

Everything 5 GHz is using that, my problem is really just having too many 2.4 GHz devices, my router only supports 32 on the 2.4 channel.

John

[Pete]

Yeah high density best Wireless practices are to:

1 - overlap dual radio multiple (Gb POE) WAP's tuning them for optimal use or
2 - shifting stuff over to wired ethernet (which involves cabling).

For commercial use of multiple wireless clients ....

1 - identify high density areas
2 - use dual band APs
3 - design AP overlap
4 - load balance traffic
5 - set AP power lower
6 - upgrade to a wired network
7 - stress test
8 - share knowledge

Tangent ...getting behind in my mosquitto devices implementation (only four here) John...IE: yesterday hardware modded a digital garage door opener button to use with Tasmota firmware in the GDO stuff. Still have not gotten to your methodology relating to your RGB / LED modifications...could be an age thing here....

[kenm]

I'm in the final stages of planning a new mesh network using Ubiquiti Networks UniFi equipment. BTW, I think the client limit is a firmware limit not hardware. I run DD-WRT on an R7000 and I don't have a 32 client limit, even though Netgear states 32 clients per radio band.

[randy]

Ubiquiti APs have a hard coded limit of 127 clients per radio for a total of 254 per AP. My Netgear R7000 before I switched had a limit of 32 per radio. The Cisco E3000 before it did not have published specs, but I understood it to be limited to 32 as well.

All that being said, I cannot speak highly enough about how robust, fast and reliable my Ubiquiti installation has been. You can start with a single AP and turn the radios off on your router. You will need to install a Unifi controller on a computer for setup, but it is not needed for day to day operation. A single UAP-AC-Pro covers my house and most of my yard. I added a couple more, one in my shed and another in my garage, moving the household AP to the basement and I have coverage anywhere on my property. I am even able to give one of my neighbors access while they are in financial straights. I am able to limit their bandwidth and only give them guest access.

[outbackrob]

We had 2 Securifi dual band routers and 27 LIFX bulbs. It was a little tough to get all the lights to respond every time. Switched to three Ubiquiti UAP AC Pros and put all of the WIFI lights and 9 Alexa devices on their own network. Have FireTVs, AppleTVs and XBoxs on their own WIFI network. All phones are on THEIR own mesh network, and computers and printers are on a separate network as well. Lightning fast speeds everywhere and it is pretty hard to bog down more than one network.

It all depends on what you want to do. If you plan on growing your network in the foreseeable future, then you should look for a good deal on a Ubiquiti or similar setup. If you just need better coverage, buy another Nighthawk and distribute your devices on them.

[Krumpy]

You all need a life! So many wireless devices. I am kidding of course.

I'm glad that I ran conduit throughout the house and can hard wire. Never thought that wireless has these kind of limits. But, I suppose!!

Best of luck.

[Wade]

Ubiquiti APs have a hard coded limit of 127 clients per radio for a total of 254 per AP. My Netgear R7000 before I switched had a limit of 32 per radio. The Cisco E3000 before it did not have published specs, but I understood it to be limited to 32 as well.

All that being said, I cannot speak highly enough about how robust, fast and reliable my Ubiquiti installation has been. You can start with a single AP and turn the radios off on your router. You will need to install a Unifi controller on a computer for setup, but it is not needed for day to day operation. A single UAP-AC-Pro covers my house and most of my yard. I added a couple more, one in my shed and another in my garage, moving the household AP to the basement and I have coverage anywhere on my property. I am even able to give one of my neighbors access while they are in financial straights. I am able to limit their bandwidth and only give them guest access.

I'm running 3 Ubiquiti WAPs with a Nighthawk R7000 (DD-WRT firmware) with radio disabled. Unifi controller runs on my HS server. Works very well and simple to administer.

[waynehead99]

I agree on ubiquiti. They have amazing WAP that just work and silly simple to set up.

I also believe in running cable vs wireless, but you also realize that between the echos, tablets, laptops, cell phones, things do start to add up.

[randy]

I'm running 3 Ubiquiti WAPs with a Nighthawk R7000 (DD-WRT firmware) with radio disabled. Unifi controller runs on my HS server. Works very well and simple to administer.

That is exactly how I started. As I wrote in another thread, the missing information on the controller was like a siren call to me, enticing me to get a gateway and switches. Though it cost more money, I have no regrets.

[randy]

You all need a life! So many wireless devices. I am kidding of course.

I'm glad that I ran conduit throughout the house and can hard wire. Never thought that wireless has these kind of limits. But, I suppose!!

Best of luck.

While much of mine is wired, wireless creeps up on you. An Echo in every room, NodeMCU boards, Skybell doorbell, phones, Bond fan controller, Harmony hubs,laptops, tablets and Sonos speakers. It all adds up. We don't have WiFi lights and have disconnected all but one Echo and still could not work within a 32 device limit. The really frightening thing is that all of our DHCP reservations have almost used up the lower 200 (wired and wireless) addresses I use for assignments

[kenm]

I didn't really want to hijack this thread but here goes "How much does the UniFi controller software you run on a local PC cost?". I keep finding prices for UniFi Cloud but I really don't want cloud hosting. Also, What APs are you using? I'm looking at the UAP-AC-Pro. 2x initially but at least 2x more to follow.

[Fellhahn]

The 32 client limit is definitely a firmware/hardware limit being imposed by your WAP. It is not a limitation of the wireless standard itself.

Your real problem is going to be the devices themselves and what 802.11 standards they can support. Cheaply made wifi radios may bring down the speed of your whole radio cell.

