Hi, I have 15 computers that need to connect to the Internet. I have DSL or Cable, from the device/cable modem I will have a wire to a wireless router, from the router it will wirelesly connect (of course) to the individual wireless computers. The router supplying each PC an IP and access to the Internet.
What should I buy that can accomodate that many computers? I know it's not a lot of PCs, but I'm afraid it would overwhelm a $49.95 D- Link (or some other brand.) I was hoping for advice on this. I'd like to spend under $200 if possible, less if possible; that's the top end.
I doubt many retail wireless routers would support this lot - plus at best each would get 1/15th of the bandwidth, maybe less than a megabit. Ok for web/email but no good for heavy traffic.
You could zone your network into three or four, use one wirelsss router and a couple of APs on different channels. Unless you're attached to a really high speed line, you're total thruput is limited by the downstream anyway.
Certainly if all 15 are p2ping. Presumably this is educational or business howeverg, so that won't be an issue you would hope.
No, but a I have short list of what not to buy. See:
Select "Max simultaneous connections" from the pull down menu. Anything that won't handle perhaps 30 connections is not going to work.
I like John's suggestion of Sonicwall products. However, I can't really offer a guaranteed to work solution as I have no clue what these 15 computahs are going to be doing. If only one of them is into file sharing, say goodby to your entire bandwidth. Also, I can't visualize why you would want all of them connected via wireless. Surely some of these are going to be sufficiently close to run CAT5 ethernet cable. A mixed system saves on wireless airtime, especially if one of these is going to be a server.
Also, you might consider how the airtime is going to be shared. Let's assume you're cheap and can only afford a single access point or router. Let's also assume that all 15 users are in the same room, same airspace, and get perfect 54Mbit/sec connections. That gives each user the ability to move data at about 25Mbits/sec maximum from the router. If two users are active, the maximum bandwidth goes to
12.5Mbits/sec. If all 15 users are downloading at the exact same time, it's 1.7Mbits/sec per user. No problem as that's fast enough for most applications. (Note: It's never this ideal and will probably be slower).
However, if only one user has a really crappy wireless connection and only connects at the slowest 1Mbit/sec speed, they will hog 50 times the airtime of the 54Mbit/sec connections. I'm too lazy to calculate the exact effect, but it will cause a massive slowdown. Therefore, you might consider adding one or two (no more) additional access points, on different non-overlapping channels (1, 6, or 11) putting the slower more distant machines on one channel, and the high speed users, on the others.
Incidentally, my office complex has 30 computers connected to a single DSL 1500/384 kbit/sec DSL line. It works reasonably well (unless I'm downloading updates from Microsoft). However, the reason it works is that there are no bulk file transfers happening and that all the server traffic never hits the DSL. However, I had to beg one user to stop doing internet backups because it was killing the DSL for an hour per day. In other words, your ability to make this work is totally dependent on your traffic patterns and usage.
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