Concurrent users

How many users can simultaneously be connected to the mobile routers?

Originally posted by Nick View Post

How many users can simultaneously be connected to the mobile routers?

The number of concurrent users is practically it's limited by the desired data rate than by the router resources e.g RAM, buffer size etc. The 3G mobile routers essentially create an 802.11g wireless network and use cellular as the wireless backhaul (i.e cellular to provide the internet connection). 802.11g uses CSMA/CA to control access to the air interface. When multiple mobile stations start transmission at the same time they collide and they back off and repeat the transmission at a later time. As more users get added to the same wireless channel then there are more collisions and more repetitions which manifests itself as a drop in datarate. One may easily avoid this by changing the wireless channel of a subset of these users. Recall in N. America we have 11 channels available with 5MHz separation distance. Most routers come preset to either channel 1, 6 or 11 since these provide the least interference due to their spectral distance. If these already have lots of users then go to 3, 4 or 8,9 whichever will result in the least neighbors.

KF7RCQ

When you start running into issue of too many users then you need to consider routers designed for this and devices such as load balancers ... these mobile routers, although the can support unlimited number of users are thuor mentions, are designed for less than 10 or so simultaneous users ... But its not expensive to isolate collision domains by adding different devices behind the EVDO router