How many clients?

[Theodor Milkov]

On Fri, Sep 05, 2003 at 04:01:40PM -0400, tom at ceisystems.com wrote:
> Hello again,
> 
> 	So, HostAP seems to be limited to somewhere around 15 STAs
> (client devices).  This makes me think of a question.  Why can an
> Orinoco (Proxim) 2500 AP handle hundreds of users, and HostAP can only
> handle 15?  Again, I understand that 11Mbit/sec divided by 100 users is
> only 112.64Kbps, but you will never see 100 _simultaneously_ active
> users.

We see packet loss problems at about 15 STAs and 200pps, but probably
because of contention/interference. I have not tested with hardware
(Orinoco or other) AP, so don't know how they will perform in the same
environment. However I believe that this is not problem of hostap driver
itself but 802.11b problem.

At the time we begin to see packet loss the hostap underlayng OS shows:

23:28:17 up 11 days,  1:32,  1 user,  load average: 0.40, 0.37, 0.37

This system have 2 Senao CD-2511+ EXT2 (23dBm) cards and is 486 DX/4 at
100MHz. In the indoor environment it was able to forward almost 5Mbps
between 2 STAs. We are still using version 2002-10-12.

-- 
        Theodor Milkov        Head Network Administrator
        Davidov Net           Phone: +359 (2) 730158