Best WAP For Dense Crowds?

An anonymous reader writes "A local community organization has asked me to help them set up Wi-Fi access for an upcoming event, with some unusual (to me) requirements. All users (up to 500 people) will occupy a relatively small area and more-or-less have line-of-sight to the WAP, so issues like signal strength and wall penetration don't matter. Security also does not matter, as we plan to open this to anyone wanting to connect. Cost always matters, but we realize a $50 Linksys or three won't cut it here. In the past, I have used Cisco AP1200s for a few dozen users to great satisfaction, but they only handle 50 connections at a time, and practically count as antiques at this point anyway. My research on the matter tells me that 802.11n performs far better in this regard, but I want to support 802.11g as well. I have no objection to using two APs to split those apart (with n limited to 5.8GHz, as per the suggestion of several comments in a recent Ask Slashdot), but physical constraints make it preferable to minimize the total number of APs needed — Ten WRT54s might cost about the same as one Aironet, but I only have three good places to mount these. I welcome any suggestions and real-world experiences with similar situations, including the ever-popular Ask Slashdot refrain of 'What kind of idiot would do it like that, when you can just do this?' Ideally, I would like to know model numbers and how well they held up under real-world loads comparable to my situation."

Comments

Best WAP For Dense Crowds?

[theolein]

You don't have to hit 'em, mate. Just find another crowd that's brighter.

Re:What's the event?

[MichaelSmith]

And why wasn't I invited?

ballroom surfing

[jandoedel]

So you put 240 people in a single ballroom, and all they do is surf the web?

Why..? Did you forget to turn on the music?

Re:ballroom surfing

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they're texting because they're making fun of the faggot who calls it Starbys.

airport extreme

[saleenS281]

It won't have anywhere near the granularity in configurations, but I will say apple airport extreme's tend to "just work". They support both g and n operating at the same time since they have multiple antenna's, and they also have a sort of sandbox guest environment you can set.

If you want fall-down easy to setup and manage, they'll get the job done. If you want granular control, don't waste your time. I got sick of trying to make dd-wrt work with WAP, wireless-n and g at the same time a year ago, and just bit the bullet on the apple units. I can say it's been one purchase I don't regret.

Re:how cheap? pfsense?

[Drantin]

Yes, we should be able to mod people up to remove our comments.