2 routers?

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Here's where I utterly embarass myself with regards to my basic knowledge of networking.

-=edit=- for clarity.

Literally, I have recently discovered that my router apparently has a maximum number of devices (50).

Im very close to this.

My post was to query if its therefore best to add a second wifi router, to result in having plenty of space to grow.

Hope this is clear.

-=/edit=-

Original below :

I have one nighthawk router (ace), and multiple inexpensive network switches in various locations. This is tri-band, and shows a single wifi connection and it self-manages which devices connect to either 2.4 or 5Ghz radios without needing to manually select one or the other. Very handy IMO.

I also have an always-on PC (blue-iris & cams) and multiple wifi devices due to my love of nodemcu's. Although everything that can be hard-wired, is hard-wired.

Everything is one network, 192.168.1.x

It's came to my attention that it's probably about time I actually did a bit of housekeeping. I'm not particularly security-conscious, but I'm assuming at some point my hillbilly network is going to end up showing problems. Right now we're ok, but the only real streaming tends to be to one tv at a time.

I'm mildly worried as I've always assumed that I could continue in this manner, happily adding wifi devices up to 254 or whatever. Apparently, this isn't true and router's do sometimes have set maximums. Embarrassingly, I had no idea of this despite the ridiculous amount of time and effort I put into this little hobby.

I'm guessing I'm either at that limit now, or very near to it. I'd like to know I'm future proofed.

My assumption is that I could possibly add another router with decent wifi and then probably chuck all of the smart-home stuff on that, leaving my original router to happily handle the cctv, tvs and laptop, allowing the smart-home router to connect to as many little devices as I throw at it.

Could someone please chime in here and let me know if I'm utterly barking up the wrong tree?

Many thanks. And sorry if this is a ridiculous question.

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I don't believe you actually stated what problem your having...

But having recently upgraded my network, I will say this: The frequency used (2.4 or 5) is only one consideration. I have found that the Wifi Standard being used is very important. I have tried to convert all my devices (especially the Router) to use Wifi 6 (802.11ax), and there has been an incredible improvement in speed and reliability. The Wifi 6 standard (from my memory) will handle 4 times as many active clients as Wifi 5.

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see below

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Router selection and configuration is highly complex when you have a lot of devices. There is no explicit reason to go to two separate routers. However, you are having some issues and are already using range-extenders, so your rethink is appropriate.

To assist you, people need to know:

  • House size and geometry/dimensions
  • preferred location for main router
  • Number of devices
  • Number of wide-band devices (i.e., fire TV, apple TV, any streaming TV device - including tablets and laptops that may use them). Here, you can limit based on anticipated maximum usage

Then, I would go to a reputable local vendor (or two vendors) and ask for their recommendation / compare recommendations and costs. Also ask about set-up complexity. Look like you are in the poor house - or you will end up with the Rolls Royce of routers.

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Thanks for the reply.

Literally, I have recently discovered that my router apparently has a maximum number of devices (50).

Im very close to this.

My post was to query if its therefore best to add a second wifi router, to result in having plenty of space to grow.

Hope this is clear.

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I have the Nighthawk (R7000) and was having a few issues with devices (Amazon Fire HDs for wall mounted dashboards) dropping off the network. I wasn’t aware of that device number limitation either..

I’ve kept the router, but switched off the wireless radios completely. I’ve fitted two Ubiquity UniFi U6 Lite access points to do the wireless (each is hardwired to a switch). Using the Unify network manager software on an always on device (I use a Pi 4 that does a few other things for HE) it manages the APs as a single WiFi network. Devices can switch seamlessly but anything remaining static (your NodeMCUs) can be locked to whichever access point provides the best signal.

I can heartily recommend the Unify APs - great coverage and very scalable so you can add more for better coverage (externally in garden for instance). You could add them and use the same SSID and password that your Nighthawk uses so you don’t have to alter the details on your end devices. (Oh and they can handle hundreds of devices!)

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I had a nighthawk R8500 and updated to a RAX70 about a year ago. Both are tri-band and I don’t understand where the 50 device limit is coming from. With the R8500 I was running with 16 wifi plugs alone and a total of approx 75 wifi devices.

