Wireless Network with 30 clients

Hello all,

I am running a small wireless network (30 users) at my school and it seems that my D-Link 624 Wireless Router just can't cut it anymore. I am getting about 5-10 outages a day when the lab fills up. I am thinking I need to upgrade to a more powerful router. I tried to take an old PC, install FreeBSD (failed!) and Ubuntu (failed!), and get it to do NAT and Masquerading but I wasn't able to figure it out and I don't have the time to do all of the research. Perhaps Suse would be a viable option?

Does anyone know how I can use this old computer as a simple router and hook up an access point? What about the Apple Airport Extreme? Should that be able to handle the load? What's a good high-powered router that I can find in the =80500 range? The students do not do anything out of the ordinary besides downloading and uploading photos and printing.

Thanks in advance.

Reply to
brendacchio
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Look at adding "access" points to the router. It seems that the built-in wireless access point can not handle the amount of individual requests.

Also, please note that most wireless networks devices are not "secured" out of the box.

I am running a small wireless network (30 users) at my school and it seems that my D-Link 624 Wireless Router just can't cut it anymore. I am getting about 5-10 outages a day when the lab fills up. I am thinking I need to upgrade to a more powerful router. I tried to take an old PC, install FreeBSD (failed!) and Ubuntu (failed!), and get it to do NAT and Masquerading but I wasn't able to figure it out and I don't have the time to do all of the research. Perhaps Suse would be a viable option?

Does anyone know how I can use this old computer as a simple router and hook up an access point? What about the Apple Airport Extreme? Should that be able to handle the load? What's a good high-powered router that I can find in the ?500 range? The students do not do anything out of the ordinary besides downloading and uploading photos and printing.

Thanks in advance.

Reply to
Yves Leclerc

I am running a small wireless network (30 users) at my school and it seems that my D-Link 624 Wireless Router just can't cut it anymore. I am getting about 5-10 outages a day when the lab fills up. I am thinking I need to upgrade to a more powerful router. I tried to take an old PC, install FreeBSD (failed!) and Ubuntu (failed!), and get it to do NAT and Masquerading but I wasn't able to figure it out and I don't have the time to do all of the research. Perhaps Suse would be a viable option?

Does anyone know how I can use this old computer as a simple router and hook up an access point? What about the Apple Airport Extreme? Should that be able to handle the load? What's a good high-powered router that I can find in the ?500 range? The students do not do anything out of the ordinary besides downloading and uploading photos and printing.

Thanks in advance.

Try Smoothwall free from

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runs on anything from a

486 upwards (pentium with at lease 128mb RAM better though - with 30 users a PII might be better.)

Easy to set up and use. Just connect to an access point and away you go.

Reply to
Tony

4 newsgroups? I just love to participate large cross postings.

How can you tell? Have you measured the reouter thruput? Have you sniffed the traffic between the unspecified broadband connection and the DI-624? Do you have *ANY* idea what's moving on your network?

Outages or spectacular slowdowns? There's a big difference.

My rule of thumb for wireless loading is: 100 light web and email users. 10 business type users. 1 file sharing user or worm infected computer. How many *ACTIVE* laptops are running? Are you sure there aren't any users that you don't know about such as students in the parking lot or nearby neighbors? Have you looked at the log files or syslog? Do you have

Powerful? Is the processor overloaded? Got any numbers as to how many bytes/sec is going in each direction? Is your unspecified broadband connection shared with other users or wireless contrivances in the skool? Are they hogging the bandwidth?

That's a little like polishing the chrome to make the car go better. Perhaps you had better take a close look at what's moving on your network, who's on your network, what's causing the slowdown, and what's buried in the log files, before you tilt at windmills.

If you insist, I use Freesco.

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Incidentally, the DI-624 can do about 35Mbits/sec TCP thruput LAN to WAN connection. If your unspecified broadband connection is that fast, you might consider a different router. Meanwhile, Yves Leclerc has the right idea. Go shopping for 2 more access points (or routers configured as access points).

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Just trying to be nice, that's all...

I've checked the logs and nobody seems to be doing anything out of the ordinary. I'm in Italy and my internet connection is pretty basic. Testing it now I've got 300! The most significant strains seem to be when the students upload/download their dig photos to sites such as snapfish and ofoto.

Outages. The router locks up and has to be restarted.

No, we share the building with elderly priests and there is no indication that they are stealing our connection. It's password protected.

I turned off the log because the Dlink support site says that it may be hogging the router's resources.

Thanks!

Reply to
brendacchio

Holdit. That's a total failure and should not happen. I've staturated the RF bandwidth of my assorted routers in various benchmark tests and only the defective routers lockup. Searching Google for "DI-624 overheats", I find that your lockup problem is apparently not uncommon.

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may be of interest:
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I don't think it's the quantity of traffic that's causing the hangs.

300kbit/sec is really slow. A faster router will not help if you're using this particular DI-624 router as an access point, and will probably produce identical lockups. I suggest borrowing a differnt router or a later model DI-624 and trying a substitution.
Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Here's one person that had to add a fan on their WGT-624. I drilled the case of a DI-604 rev B1 into Swiss cheeze to improve cooling. These are different model but you might be the same problem.

Also, for another PC based router replacement, see:

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just started playing with it and it looks really nice. Documentation also available in Italian.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Oops. I forgot to include the URL.

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Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Lots more.

Reply to
John Navas

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