Wifi – Many clients on a wireless AP for UDP broadcast packets

maximumudpwifi

I asked this question on StackOverflow and was directed over here, so I'd appreciate any advice.

I'm deploying a smartphone application as part of a live music performance that depends on receiving UDP broadcast packets from a wireless access point. I'm guessing that between 20 and 50 clients will be connected at any one time. I'm aware that a maximum of 20 clients per access point is advised, but as the UDP broadcast packets are ground through the LAN, how would I be able to link multiple APs together?

I'm looking for recommendations on a suitable AP for this. The actual data transmission rates are very low – only a few kB/s – as I'm just sending small messages to the smartphone apps, and there will be no WAN internet connection. I tried it with a few connected peers on an adhoc wireless connection without any problems, but ran into dropped packet issues on an old WRT54G running ddwrt, though it's in pretty rough shape.

What's the best way to do this? I suppose I could limit concurrent wireless connections to 20 clients… but more would be nice.

EDIT: I should also say that it's purely one-way communication; the smartphone application is only receiving broadcast packets, not sending anything.

Best Answer

Like Brad mentions you can easily connect most Access Points and even consumer Routers to switches and get them to act as simple Access Points. In many cases buying a consumer router and even flashing it with DD-WRT will be much cheaper than buying a specific "Access Point" device and offers much more power and functionality.

So to scale your solution like you asked you simply need to figure out how many clients you can run over a single access point's hardware and software. For the consumer style devices with the standard firmware I wouldn't try to run more than 20. With an alternate firmware like DD-WRT you might be able to pull off 30 max. Your other option is to investigate buying advanced/industrial access points like what are used in large office buildings and schools. These devices can easily support many users, up to thousands of users at once, but they aren't cheap.

Any of the current Linksys or Netgear routers are fairly decent and can provide the connectivity you need. Access points too. I recently purchased two Linksys Wireless-N routers and flashed them with DD-WRT, they support about 40 users total across a single floor of a building and the range is great, especially with DD-WRT sending more power to the antennas.

Typically you just connect a standard ethernet cord from your switch to a switch port on the router or access point and thats all there is to it. Just make sure you observe the proper channel seperation for your locale and for the physical location you are using. Just obtain a free wireless network monitor tool to view the current networks around you and place your devices channels where there isn't much activity.

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