Client capacity

[scas]

How many clients can the RouterStation handle?

[UBNT-Mike.Ford]

Hello,

The limiting factor will be how many Radio Cards you are using and what bandwidth each client is getting.

The aggregate throughput is about 75Mbps TCP/IP for 3 radio cards in 20Mhz operation.

Thanks,

Mike

[scas]

Right now I will be using 2 XR2 cards. With about 40 clients.Also what type of power supply requirements are needed. I have a short run of about 15 feet poe. Will 18v 1A do it, or will i need 24 v. Also what is the max power that can be put to these units? Is 48v too much?

[scas]

I see that on the board 24v is the max.I think that I will try it with 1 card first.That card will have about 30 clients on it, so will 18 1a do it?

[bgoksel]

Hey Scas,

Let us know the results.

Thanks.

[UBNT-Mike.Ford]

Hello,

18V 1A should be fine. Any results yet?

Thanks,

Mike

[marcelodm]

Hi guys!, i think that this is the rigth topic for this question so, how many simultaneous clients should nanostation 2.4 support in bridge mode?, with +- 128k/200k upload/download bandwitdth usage?, and the same question for the Powerstation2?

Best regards!!

[WHT]

Generally speaking, the PS, NS. Loco, and Bullet start to choke with more than 30 to 35 active clients.

But IMHO, I suspect this is assuming that all clients are surfing the web, downloading email, etc. same time. In other words, I'm beginning to think you could have many times that number if they are simply sitting there and not doing anything. That's just an idea that needs to be verified.

[marcelodm]

Thank´s for the answer, but i have another question, what can do a nanotstation 2.4 freeze?, i have two of it, and one of then, locks sometimes...., then i have to manually turn it off an turn it on!!, any ideas?


Best regards!

[WHT]

Try the Nanostation forum...there have been a few odd instances of this. Are you using the latest firmware?

[marcelodm]

I don´t think so, have to verify..., but only one freezes, the other is working for a 3 months uninterruptable without any problem, but i will try to update the firmware, maybe this can solve the problem, again, thank´s for the help!!!

[umfo1]

you are geniuses)))

[WHT]

I prefer the term, "Uber UBNTeers"

[WHT]

Say that three times fast.... :D

[cz_ranger]

From preliminary tests it looks like the CPU (?) will be the problem here... A single wireless is maxing it at some 25 mbit TCP thruput... which is not a good sign in terms of handling many clients... which is a shame.

[WHT]

There are other manufacturers' radios, but will cost you a lot more.

[cz_ranger]

That is not exactly the point and besides it is not exactly true..

1) I suppose running netperf/iperf really maxes out the CPU
2) throughput pc - (wlan -bridged- eth) - pc is about ~ 50 mbit which is not bad although i have seen better
3) There is for example this nice little board sold for $79 powered by 300MHz ARM920 CPU with one miniPCI slot. It outperforms the RS quite easily.

So, I like the RS design, but it is a shame putting an atheros mips CPU on it. Simply there is not enough power, to handle one, not to mention three radios. An ARM or Xscale CPU would make more sense....

[cz_ranger]

There are other manufacturers' radios, but will cost you a lot more.
Another point is - this is not about radios - UBNT makes excellent radios - they are worth every cent. This is about CPU/HW platform which being MIPS based seems to be underpowered.

Another choice is to go via Intel's Litlle Falls + Mikrotik RB14 + picoPSU + CF/IDE adapter + 1G CF + some ram - $190 - it slightly bigger, 4xminiPCI and lot, lot powerful... I guess I was sort of hoping that RS would be the dream machine...

[UBNT-Mike.Taylor]

cz_ranger,

The CPU bottleneck you see is software related, and was kind of a surprise. I'm investigating now.

I can be certain since we use the same CPU (with Atheros' drivers) and SR71-A 11n card to achieve 120-150Mbps on LS-SR71. I have seen 150Mbits/s + on the bench, and have seen 120Mbits/s in the field in my own tests. We have customers with fielded long distance links achieving 70-80Mbits/s routinely.

Thanks,

Mike

[UBNT-Mike.Taylor]

MIPS and ARM are just instruction sets. Neither is faster. AR7100 is faster than most of the XScale boards I have used. Stay tuned...

[cz_ranger]

Mike,
I'd say MIPS and ARM are processor core architectures however that's not really important at the moment. Thanks for the input Mike, I will keep the RS on the workbench for a little longer then. I was hoping it was a SW issue since it was the softirq exhausting the resources mostly.

Tom

[UBNT-Mike.Taylor]

This problem should be addressed in the next release of the boot loader and a workaround is already present in OpenWRT head revision.

Thanks,

Mike

[cz_ranger]

Now that is a different story :D 94.58 Mbit on the ethernet interface a load is still not maxing out... same story with the wireless part. Thank you for the pointer, I confirm that things now work as expect ...

Tom