Maximum number of clients - WRT54GL?

[backroger]

Hi guys;

Somebody told that WRT54G or GL routers has a maximum of 32 Clients. Is this true?

Also, is this both Wireless & Wired combine? or It is only in wireless and the wired are independent?

Because i'm confused since the default is 50 user and I have to put this on a classroom with 40 students.

Thank you in advance.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

From what I know, and from personal use of this router (GL) it can support 50 users in its DHCP server capabilities. I would imagine that extends to wireless (although lets face it if everyone accessed wirelessly that would be constipation slow.. I imagine the number is nearly limitless if you manually assign IP address however. I dont know that for sure though.

 

[dman]

Sorry, don't know specifically about max # of clients, I'm using DDWRT (at home) and it may have a higher limit than the factory firmware. I've got about 15 devices connected but most are wired. Works fine 99% of the time.

I suspect you'd have two areas that'd suffer... first would be the concurrent wireless devices which you could fix by connecting a second wireless device as an AP to one of the Lan switches.

The second would be if you are using it as a router, how many concurrent internet sessions i'd support... that I have no idea. But 32+ would be a lot for any home router to handle. I think it'd work ok for web surfing and IM but other P2P type apps would likely cause issues with NAT. Sometimes just 1 Torrent client can bring down the performance on our home connection.

There's a new Buffalo router that supports DDWRT with a slightly faster processor (240Mhz vs 216Mhz I think) and supposedly better wireless chipset that might support more users. WHRG125S I think. Price has been $20 or so after rebate from Circuit City recently.

Not sure if that's an option, just wanted to share.

 

[JackMDS]

It sort of funny, I do not know what the maximum of any entry level Network Router is.

Why? I never would use such a device for more than 10-20 users.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

Originally posted by: dman
Sorry, don't know specifically about max # of clients, I'm using DDWRT (at home) and it may have a higher limit than the factory firmware. I've got about 15 devices connected but most are wired. Works fine 99% of the time.

I suspect you'd have two areas that'd suffer... first would be the concurrent wireless devices which you could fix by connecting a second wireless device as an AP to one of the Lan switches.

The second would be if you are using it as a router, how many concurrent internet sessions i'd support... that I have no idea. But 32+ would be a lot for any home router to handle. I think it'd work ok for web surfing and IM but other P2P type apps would likely cause issues with NAT. Sometimes just 1 Torrent client can bring down the performance on our home connection.

There's a new Buffalo router that supports DDWRT with a slightly faster processor (240Mhz vs 216Mhz I think) and supposedly better wireless chipset that might support more users. WHRG125S I think. Price has been $20 or so after rebate from Circuit City recently.

Not sure if that's an option, just wanted to share.

The stock processor speed for a GL is 200Mhz. It can *usually* be safely overclocked to up to 216Mhz via DD-WRT.

 

[bigpow]

a kind reminder, wifi connection is like that of a hub
All wifi clients will "share" bandwidth.

Say an 11g, that's 54Mbps on the paper and at best, 22Mbps in real-life.
Reduce that by overheads, other wired connections, and what's left is to be shared between wifi clients

Realistically speaking, you'd probably run out of bandwidth before running out of anything else.
Then again, I'd seen a practice where they'd share a 56K dial-up connection between 25 users - I'll let you do the math

I'd say give it a try and tell us how it goes. As long as your students aren't watching online video all at the same time, I don't think 40 users would be an issue

 

[backroger]

Thanks for the input guys...I really appreciated it.

This student have to bring their laptops in school althought they have not simultaneously using the internet as 40 client but based on what I have observe, more or less 30 student are using the internet. I'm just thinking of a worse scenario that if a 40 simultaneously access the net, only 32 would be able to surf.

So far observing 15+ clients doing youtube (dang Anime) simultaneously & others doing surfing/e-mail & chat, the router is able to handle it. Althought, its getting a little hot when I touch it. Maybe I should put a fan on top of it (like on those PSU).

Torrent is not an issue because its block by the Uni.