I manage a large wifi network for a ~1500 student school. We used to use HP MSM WAPs when I first arrived in the job, the MSM410s that were the bulk of the fleet would start to struggle is they got to 2 dozen clients or more on a single radio. As a result we had two in most classrooms.

A couple of years ago we got a big break with a change of principal and resultant shift in funding attitude towards IT. I replaced the whole fleet with a Xirrus system, mostly XD-240s. These have been incredible, easily handling 30+ clients on a single radio. During a major exam, one of the two multi-radio access points in the gymnasium dropped due to a cabling problem. The other unit (Xirrus XA-4) kept the entire 240 student group going and they all finished the online exam with no issues. My point is WAPs are not created equal, the AP has to do a lot of work dictating who can speak when (wireless is a shared medium remember), encrypting traffic, and pushing everything from cable to air and vice versa. Higher priced APs will have better CPUs that can better handle mediation on large client cells. This is a big distinguisher between consumer vs enterprise devices.

As others have pointed out already, Ubiquiti do a great job of walking the line between enterprise and consumer. The hardware isn't quite a match for brands like Aruba or Xirrus, but for the price they come at it's a damn fine choice.

A great resource I like to go back to often is http://mcsindex.com/ , it shows you expected speed based on frequency, channel bonding, 802.11 standard and modulation. That speed you arrive at is the shared speed for the wireless medium, it is shared between all clients on the network and it is shared between tx/rx (or upload/download if you like). If you are downloading something at your max speed of 200Mbps there isn't another 200Mbps available for other clients to send over.

You can't really control the modulation, that's negotiated between the AP and the client and it's mostly a factor of SNR. Improving your radio conditions can help encourage better modulation negotiation.

You can't change your max spatial streams as that's the hardware that's built into your client or router. Just about all smart phone or tablet devices nowadays will have two spatial streams, because they have two dimensions in which to orientate antennas, X and Y. Some laptops will have three spatial streams because when in the open position, they have an extra axis, X, Y and Z.

High end APs will sometimes support 4 spatial streams, the reason for this is to enable MU-MIMO (multi user multi input multi output). This is a feature where an AP can tx to multiple clients simultaneously by using a combination of different spatial streams. Ie stream A and B are used to transmit data to client one, while at the same time stream C and D are used to transmit to client 2. MU-MIMO is only used in AP > Client transmission and not vice versa.

You can specify channel bonding in your APs settings, but if the client device doesn't support it, it will likely fall back to 20MHz.

802.11n vs 802.11ac, again you can specify on the router. Typically routers will be set to support both and negotiate, you can sometimes set it to ac only to "lock" the cell at this standard, in which case 802.11n only clients requesting to join the network will not be able to. 802.11ac will provide you with better client density.

Essentially you want to get your radio cell to the best speed standard you can manage on that MCS chart. Higher speeds aren't just about streaming 4K instead of a measly one-thousand and eighty peas. Faster speeds mean shorter symbol times, which means lower latency and faster device response.

So, look at your devices and identify the lowest common denominator, because that device is likely going to bring the speed down for the whole cell. Is there one device out of many that doesn't support channel bonding? Consider replacing it, likewise for other factors.

Some other things not covered on the chart:

Separate your conventional client devices and your IoT network. Your laptop, smart phone, Xbox, smart TV etc, all the devices that have the potential to consume a continuous stream of high bandwidth traffic. Put these on their own 5GHz radio and don't mix that radio with smart devices. Smart home devices, place on their own radio shared with devices that use an equal and consistent amount of bandwidth. A 2.4GHz radio will give you better range.

Air time fairness/time division multiplexing. If you see a feature like this you might consider turning it on, it changes the media access control method for the spectrum and ensures all clients get an equal chance to "speak". This can help in preventing a single high bandwidth device from stopping other clients speaking when they need to.

Channel management. Scan your spectrum using something like wifi analyzer, channelyzer etc. Your neighbors will have WiFi as well, find the cleanest "gap" in the channels that isn't being used, set your AP to use that channel. If you are using multiple 2.4GHz radios, be aware that 2.4GHz channels overlap each other. Even though there may be a selection of 11 or 13 channels available, those channels are only separated by 5Mhz increments, but each channel is 20MHz wide. If you live in North America the only non-overlapping channels are 1, 6 and 11.

https://www.radio-electronics.com/in...-bandwidth.php

If using 5GHz, try to avoid using DFS channels. Dynamic Frequency Selection is a required technology on 5GHz APs that means the AP will switch channels if it detects radar activity (5GHz shares some spectrum space with weather and aircraft ground radar). Switching channels can be disruptive to the client if the client doesn't honor/process the change of channel management frame correctly. Channels 36, 40, 44, 48, 149, 153, 157, 161, and 165 exist outside the DFS range and will not be prone to channel switching. 5GHz channels are separated by enough bandwidth that neighboring channels do not overlap.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...1a/h/j/n/ac/ax)




Sooo, yeah. Get a better AP, Ubiquiti is a solid choice. Never settle for the garbage your ISP has provided you with (typically the lowest cost mass produced device available) and use as much of this advice as you can to try and ensure stable performance as the client density grows.

The unquestionable golden rule though is that hard wired is ALWAYS better. No shared medium, full duplex communication, 1Gbps speeds. Or for a really low cost way to operate multiple basic relays, consider looking at an Arduino.


Apologies for the inconsistency but anywhere I've said "Router" please assume I meant "Access Point", I know technically these may be separate devices based on your network setup.