Need a wireless router recommendation to server 40+ people

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Sat, Jun 25, 2011 at 11:11:23AM -0400, Colin McGregor wrote:
> You have a bunch of problems here each with different flavors of ugly.
> You should be able to assume all your attendees have laptops (or other
> devices) that support 802.11g, and you can tell anyone that has an
> 802.11b only device, sorry, but tough... Okay, I don't care who builds
> it or what it is running, there are NO 802.11g routers out there that
> could support 40 people hitting a media rich (read video) websites
> without barfing, the 802.11g standard just doesn't offer enough
> bandwidth. You could go to 802.11n but there are several issues here,
> starting with the near certainty that some significantly large
> percentage of your users will not support 802.11n so, 802.11g support
> will likely be a must. Further, while 802.11n in the 5 GHz band might
> be enough enough to support your people, there is no requirement that
> 802.11n use the 5 GHz band, meaning some 802.11n devices use just use
> 2.4 GHz other support 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz. The 802.11n devices that just
> support 2.4 GHz will be battling for bandwidth the 802.11g devices
> (yuck!).
> 
> Bottom line, if money wasn't a concern I would set-up multiple routers
> as follows:
> 
> - 1+ x 5 GHz 802.11n router(s)
> - 3 x 2.4 GHz 802.11g routers on channels one each on channels 1, 6 and 11
> 
> The above would get your attendees as much bandwidth as is possible.
> Get the people who have 5 GHz 802.11n support to go to 5GHz and then
> try to get the 802.11g/802.11 2.4 GHz  only people to spread out among
> the 2.4 GHz channels.
> 
> Beyond that, one of the Unix Unanimous group regulars (a big *BSD fan)
> will happily tell you how he can make the Linux TCP/IP stack fall over
> (under semi-extreme conditions).  So, while not perfect, I do trust
> the Linux TCP/IP stack far more than any proprietary software stack.
> There are several 802.11g routers out there that can be made to run
> 3rd party Linux distros, best known, but hardly only being the Linksys
> WRT54GL...

I certainly agree that 5GHz is great to have.

I still love my DIR-825 rev B.  It is dual band, abgn, runs the two
bands completely independantly and with a 600MHz MIPS CPU and gigabit
wired switch I would suspect it could handle a good chunk of such a load.

Nothing can help the fact 2.4GHz is overloaded, so yeah multiple routers
in 2.4GHz may be needed.  Perhaps dedicate one channel to 802.11n only,
and another couple to g only.  I believe that is more efficient.  Most
newer laptops have at least 802.11n in 2.4GHz, even if they don't do 5GHz.

Of course nothing beats a pile of Cat 5e or Cat 6 cable for reliable
bandwidth.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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