I’m searching for Hardware that can handle 400 concurrent hotspot users. I use the standard hotspot setup with no special firewall rules. I want to use VRRP and Load Balancing between two Routers. The Routers connect to a 100MBit line.
Can two RB1200 handle that or do i need a x86 system?
thx for your answers
Sven
RB1200 should handle this amount of users easily. just note, that you better opt for RAIDUS server (like user-manager) to mange logins as internal database is optimized for around 100 users and 400 will stretch it badly.
Sounds a little like some of my busy WiFi networks.
I would avoid 400 hotspot users on a single omni antenna - single radio card.
I would suggest (if possible) using sector antennas with APs on different channels.
I would suggest making the AP act like a ethernet bridge to the wlan card. Then disable all other services on the AP. Do not run DNS - do not run DHCP - do not run NAT - do not run Captive Portal - do not run anything that will load up your CPU.
With a 400 user hotspot - you should be using DNS and DHCP servers which are outside of your AP or APs.
You might want to take look at running a pfSense box. It supports Captive Portal (walled garden) , radius authentication , bandwidth up and down rate limiting per MAC address, DNS , DHCP and NAT. This permits your APs to run at low cpu loads (around 3 percent) with hundreds of connedted users.
–EDIT – I added another note
For this many users - you should also configure your APs for CTS-to-self with a threshold of 0 (zero).