Can my wireless hub-router handle a houseful?

Asked by gasman (11345

) September 23rd, 2012

Technical Jellies: How many users can share a home wi-fi network before it’s noticeably slow?

Next week my wife & I will be hosting a houseful of visitors from France, maybe 8 or 10 lodging in our home in connection with a “sister city” event.

I have a single broadband connection from Comcast via cable modem, connected to an Apple AirPort Extreme 802.11n (4th Generation) hub-router, about two years old. The wi-fi network has “WPA/WPA 2 personal” security. Although it’s dual-band I only use 2.4 Ghz, which gives pretty good coverage through our house.

I googled “speed test” and ran three different free apps. My connection clocks out around 35 Mbps download, 6 upload. On Sunday morning, if that matters.

We’ve had 2 or 3 laptop users connected to our network simultaneously without any problems but never had to handle as many as 8 or 10 users at once. Any way to know in advance how it will work? What else can we do short-term?

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5 Answers

Unless everyone spends their time watching streaming video, you will be fine. For most purposes, the Internet is slower than your cable connection and your WiFi.

jaytkay (25810

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Precisely so. Many coffee shops and other public access wifi hotspots use the same sort of router as most households.

As @jaytkay says, the weak link is actually your internet connection, but even that isn’t much of a limit unless people start streaming video or doing file-sharing. Normal surfing takes up little bandwidth and thus won’t be a problem. Even then, your connection is 5 times faster than mine and I have few issues with 2–3 devices on my network at a time.

jerv (31076

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