Side note: in my opinion, splitting the ssid is mandatory. 2.4 is mostly IoT plus I reserve the low 5g for IoT as well (echo’s, etc).
I reserve my upper 5g for our devices only.

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I have a question about the Ubiquity UniFi U6 Lite that you are using just because I have previously tried this before running two routers in AP mode (netgear R8500 + a TPlink something) with the same ssid and hopping from one to the other was impossible while the device could still hear the AP it was connected to.

With multiple Ubiquity UniFi U6 Lites does hopping occur or do you need a Ubiquity main router to manage it?

Edit: now with the single RAX70 I have the coverage I need but we are in the planning stage of a new build.

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Thanks for the reply.

This sounds like the ideal solution.

Can you confirm that I can set static IPs through the software, for each of my nodemcu's?

If so, this sounds like it's the way to go.

As for the reply a few above (sorry, mobile and in a hurry), the device limit is publicised.

Plus i tried adding multi new nodemcu's, and the magic number for me appears to be 29 wifi plus 13 wired, or thereabouts.

I verified odd behaviours by adding and subtracting a device when I reached the limit.

Edit

Essentually just trying to decide whether to buy a new kick ■■■ router which should increase my device limit (because I'm happy with the speed and reception of my tplink ac3200), or... Go with the AP.

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It is partly down to the device to switch I believe, but setting the APs up correctly with regard to coverage and transmit power helps. You can also set a minimum RSSI level to encourage the switchover between APs. To be fair I have mine set to auto power and my devices 'roam' just fine.

Not as long as you use the controller. That can be a hardware Cloud Key Controller, or as I have, you can install that software on an always on machine - I'm using the same Raspberry Pi that I also use for MQTT, Homebridge and MotionEye.

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Yeah not a problem. You can still use the same static IPs you're using on your Nighthawk. The access points are just doing the wireless communication and sending the info back to your router. The router will still be the DHCP server for assigning addresses etc.

I was in the same boat - looking at a new all in one router or even one of the consumer mesh devices such as TP Link. However reading the forums they didn't seem great from a feedback perspective. As good as some of the newer expensive routers might be, you can't dodge the fact that however good the signal is there won't be one perfect spot to locate it to get great coverage. With multiple access points you can get the WiFi signal everywhere. I really wish I'd gone this route sooner. I maybe thought that it would be overly complex but it's not (I had a few hiccups initially installing the software).

I think I paid around £118 for the first U6 Lite access point from Amazon. You also need to power it from either a PoE switch or adaptor. I used the latter for each access point - a TP Link TL-POE150S (also from Amazon £10.99). To ease the burden on my wallet I just did the free 5 monthly payment option on the second one. The U6 are the latest WiFi 6 (802.11ax). You can get the older WiFi 5 devices (802.11ac) a bit cheaper possibly. You also can find a lot of the AC models kicking around on eBay - no doubt being sold by those wanting the latest devices.

This is the only thing I'm unsure about. If it's simply a device limit regardless of whether it's wireless or wired, you'd maybe need to replace the router anyway. In that case I'd still use the access points for wireless and use the router without. I've probably around 40 devices on my network at the moment.

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Thank you for the additional info.

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Thanks for that. This is my issue at the moment.

I'd hate to buy an Ap, losing my perfect wifi coverage, then need to buy another Ap.

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I suppose a lot comes down to cost and performance. The outlay for my two U6 Lites and PoE adaptors came to £258.96. An Asus or TP Link WiFi 6 router is about £200 on Amazon. I think I'd be just as happy if I'd picked up some second hand Ubiquiti ac kit on eBay. You can mix and match different access points.

With my old setup - Virgin Media Hub 3 (modem mode 550meg package) > Netgear R7000 I was getting WiFi everywhere in my house but maybe only getting 250 meg download in the same room and 50 meg in the extremities. With the two access points I'm getting 400 meg when in same room as an access point and 200 meg plus everywhere else inside. While testing I found that the AP I installed upstairs was getting me 130 meg download on the drive outside and even 50 plus inside the car!

I checked that limit and it appears to be just a wireless limit - 32 devices per band, so I guess your nodemcu's are topping out the 2.4GHz band.

