What is the maximum number of supported wireless clients on Ray Wi-Fi Access Points?

Frequently Asked Question!

In this Ray article, we are going to tackle and answer one of the most frequently asked questions which are how many supported wireless clients are supported on the Ray Wi-Fi Access points?

In order to understand the maximum number of supported wireless clients on a Wi-Fi access point, 

it's important to 1st understand the 2 main types of Wireless clients on Wi-Fi Access points.

1. ) Associated Wireless Clients per Wi-Fi Access Point.
2. )Concurrent Wireless Clients per Wi-Fi Access Point.

i.) Associated Wireless Clients per Wi-Fi Access Points.

To better understand how a WiFi client connects to a wireless network, it’s worth familiarizing yourself with two client processes. The first one is WPA supplicant.  WPA stands for ‘WiFi Protected Access’. The second one is the DHCP client, in which DHCP stands for ‘Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol’. Let’s see how these two system processes come into play when a WiFi client is connecting to a Wi-Fi Access point.

The WPA supplicant process handles the 802.11 Authentication and Association of the client with a BSSID. The 802.11 Authentication and Association is then followed by the 4-way handshake, which establishes a secure and authenticated channel between the client and the access point. Once that step is completed, the DHCP client requests a dynamic IP address that is used to connect to the network and exchange communication with the outside world.

The 2 main steps for this type of wireless client are;

Authentication
802.11 authentication is the first step in network attachment. 802.11 authentication requires a mobile device (station) to establish its identity with an Access Point (AP) or broadband wireless router. No data encryption or security is available at this stage. 

Association

Once authentication is complete, mobile devices can associate (register) with an AP/router to gain full access to the network. Association allows the AP/router to record each mobile device so that frames are properly delivered. The association only occurs on wireless infrastructure networks, not in peer-peer mode. A station can only associate with one AP/router at a time.

Answer For Maximum Number of associated clients per Wi-Fi Access Points?

This is the Maximum Hardware Limit for Associated Clients per Wi-Fi AP Model. 

This is the hardware limit for each AP model. Associated Wireless clients are connected to an SSID, but not actively sending or receiving traffic.

ii.) Concurrent Wireless Clients per Wi-Fi Access Points.

Concurrent Wireless clients refer to the number of WiFi clients currently connected and associated with a Wi-Fi access point BSSID and that are actively sending and receiving data traffic to an access point.

These numbers can be affected and sometimes limited by factors such as the Hardware (AP) model of the WiFi AP (Wi-Fi 5 / Wi-Fi 6), and IP addresses available in the DHCP pool as we described this is one of the steps during the WiFi clients association phase.

Summary:

In summary, a Wi-Fi Access point can have a higher number of associated Wireless clients compared to the number of Active concurrent wireless clients.

Table showing Ray WiFi 6  ASSOCIATED CLIENTS AND CONCURRENT CLIENTS:

We hope this article was helpful..

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