How many pc's..............

[nokevin]

Hi all, how PC's can i run from one WAP ? what is the best WAP for highest power output ?

Thanks Steve

[M/Q]

As usual it is not that simple of an answer. There are many conditions to consider. First, the band needs to be looked at. 11b will give you 5.5mb and 11g will give you 27mb of throughput bandwidth. 11b has more output power so will have a larger coverage area, thus will be able to support higher throughput bandwidth further from the node/AP.

Next the required user throughput bandwidth, is the user streaming video? Or just using normal office programs, file sharing and surfing the Internet. Once you know that amount of bandwidth then you can add a fudge factor and divide the available AP's bandwidth by that and get an approximate idea of how many clients can be used. Also remember there is increased management overhead needed by the AP as the number of clients increases.

The AP with the most output power right now is the EnGenious AP. It is a good one. That along with Cisco and Proxim are the brands that I recommend to clients. There are other important considerations that may need to be looked at depending on whether this is a SOHO or a business system.

[nokevin]

Thanks, does that mean if i use a 54Mbps AP on a 2 Mb dsl i could run more Pc's or is the 54Mbps AP just faster transfer speed with the same Bandwidth ????????????

[M/Q]

The DSL will be the bottleneck if all the clients are downloading at the same time. Typically the Broadband access bandwidth limitation is not noticed as much as the reduction in throughput when changing from a 100mB Ethernet system to a 11g system running 54mB. That is why in most cases we calculate the number of users on what the wired/wireless system bandwidth is more so than the Internet access. At least that is what my mentors beat into my head. An example is that I have a client that has a T1 frame relay, he designated half of it for data and half of it for phone. So the data at most will be 750kbs. That client has 40 users and they for the most part have acceptable Internet access. But several years ago when I upgraded that same client's Ethernet from 10mbs to 100mbs they were very happy at the increase. Again it will become a problem if all users are streaming video at the same time. I hope that helps clear it up.