Mon Jan 25, 2016 5:04 pm
Unfortunately with wireless, there really isn't a simple answer to this question because it depends on lots of things.
Of course a clear RF environment is a big key, but there are other factors, such as what type of traffic are you handling. If you're handling VoIP or some other application that has a high packets/second count, this can eat through your total capacity much faster than you might think - bandwidth isn't the only concern. With wireless, time is really key, because only one device can be transmitting at any given moment.
Another troublesome issue is if you have lots of good links, but one client has a poor signal - the AP has to transmit this station's packets slowly, which chews up precious air time. If a user is using a basic rate like 6Mbps modulation, then the time it takes for 4KB of data to reach this customer could have sent 200KB to other customers at 300Mbps modulation rate.
So one 6Mbps link is like having 50 300Mbps links from a density planning perspective.
Also - broadcasts / multicasts on the sector take longer because the sector uses a base rate to send these packets. It has to transmit no faster than the slowest modulation rate on the sector, or else the transmission might get corrupted on the slow link.
In practice, we had some sectors that could only handle 3 or 4 links, while others worked just fine with 15 or more clients. (these were Ubnt airmax sectors, operating in a congested RF environment - dual chain 20Mhz channel - 5Ghz band)