Q: How many AEBS can I connect wireslessly

Each base station that you add, via a wireless connection, to extend the "main" base station can reduce the overall bandwidth of the Wi-Fi network in half. By adding too many base stations this way your wireless network will have little or no bandwidth to be useful.

Instead, consider connecting them all by Ethernet and creating a roaming network. In this scenario you can add many more.

Just to add a point..

Apple repeaters (extend wireless) all have to connect back to the main AEBS.. you cannot extend and extender.

And 5 AEBS that connect wirelessly is far too many.. They will interfere with each other.

I would say one base and two extenders.. at most.

Even in the scenario Tesserax has quoted of connection with ethernet.. they still should be far enough away from each other to have no overlap. With only 3 non-overlapping channels in 2.4ghz.. 1, 6, 11 that means you need at most 3 in any one area.. of say 20-30 feet in a normal house. Normally, unless you live in a barn or a sultan's palace 3 should be enough.

Apple could have this answer as a formal document .

They already do. Here is a sample, brief excerpt from this Apple Support document........Wi-Fi base stations: Extending the range of your wireless network by adding additional Wi-Fi base stations - Apple Suppo…

Before you add additional Wi-fi base stations to your network, you should consider whether or not you really need to.

Adding Wi-Fi base stations when it is unnecessary can reduce Wi-Fi throughput because the Wi-Fi network will require more data management overhead. The network configuration also becomes more complex. In the case of a wirelessly extended network, throughput may be reduced to less than 60 percent of that of a single device. The general rule is to keep the Wi-Fi network as simple as possible. You can accomplish this by using the minimum number of Wi-Fi base stations required to service the physical network area and by using Ethernet wherever possible.

 

Extending the range of your Wi-Fi network by connecting Wi-Fi base stations together using Ethernet is always the best option, and will provide the best throughput. Ethernet offers up to one gigabit rate, which is much faster than wireless (for wireless, the maximum rate is 450 Mbps on 802.11n @ 5 GHz). Ethernet is also resistant to radio frequency interference and is easier to troubleshoot. Additionally, as there is virtually no management overhead over Ethernet, more data will move from one point to another in the same space of time.