What was the MR access point limitation?

[Knowledge_gainr]

Dear Friends,

What was the limitation(Usage,Client) for MR access points(MR36/44/33/53)?

Because when on some AP,s have around 40 to 50 users connected that time the AP is misbehaving its gone in hung mode so there was no option other than restarting that AP.

And sometime the AP usage going high so that time also having same situation to restart AP.

Is there any other option to no need to restart the AP?

[KarstenI]

The first troubleshooting step is to factory reset the AP. If nothing changes, open a case. This should not happen and perhaps the AP has a defect.

[alemabrahao]

Do you want to know the limitation of the datasheet or what is really recommended?

The datasheet will tell you that the hardware supports more than 100 simultaneous clients, but in terms of Wifi technology (regardless of vendor) and best practice recommendation is not to have more than 30 clients connected per access point.

The first thing is to check whether the customers' Wi-Fi card is up to date. Secondly, check the features enabled on each SSID and make adjustments as necessary (e.g. is 802.11w enabled? How is the data rate configuration? What is the configured channel width?)

And finally, it is always recommended to carry out a site survey to evaluate the real conditions of your WiFi environment to validate that any readjustment is not necessary.

[cmr]

@Knowledge_gainr we find that limiting the number of clients to 30 per AP radio provides a good service if the clients are not too busy.  The more busy each client is and the more time sensitive that the traffic is, the fewer clients you can have.

Basic clients on MR33/36/44/53 etc. 30 per radio, so up to 60 if evenly split between 2.4GHz and 5GHz.

Voice/video clients on above. 10 per radio, so up to 20 if split.

Basic clients on MR57/CW9166. 30 per radio, so up to 90 if evenly split between 2.4/5/6 or 2.4/5/dual5 where the third client radio is changed from 6Ghz to 5GHz mode.

Voice/video clients on above. 10 per radio, so up to 30 if split.

Of course you might be able to get away with more, but the performance will be pretty poor!

[PhilipDAth]

I would also make sure you are running a current stable or better firmware.

Apart from the issues, the others have mentioned to do with bandwidth and clients, I would not run 50 clients on an MR33/MR36 (unless they are doing nothing) because I doubt they have the CPU and DSP grunt to process that much control traffic (associations, disassociations, roaming events, etc.).  If everyone was connected and no one moved and the WiFi network was perfectly stable they might cope - but that is just not reality.  I could easily see them becoming unstable at 50 devices.

The MR44 might be borderline.

The MR53 should have no problems.

There is a reason why APs like the MR53 cost a lot more, apart from their radios - they have a much gruntier CPU and DSPs, and more RAM.

As a guide; if I was speccing it out - and it was quite a bit of area to cover, I would use twice as many MR36s as opposed to MR56s to compensate.  In a smaller space, I would prefer to halve my cabling and switch ports and would go to the MR56s as the overall solution would end up cheaper.  For MR36s, I aim to target no more than 20 clients per AP.

This is my personal opinion.  Others may have different thoughts.

[cmr]

Totally agree with you there @PhilipDAth. We have seen an MR52 cope with 100 clients at one point, though I don't know what the client experience was like!