How many base stations can form a WDS

Question

How many base stations can form a WDS

hi, I am considering covering a very large area with very few users, so I would like to just have a central Extreme Base Station connected to the internet and maybe a dozen or so Expresses peripherally located as relays and remotes. I have been looking but can't find a statement from anyone on the scalability limits of these networks.

How many can be connected at one time?

Posted on Nov 2, 2005 4:00 PM

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Answer 1

Modem Geek

Level 4

1,110 points

Nov 2, 2005 4:03 PM in response to Stephen Goodman

You really don't want to do this. The amount of wireless traffic generated on a WDS is multiplied by the number of WDS nodes. Any packet must be transmitted to every node. Creating a very large WDS will severely impact your wireless throughput.

If you are talking about a few nodes, then it shouldn't be a problem.

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Answer 2

Henry B.

Level 9

78,731 points

Nov 2, 2005 5:56 PM in response to Stephen Goodman

You can set up a maximum of five nodes on a WDS - one main base station, and up to four relay or remote base stations.

If you need to cover a large area with multiple base stations, a WDS is not a good solution as pointed out above by Modem Geek. You should set up a cabled ethernet network connected to a cabled router as a backbone, then connect multiple base stations (each configured to function as a wireless network access point) to that ethernet backbone.

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