Here is my situation - hope someone has some suggestions.
First, note that my knowledge of wireless networking is admittedly poor in that I've set up many home wireless networks for myself, friends and family; but never anything where I needed some more capacity.
The situation is this: We have a conference room where we need to have between about 25 and 40 people connected at once. We have a Netgear wireless router that is of the type you would usually see in your home (don't remember the model). For security purposes, the wireless setup is completely separate from our main network and just gets you to the Internet. When you need resources on the internal network, you connect to it using the Cisco VPN client software on your laptop to connect through the firewall.
This setup worked fine when I tested it with three or four computers but at a recent meeting where we had about 25 in the room all trying to connect at once, we could never get more than 15 to 20 of the 25 connected at the same time. Many of these users were using VPN but not through any functionality on the wireless router - it's through the Cisco VPN client software.
I came to the conclusion that our little router designed for SOHO use is just not up to the task and want to buy something that could handle the load of up to about 50 simultaneous users (over estimating at 50 just in case).
When I started searching the net I found the number of options bewildering. Can anyone provide any specific suggestions? We will want to continue to keep our wireless setup as a separate network to avoid the security complications of bridging it to our internal network. Many of the high end products I've seen seem to be overkill for our situation. The actual functionality provided by the SHOHO router is fine - we just need to be able to have stable connections with larger numbers of users.
Thanks in advance.
First, note that my knowledge of wireless networking is admittedly poor in that I've set up many home wireless networks for myself, friends and family; but never anything where I needed some more capacity.
The situation is this: We have a conference room where we need to have between about 25 and 40 people connected at once. We have a Netgear wireless router that is of the type you would usually see in your home (don't remember the model). For security purposes, the wireless setup is completely separate from our main network and just gets you to the Internet. When you need resources on the internal network, you connect to it using the Cisco VPN client software on your laptop to connect through the firewall.
This setup worked fine when I tested it with three or four computers but at a recent meeting where we had about 25 in the room all trying to connect at once, we could never get more than 15 to 20 of the 25 connected at the same time. Many of these users were using VPN but not through any functionality on the wireless router - it's through the Cisco VPN client software.
I came to the conclusion that our little router designed for SOHO use is just not up to the task and want to buy something that could handle the load of up to about 50 simultaneous users (over estimating at 50 just in case).
When I started searching the net I found the number of options bewildering. Can anyone provide any specific suggestions? We will want to continue to keep our wireless setup as a separate network to avoid the security complications of bridging it to our internal network. Many of the high end products I've seen seem to be overkill for our situation. The actual functionality provided by the SHOHO router is fine - we just need to be able to have stable connections with larger numbers of users.
Thanks in advance.
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