Edit: One other thing might be worth checking....is the 32 device limit in the Netgear hardware or is it a firmware restriction. Just before I got the access points I decided to flash the R7000 with FreshTomato firmware. If that firmware removed the limit, it could be a consideration in the short term. It's relatively straight forward to do, but very important to follow the instructions regarding reboots and clearing NVRAM at each step to avoid bricking it.

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Bingo.

My gut is telling me that if I disable my nighthawk WiFi, I'll then find the single AP won't be good enough, thus needing another, taking the cost to around 250.

However, a single router would be approx 200.

Think this may be an impossible to answer without trying kinda question.

And my gut says "buy a new router".

I was actually hoping that an I between solution would be to add a cheap-■■■ router to the mix, purely to connect my mcus. But then I also have a tonne of android boxes etc (which I use for cctv screens), an always on pc with blue iris and a few laptops/tablets.

I wouldn't want to restrict the access between these which therefore, I guess, means that I'm not really able to seperate them regardless.

Thinking out loud here really.

In effect, all I want is to be able to add more devices. My coverage and speeds are perfect. Which leads me back to thinking I probably just need to pull mine out and replace it with a wifi6 router, if that'll give me additional device space.

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What model is your nighthawk? And how are you seeing this limit? I know the 5g is limited if you want to get the max mimo bandwidth, but you should not have any limit on your 2.4g

Oh, maybe it’s a limit with using a single ssid.

Btw - my rax70 was a big upgrade from the r8500

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Could you elaborate where you found this limit of 50 devices for your specific Router? It is not clear to me that this is even a "hard" limit, but rather is the recommended limit where some level of performance can be maintained. Though, the Router has to have enough CPU power and RAM to manage the multiple connections. From my search, other TP-Link Routers have higher recommended limits of connected devices. Since you are still using an old WiFi 5 Router, perhaps just upgrading your Router to a newer and more powerful Router would increase the device count to meet your needs. This would be a more simple solution than adding and managing additional Routers, SSIDS, etcs.

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Found this:

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This doesn't make much sense. That website says those netgear routers support at least, not at most.

Google wifi that i have says up 200 devices.

The problem is likely performance degredation. Each device makes a connection to the router and that is overhead. Eventually that overhead would be impactful, but only under extream data situations.

The best solution is probably a mesh system and not another router. A good mesh system will split the load acroas the nodes to maximize performance so one unit doesn't get overloaded. They will also allow you combine the network so you dont have to deal multiple ssid's.

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I have an archer c3200.

This was a little but of an assumption, due to discovering the marketing info for a newer model (presumably, better), which started 50 device support.

This worried me, as the new model was apparenty set at 50, mine was probably less.

I then started to add additional (unused) wifi products as a test.

I actually only managed to add another 3 or 4 before I started to see odd behaviour. For example, after managing to add (then set static ups), one by one, I was unable to complete initial setup for the next in line. I assumed it was faulty. Tried another. And another. Same result.

Tried rebooting the router. No go. At this point I noticed my phone WiFi was reporting "could not connect". The only solution was to remove a few of those new devices, at which point everything returned to normal.

This is repeatable behaviour.

Tried a few times, same result. Including being definitely unable add #4 WiFi socket. I then removed one of my echo dots. This enabled me. To add the 4th.

Results are pretty clear.

Also, here's something I found on Google.

SmartSelect_20221010-065257_Chrome
SmartSelect_20221010-065257_Chrome1335×808 155 KB

What I'm wondering is, is if I get another cheap 2nd hand router, can I say, connect my wled-flashed nodemcu's to that instead (at the moment, the fixed ip for one of those is 192.168.1.23..... I'm assuming the new fixed ip will need to be 192.168.2.23 instead), then will I continue to be able to set these up to work with my 192.168.1.11 c7? Or, as I suspect, will they be unable to cross that boundary?

Because essentially, if that works, then I have no limit.

It doesn't suprise me that this question has not managed to gain solid answers as yet, as many people seem to be blissfully unaware of individual connection limits of their routers. Presumably due to the general dislike of WiFi-enabled devices in the smart home ecosystem, and also following from that, the limits being so comparatively high compared to 'usual' usage. I absolutely saturate mine with WiFi based nodemcu's for a variety of projects. Purely due to cost.

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