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

Any help?

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.

~ 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?

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?

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.

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?

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

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.

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?

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?

~ 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.

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