AP with support to 200 clients

Wireless
New here

AP with support to 200 clients

Dears,

 

Which Meraki AP that can to support to 200 clients? 

 

Thanks in advanced,

Marcio - Hx Brasil

17 REPLIES 17
PhilipDAth
Kind of a big deal
Kind of a big deal

Please please please don't try and put 200 clients on a single AP.  The experience for the end user will be terrible.

 

My personal favourite for corporate environments is the MR42.

https://meraki.cisco.com/products/wireless/mr42

 

My personal favourite for guest WiFi [only] is the MR33.

https://meraki.cisco.com/products/wireless/mr33

 

10 users to 1 AP gives high bandwidth.  Between 20 to 50 users per AP provides an average experience with average bandwidth.  More than 50 and it provides a terrible experience.

 

I don't normally use a ratio of more than 25 users per AP.  Others will have their personal preferences.

I agree, 25-30 clients is about the max

Mark Earles
Poofyfoot
New here

I agree 100% with Phil above. Pushing that many clients on to a single access point would not perform well if at all.

 

In our deployments (education K-12) we never try to exceed more than 60 users per access point. It would be really helpful to know more about your situation. Are you trying to find a solution for a large common area or do you need to provide wireless for a large office space? Either way, you're going to want multiple APs.

 

-Jordan

MR52, i work at the Emergency operations center and i easily had about 110 users at one time on my wifi using 2 separate SSIDs during the hurricane and actually the experience was fine.... well fine until my 6509 shut down the wifi because of a POE fault. and the 52 does take port channel and 2 ports but my 6509 did not act nicely with the AP. Also our outdoor APs during the fair get 100s of visitors and no one said wifi was unusable.

sebastianfranco
Here to help

Marcio, how are you? MR84 supports it without problems and I have used it with more than 400 clients in both bands simultaneously https://meraki.cisco.com/products/wireless/mr84 I have many units and they work great

@PhilipDAth 

 

Is there any configuration so I can limit users to an AP? Or would it be signal distribution and plant planning?

Pedro.

Pedro Constantino
PhilipDAth
Kind of a big deal
Kind of a big deal

You can limit an SSID to being on a single AP, and if you have users connect to the SSID then they would be limited to that single AP.

Meraki is to designed to do client balancing if required.  Client Balancing is enabled by default on every MR access point. Client Balancing is compatible with all client device types and uses a combination of Meraki-proprietary and industry-standard techniques to gather information and steer clients. Client Balancing may be disabled on the Radio Settings page if the Administrator prefers.(I would not prefer to disable the Client Balancing.....)

 

https://documentation.meraki.com/MR/Other_Topics/Client_Balancing

 

LeoG
Meraki Alumni (Retired)
Meraki Alumni (Retired)

Hi Marcio,

 

As it was pointed before, it is not a good idea to put 200 clients on a single AP. The end user experience would be horrible. Although I have seen an MR53 with more than 120 clients at the same time, I would strongly recommend you to use at least three APs to share this user load. The reason is not only the AP itself, is also about using different channels on each of them, which makes it easier to every end device (STA) to content for medium.

 

In wireless, before any transmission is made, every STA and AP needs to go through the process of CSMA/CA, which takes a lot of time itself, and the more devices, there are more chances of collisions, therefore retries, which roughly translates to slowness. Even with a mechanism like RTS/CTS, collisions cannot be completely avoided.

 

Additionally, I would suggest setting the minimum bitrate to a value of at least 11 Mbps (though I would personally recommend 12).

 

Depending on the environment itself, you may want to use directional antennas instead of Omnidirectional antennas, basically to have cells where you will serve the users (it really depends where you're planning where to deploy the APs)

 

 

Also, for Pedro, while there is no mechanism to limit the devices that can be associated with an AP, you can limit it by:

 

- Limit the signal spread (by using directional antennas)

- Increase the minimum bitrate (it will also effectively limit the cell size)

- Enable client balancing (https://documentation.meraki.com/MR/Other_Topics/Client_Balancing)

 

Also, we have a really good guide for deploying APs in High Density (HD) environments:

 

https://documentation.meraki.com/MR/Deployment_Guides/High_Density_Wi-Fi_Deployment_Guide_(CVD)

 

Hope it helps Smiley Happy

Leo Gomez
Uberseehandel
Kind of a big deal


@Wireless wrote:

Dears,

 

Which Meraki AP that can to support to 200 clients? 

 

Thanks in advanced,

Marcio - Hx Brasil


Marcio

As your question stands it reads a bit like asking "how long is a piece of string?"

 

The only honest answer is "it depends".

 

In order to give you a useful answer, we need to know the answers to some specific questions

  • what will the 200 STA (client devices (or hosts)) be doing (emails, watching videos, social media)
  • will the users be mobile
  • will the use of the WIFI connection be "bursty"
  • what area (square metres) has to be covered
  • what is the capacity of the uplink (to the internet)
  • is coverage required for the 5 GHz band only or is the 2.4 GHz band also required
  • will there be a need for providing a service to old specification equipment (IEEE 802.11b/g)
  • what other WiFi networks are there in the vicinity and what are their specifications
  • are their any practical reasons why several APs cannot be deployed
  • are there marine aviation or weather radar activities/installations in the vicinity

Generally speaking I would point out

  • there are more non-interfering 5 GHz channels than there are 2.4 GHz channels (only 3 do not overlap other channels)
  • effectively 5 GHz WiFi has have half the range of 2.4 GHz WiFi at similar TX levels (so less incidence of channel interference)
  • it is better to have more low powered (and cheaper) APs operating at medium TX levels than fewer higher powered devices operating at maximum volume
  • for a functioning link between an AP and a client device, the AP needs to be able to hear the client device as well as the client device hearing the AP. Turning up the TX volume only makes matters worse

With some information to go on, then it is possible that useful advice may be proferred. Without it, nothing of value.

 

So please give us some background.

 

 

 

Robin St.Clair | Principal, Caithness Analytics | @uberseehandel

As this post is a couple of years old I am wondering if everyone still feels the same way.  We will be doing state testing in a few weeks and I am tasked with supplying a reliable wireless connection to 200 users all on chromebooks.  This will be taking place in a standard size Basketball gym  (approx 90 feet by 70)  and we have Meraki MR 56 Access points.  How many APs would you deploy for something like this?

Answer - Who knows?

Why - we don't know what the users will be doing.

 

We need to know what the users will be doing and how bursty the usage will be.

Robin St.Clair | Principal, Caithness Analytics | @uberseehandel

thanks

vassallon
Kind of a big deal

@hawkeye 

 

I would try to limit the number of users to 40-50 so I would think 4-5 APs would likely suffice.

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Thanks for the tip this is what I was thinking also

JohnD
Getting noticed

With 802.11ax the capacity benefits will only be realized once more clients support OFDMA and OFDMA in both directions. Right now, the MR45/55 are supposed to support DL-OFDMA (I don't have any first hand proof). The MR46/56 are not advertising any OFDMA capability, based off the units I have on 26.7 firmware.

 

So basically treat it like the 802.11ac APs for now like the MR42/MR52. Anything over 30-50 clients per AP, you're going to start seeing OFDM style wifi scale poorly and result in a worse experience for all of your clients.

 

TLDR: So far nothing has really changed. But the future is bright once APs and clients support more of Wifi 6's features.

hawkeye
Comes here often

Thank you!!

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