Max Clients, Stress Test Results from anyone using Cisco Wireless Ap's? (WDS) HELP!!

Hi Guys,

What is the max clients you have ever tested on the newest Cisco AP's?

I have a setup with about 200 PDA's (802.11b only) and I have a few

1231 Aironets that can handle about 120 before they start dropping clients. I am considering upgrading to the newer series.

Bandwidth is pretty small, about 30kb per PDA (just viewing webpage).

Do you think the newest Cisco gear could handle 200 PDA's on them?

Reply to
ahawk
Loading thread data ...

Any help?

Reply to
ahawk

No:) Sorry.

Cisco do publish Design guidelines. Maybe search [cisco enterprise design]. Oh yes, maybe reference design. Here is one. "LAN Baseline Architecture Branch Office Network Reference Design Guide"

Worth looking there (not that specific document I wouldn't imagine) for sensible limits.

Also alt.wireless.internet has some people very experienced with wireless. Not generally cisco but there may be 802.11 limitations to run into on any platform.

Reply to
bod43

~ On Apr 14, 4:22 pm, ahawk wrote: ~ > Hi Guys, ~ >

~ > What is the max clients you have ever tested on the newest Cisco AP's? ~ >

~ > I have a setup with about 200 PDA's (802.11b only) and I have a few ~ > 1231 Aironets that can handle about 120 before they start dropping ~ > clients.  I am considering upgrading to the newer series. ~ >

~ > Bandwidth is pretty small, about 30kb per PDA (just viewing webpage). ~ >

~ > Do you think the newest Cisco gear could handle 200 PDA's on them? ~ ~ Any help?

I can warrant that none of our APs will support *more* than 200 clients on any given radio ... 200 is the hard limit.

What is your aversion to using multiple APs for this many clients?

Reply to
Aaron Leonard

Picture 1,000 people with Wi-Fi PDA's walking into a large conference room, no bigger than a few thousand square foot. We have to provide a TON of access points to support the distribution.

Because these people are sitting classroom style, and like 1 foot from each other, it is very difficult to distribute a good network without like 30 AP's, and tons of duct tape as you can imagine on the floor with all those Cat-5 cords.

Any suggestions?

Reply to
ahawk

All the AP's are not going to be using on the same frequency and with RF power controll you can support a large number of AP's in a "small" area. With 802.11b you will have 3 non-overlapping frequencies. A wireless LAN controller will automatically select the frequencies and set the appropriate power levels to support high density wireless. The Cisco WLAN controller software now supports "micro-cell" technology to support very high density deployments.

Reply to
Thrill5

Thanks for the help on the micro-cell deployment. It just seems so overwhelming to have to setup 30+ ap's in a room where it will be used for 2 hours though. Any other suggestions?

Reply to
ahawk

If you have to have this working as part of the conference for

1000 people, get someone in who has done it before.

Will presumably be a bit tough to test in advance?

"like 30 AP's, and tons of duct tape as you can imagine on the floor with all those Cat-5 cords. "

You could perhaps use dual radio APs and use 802.11a to link the APs together and 802.11b/g (presumably) for the clients. You will of course still need power but that may already be distributed for you.

Even as a wired network this might need some significant design. For example - limited CPU power devices, how many can you have in a broadcst domain? How many will connect at once - dhcp server performance.

If you want any kind of roaming on top of that you could be in a world of pain unless you go the whole hog with a managed system.

formatting link

Reply to
bod43

Thanks bod43. It seems like Micro-Cell is my only option. I could run POE for the AP's which would help with the cabling requirements, but man, this seems like such a nightmare.

I am in talks with Cisco to find an expert on micro-cell, so hopefully that will bring some ideas to the table.

Is there a solution for upgrading or chaining together AP's to boost the amount of clients they can handle?

Reply to
ahawk

Thanks bod43. It seems like Micro-Cell is my only option. I could run POE for the AP's which would help with the cabling requirements, but man, this seems like such a nightmare.

I am in talks with Cisco to find an expert on micro-cell, so hopefully that will bring some ideas to the table.

Is there a solution for upgrading or chaining together AP's to boost the amount of clients they can handle?

Reply to
ahawk

~ Is there a solution for upgrading or chaining together AP's to boost ~ the amount of clients they can handle?

As I said, I can warrant that none of our APs will support more than 200 clients per radio. This is a hard limit.

Reply to
Aaron Leonard

Have you had deployments that will handle 200 clients? Was it just web browsing? Any other metrics for that 200 client limit? Thanks!

Reply to
ahawk

Reply to
ahawk

Cabling-Design.com Forums website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.