I had to reboot my Verizon router three times today. This is getting old, so I have decided that it's time for a new router.
My home network includes 100 devices, 76 of them are 2.4 GHz WiFi. My issue is that some of my 2.4GHz devices aren't reliably connecting. I reboot and they will connect, but some others won't. Sometimes they all connect. I've tried reflashing some devices with static IP to reduce the DHCP load, but no change. Tomorrow when no one is using the Internet, I will be unplugging what devices I can and reboot the router. I think I can get down to 60 WiFi devices. Note, this arrangement has been working for years. I convinced Verizon to give me a new router and everything worked fine for a week. FWIW, the 5GHz WiFi and Ethernet are not experiencing any issues. Just the 2.4GHz WiFi.
I am deciding between the Edgerouter and the TP-Link Omada routers. Any inputs would be appreciated.
I love my wired Ethernet system, same router for many years. Theoretically, a home router could have a maximum 254 devices connected to it. This is because of the limit in IP addresses it can assign to devices, from 192.168.1.0 to 192.168.1.255 or whatever block it is supporting. You can add an additional router if you want. Also what bandwidth is available to each unit. Check this link: How Many Devices Can Connect to a Router at The Same Time? - Tech Advisor
I don't know about your router specifically but I would expect most routers or wireless access points to have a problem with 76 simultaneous WiFi connections. Check the specification of your router, there should be somewhere something that tells you how many WiFi connections it can deal with at one time, I suspect it will be a lot fewer than 76. Note this has nothing to do with the size of the DHCP pool, this is to do with how many connections the electronics can deal with at once.
If you want that many simultaneous connections you will have to read the specifications carefully to ensure your chosen router or wireless access point can handle them.
If the IP addresses on the devices are within the DHCP range then you are risking the DHCP server giving them out to other devices, with the result that you will have 2 devices with the same IP address. I would expect that to cause intermittent and unpredictable connectivity problems to those 2 devices. The limit on DHCP is the number of IP addresses available, if there's an address free then there's no problem, if not, then you have problems. If you want to have more than the ~250 addresses available with 192.168.0.0 / 24 then use a different subnet with a larger pool. At this point, if you want suggestions for a larger range I have to ask someone else for advice, but given what you say I don't think the availability of IP addresses is your problem.
You must not add an additional router, that would create a separate subnet and make a right mess of the network. You can of course add as many wireless access points as you like.
He can certainly cascade wireless routers downstream of his internet service provider's router and these can have internet access (say for accessing NTP or posting data to a server etc.) which satisfies the needs of a lot of IOT type applications. What you cannot (easily) do is enable a device which is a client of one network to talk to a client of another network.
I think there is a confusion about terminology. A router provides routing functions, such as DHCP and NAT. Unless you really know what you are doing and why you are doing it there should only be one router on the network. A wireless access point provides only WiFi, without routing functions. You can have lots of wireless access points.
As always: It depends on your setup
I love OpenWRT. Get a supported hardware and configure it the way you like - e.g. my wireless routers just act as media bridges without client seperation.
Cascading routers in the way I have suggested creates multiple island networks with no routing function between those networks analogous to multiple instances of a home network. This is useful for isolation. It could be you don't want guests and untrusted IOT devices etc. talking to your main network. I agree, however, that a single network should have only one router (but could have multiple bridges, switches, access points, firewalls etc.). It is, after all, the router which creates the network. The chosen topology depends to some extent on the degree of isolation which is required/tolerable.
In my home network, I have added a router downstream from my internet service providers router and I use this for my IOT devices. The devices in the VLAN I've created can not even talk to each other and are blocked from seeing any devices in the upstream network and are only permitted to use specific protocols (NTP is one) when talking to the internet.
Incidentally, the topic (or a similar one) was also discussed here: Router experts- looking for help and maybe the current topic did not deserve its own thread.
I thought about that but my other thread was looking for troubleshooting advice. This one is specifically to help me decide on a router/AP family to purchase.
This is my third Verizon router. They work fine when installed, and they all fail the same way after a few weeks.
Maybe they use some low quality flash memory (low number of write cycles) for some tables (to survive a power failure) and don't do too much in the way of wear levelling.
Try powering the router down for a few minutes and restart it to see if it fixes your problem for a while, it may be its routing table is getting full.
Yes, I agree, and if that's what you want to achieve this is one way to do it. Note my comment:
@SteveMann,
Keep in mind what @6v6gt and I have said, and understand the difference between a router and a wireless access point. If we have confused you then please ask for clarification.
I hardwired everything possible, bit there's still a pile of cameras and security devices. Performance increased dramatically with the installation of a mesh.
I did remove 25 non-essential WiFi devices and reboot the router. Everything not removed connected normally, as did the unplugged devices when I plugged them in one at a time. (Sensors, Alexa devices, Broadlink devices and a few ESP based tings). It appears that when I had more than 60 WiFi devices, connection started getting "maybe I'll connect, maybe not". So I reduced the load by disconnecting a few devices and the problem went away. Is there a soft limit to the number of connected devices? I don't know and neither, apparently, does Verizon support.
Replacing the router (three times now) made to problem go away even with all 76 WiFi devices connecting. For a while. Router #2 lasted a month. Router #3 lasted a week.
Routing Table. You mean the ARP? My router gives me no access to the ARP but "Refresh". Currently it shows 63 devices as "reachable".
