One thing that we tell you a lot around here is that routers are one of the most important pieces of homes today. We connect all kinds of devices to it, not only computers but even printers or vacuum cleaners, to give just two examples. There are so many of these devices that we can cause a malfunction of our router that makes us navigate slower with them. Today we are going to talk about the connection limits of your router.
If you have problems browsing the Internet with your connection, it may simply be that your WiFi network is saturated at the moment. This happens when we have too many devices at the same time, although it can also be due to other factors such as our bandwidth.
A problem with the number of connections
Each router (no matter what you have at home) supports a maximum number of connections. The routers that we have at home are generally more “simple” than the business ones, since the latter generally support many more connections. In addition, in our house we only have one access point as a general rule , so the computers are all connected to the same device and are not distributed among several.
If we get theoretical, it is not difficult to imagine how many maximum connections a router accepts. If we take into account that the subnet mask of the devices is 255.255.255.0 and we discount the IP address of the router itself, then the account does not come out that we can connect 253 devices to our equipment . At this point it should be added that the connections are not distinguished, these 253 would include both the equipment connected by cable and by WiFi.
As we say, this is a purely theoretical number, since in reality they are much less. In fact, there is a way with which we can know how many maximum connections our router accepts via WiFi. To do this, we just have to access our router by typing the address 192.168.1.1 in the address bar, enter the password that we have by default (or the one that we have set, if we have changed it) and go to the advanced configuration of the Wireless section or WiFi. Most likely, the number of clients that your WiFi accepts will appear there, which is usually 64 or similar .
Be careful with your bandwidth
Now that we have talked about the maximum number of devices that your router accepts, it is time to talk about how many there may be problems with. The problem is that, unfortunately, there is no answer that works for everyone. This will depend on many factors , such as your router or the type of devices you have connected to the network. It is not the same to have a connected mobile watching social networks than a computer that is downloading files.
Of course, we can give an approximate idea, and that is possible thanks to the bandwidth that we have contracted . Having a 50 Mbps connection is not the same as having a 1 Gbps connection, because these will have to be distributed among all the devices. If we have 10 devices connected to a 50 Mbps network, we will have many problems doing almost anything, but this will not happen with a 1 Gbps network, since there is much more bandwidth available.
However, even if we have a connection with enough bandwidth, we will also have problems if we connect too many devices. This is due to something known as a bottleneck , something that occurs because the bandwidth is consumed between the devices and a narrowing occurs that prevents the rest of the devices from being able to navigate normally. In this way, we can say that the maximum number of devices that you should connect to your router should never exceed 15 or 20 at a time .
