I'm setting up a wireless intranet network using Airport Extreme DHCP service for over 300 machines. I set the static IP of my Airport Extreme as 10.1.10.1 and subnet mask as 255.255.252.0. Then enable Route Mode as DHCP Only. I found that DHCP range had been limited to 10.1.10.x for both "from" and "to" field. I'm not able to change it to 10.1.11.x. Why did this happen? Is there anything wrong with my setting?
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how to set up DHCP over 300 IPs on Airport Extreme?
- Thread starter zhouxiang
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All of the airport models are a consumer devices, in the tech specs it says "Number of users: 50"
If you have 300 users, you're using the wrong thing,
and if you have 300 wireless users, and are only using 1 base station (of any kind) you're going to make everyone very miserable. Especially yourself if you're the one setting it up, when all 300 of them start complaining that the wi-fi sucks
For a system of that size, you need to start looking at industrial gear, and multiple wireless base stations scattered around the area.
If you have 300 users, you're using the wrong thing,
and if you have 300 wireless users, and are only using 1 base station (of any kind) you're going to make everyone very miserable. Especially yourself if you're the one setting it up, when all 300 of them start complaining that the wi-fi sucks
For a system of that size, you need to start looking at industrial gear, and multiple wireless base stations scattered around the area.
Yup. You need to change to something fit for purpose.
Your budget will need to increase significantly, for that sort of installation you're looking at an intelligent multi-AP wireless network, proper site survey, etc.
At the very least... you'll need a few Airports, split them onto separate VLANs on your switch, configure the APs to use different channels and SSIDs, split your users between them, etc.
But it's just not really fit for purpose. That solution would suck. Hard.
Your budget will need to increase significantly, for that sort of installation you're looking at an intelligent multi-AP wireless network, proper site survey, etc.
At the very least... you'll need a few Airports, split them onto separate VLANs on your switch, configure the APs to use different channels and SSIDs, split your users between them, etc.
But it's just not really fit for purpose. That solution would suck. Hard.
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I use an AirPort as the router on a 150+ client AirPort network, but the limitation does not lie with the AirPort but the DHCP range that you are using.
They do fine with the load and actually better than any prosumer product I see today, but only an enterprise class can handle more than 255 or so IPv4 addresses.
You bring up a good point. Is an AEBS even capable of doling out more than 254 IP addresses? An enterprise-class AP usually connects to a managed switch that is part of the system handling DHCP duties, and can hand out addresses in ranges larger than 254 clients.
Higher end network hardware does not work on the 255.255.255.0 subnet. The AirPort is limited to that specific subnet which has a total of 256 available addresses. Since the router itself occupies one IPv4 address, there are 255 available, theoretically, for other clients. That being said, since the AirPort's QoS is not user configurable they may or may not meet the demands with that high of a load. I have had over 200 clients on the AirPort network at school without issue, but if they were all trying to video chat or other bandwidth intensive tasks I am not sure how that would work out.
I would definitely agree with using more than one access point for that many clients, but a simple way around the DHCP issue is not to allow the AP's to hand them out. Set up on the network a Linux, FreeBSD, or even perhaps an OSX box, and use isc-dhcp-server to handle the DHCP duties. On FreeBSD, it is a simple port install. It may even be available via MacPorts or some such, otherwise download and compile.