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Number of clients and volume of traffic in a mesh network

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Number of clients and volume of traffic in a mesh network

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Number of clients and volume of traffic in a mesh network
Number of clients and volume of traffic in a mesh network
2020-03-10 21:02:44

We have our mesh network in the marina almost set up. There is one root-AP and 3 wireless APs. The client has no real grasp of the number of connections they will need. I have read that the mesh will support 50-60 clients at one time. 

When using the Omada cloud, I can see the traffic on each AP and the graph will tell me if the traffic is good, acceptable, or if it is getting up toward capacity. It looks like I can balance the load on the wireless APs, but when it comes to the root AP, there is nowhere else to go.

So--how do we plan for a time that the usage creeps up to the max of 50 to 60? I recall seeing somewhere how to handle this but I can't find that reference. I assume another mesh network would be needed. Am I correct? In this case, we would need to install a couple more CPEs and then add APs to create a second mesh.

While I'm on the subject, when I look at the utilization graph, I see Rx, Tx and interference. Rx and Tx are self-evident. Interference is not. One source of interference here might be all the metal masts of the boats in the marina, but I'm not sure. Is there a way to identify the source of interference? It's not really a whole lot, but it would be good to minimize it.

 

Once this project is completed and working, I'd be willing to submit this to TP-Link as an example of a mesh network if they want me to. I'll just need to know the guidelines for submission.

 

As an aside, the marina manager has been getting compliments on the quality of the wireless network, but we may need to limit data use because a couple of data-hogs have sprung up!

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#1
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Re:Number of clients and volume of traffic in a mesh network
2020-03-11 08:33:43

@Byteguy 

 

We have a faq about mesh, I think this should be useful for you. Please refer to the following website:

Frequently Asked Questions about EAP Mesh Network.

 

 

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#2
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Re:Number of clients and volume of traffic in a mesh network
2020-03-11 16:50:03

@forrest Thanks.  I'll check it out.

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#3
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Re:Number of clients and volume of traffic in a mesh network
2020-03-22 16:39:35
Hello! There are many articles on the Interwebs about proper wifi network design (look for hexagonal honeycomb layouts) Like this document (from a competitor) https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en_us/solutions/industries/docs/education/cisco_wlan_design_guide.pdf But don't get me wrong. TP-Link makes great, feature rich, cost effective products. I use the EAP225's (V3) and OC200 at home. Fantastic! But the best thing you can do, longer term, to plan for increased capacity is to plan to move away from wireless MESH solutions. Wireless MESH is convenient, NOT performant (at scale). All corporate Wireless installations (like the one I use at work with 1000's of AP's) use fully hardwired backhauls. How many EAP's do you have currently? Which models? Inside or outside?
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#4
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Re:Number of clients and volume of traffic in a mesh network
2020-03-22 16:43:45
Should also add, that I have ~40 clients on my home TP-Link solution. But many of these are IoT, etc. I have about 10 or so laptops, ipads, Roku's actively streaming / gaming / etc. at any give time. Depending on you internet service provider (I have FIOS Gigabit) you'll probably need to throttle your clients as well or they will quickly saturate your internet connectivity
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#5
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Re:Number of clients and volume of traffic in a mesh network
2020-03-22 17:10:35

Speaking of throttling users, I've tried but don't seem to have much success. I've limited traffic on both the APs and individual clients, but when I view their activity with the cloud app, the limit does not seem to be working. Imust be missing something.

 

I also don't quite understand how the Insight tab works. I have noticed several times that I have a high-use client and am trying to get a handle on their use. I went to the Insight tab and they didn't appear. I refreshed the display several times but no luck. I finally blocked the one user and then unblocked him. Only then did he show up. Strange.

 

 

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#6
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Re:Number of clients and volume of traffic in a mesh network
2020-03-22 17:27:33
Do you have the OC200? I just enabled a throttle on my iPhone though the Omada iOS app (connected to my on premise OC200) and limited the download and upload to 1024 kbps (aka 1Mbit/sec). It took effect instantly and limited my speedtest (SpeedSmart) bandwidth to approx 1-3 Mbit/sec up and down. Worked great. -Jonathan
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#7
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Re:Number of clients and volume of traffic in a mesh network
2020-03-22 17:29:16
I should have added this is using the current firmware (2.7.0) on my EAP225's(V3) and the OC200.
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#8
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Re:Number of clients and volume of traffic in a mesh network
2020-03-22 17:51:29
Yes, I am using an OC200.ON the traffic limitation, I could have mis-typed the limit by adding too many zeros! I'll check on that. Thanks
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#9
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Re:Number of clients and volume of traffic in a mesh network
2020-03-22 17:59:49
Let's see--you limit the data in Kbps. 1000K would be 1 Mbps 1000000 should be 1G I set it to 2000000 but one or two users seem to be exceeding that and I'm wondering why. FYI, I'm using EAP-225 Outdoor V 1.0
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#10
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Re:Number of clients and volume of traffic in a mesh network
2020-03-22 18:24:43
I'm not sure if there is a way to limit all users to a particular bandwidth (I assume there would be, but I didn't try it). I had never had occasion to use this feature before until you raised the question. I limited a single specific user (my phone). The GUI said the speeds were in kbps (kilobits per second). So, I used 1024 (aka 1024 kilobits / sec = 1 Megabits / sec). If you want to limit your clients to say 10 Mbit/sec (which is generally good enough for most things, including Netflix) then you would use a value of 10240. So, for example, you have a 100 Mbit / sec DL connection for your internet service this would mean that ~10 concurrent users could saturate it.
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#11
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