Echo & Alexa Forums

General Category => Smart Devices and Gadgets => Topic started by: tngw1500se on October 13, 2020, 10:07:32 pm

Title: WIFI Help needed
Post by: tngw1500se on October 13, 2020, 10:07:32 pm
Help! I 'm having network problems. It may seem nuts but I have somewhere around 84 wifi clients connected to my home network. It's a bunch of amazon devices, phones, wall switches, bulbs, ESP8266 chips and sensors. It's all been fine until I hit that over 80 mark. Now things drop out at times. I'm running 2 TP-Link Archer A7 routers. One is an just used as an access point with a few items on it and the other does the heavy lifting. Would it work better if I got some of the stuff moved over to the access point routers wifi or is this just to much for these routers and I need to upgrade my main router? I haven't set many of the items as a static IP either, would that help???

NOTE: My internet speed is 170 Mbps
Title: Re: WIFI Help needed
Post by: renegade600 on October 14, 2020, 05:01:40 am
what is the model of the a7 router?   also have you tried a power cycle on your routers?
Title: Re: WIFI Help needed
Post by: tngw1500se on October 14, 2020, 05:41:30 am
what is the model of the a7 router?   also have you tried a power cycle on your routers?

Isn't "A7" the model?

I have cycled the router

I also updated the firmware.
Title: Re: WIFI Help needed
Post by: renegade600 on October 14, 2020, 01:07:58 pm
Isn't "A7" the model?

I have cycled the router

I also updated the firmware.

that is the series number, there is a specific model number. 
Title: Re: WIFI Help needed
Post by: jwlv on October 14, 2020, 03:18:10 pm
Although all routers can support 256 submask IPs it is usually not reasonable to expect a consumer router to handle more than a few dozen devices. That’s because the CPUs and WiFi radios in consumer routers are just not powerful enough to handle the load. As you found out, for your particular router the magic number is around 80. In my opinion that’s already quite high.

Unfortunately consumer routers don’t specify how many devices they can handle. What you need to do is get a commercial/industrial router, like the one schools and office buildings use. They are made to handle tons of devices. They are quite expensive too.

Btw I’ve heard good things about the Archer A7 & A5 routers, especially from the gaming community. But still they are not made to handle that many devices.

Using one of the routers as an access point will reduce the load on the WiFi radios. The CPU of the main router will still bear most of the load on the data traffic. But will it help? Maybe just a little bit. Try it and see.

Using static IPs vs. dynamic IPs would probably make very little difference. The DHCP server is only pinged once to assign a dynamic IP to a device. Once that's done, not much else happens.
Title: Re: WIFI Help needed
Post by: tngw1500se on October 14, 2020, 05:32:28 pm
that is the series number, there is a specific model number.

I'll have to check when i get home
Title: Re: WIFI Help needed
Post by: tngw1500se on October 14, 2020, 09:11:32 pm
UPDATE: Got off wallet and bought: TP-Link Deco Mesh WiFi System
Title: Re: WIFI Help needed
Post by: renegade600 on October 15, 2020, 04:15:52 am
UPDATE: Got off wallet and bought: TP-Link Deco Mesh WiFi System

hopefully it will fix things for you.  be sure to use the ssid and password from the old router on the new mesh.  It will save a lot of time and frustrations
Title: Re: WIFI Help needed
Post by: tngw1500se on October 15, 2020, 09:11:25 am
hopefully it will fix things for you.  be sure to use the ssid and password from the old router on the new mesh.  It will save a lot of time and frustrations

Good idea! Thanks
Title: Re: WIFI Help needed
Post by: showpow on October 24, 2020, 05:02:40 pm
You. may want to check how many simultaneous connections are allowed. I know some devices like the eero only allow up to 75. I may be wrong, but worth having a look into.