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Forum Discussion
Number of connected devices
I have an Orbi RBK653. In the details from the retailer I bought it from it says it supports 40 devices. I have had up to 47 devices showing connected. In the article below it says 512 clients with 1...
It comes down to usage.
If you have 100+ IoT devices like smart switches, you're going to be fine as they use minimal data/bandwidth
But if you have 50+ streaming devices, then its going to be to much.
So its more about what you're using the devices for versus how many you have.
As the Netgear article says, "how many" depends on what the devices are doing. Devices like smart plugs and smart light bulbs consume almost zero WiFi bandwidth. A couple of very short WiFi packets every couple of hours (or days!) As plemans said, television streaming 4K video or playing an interactive video game may consume a tremendous amount of bandwidth.
That upper limit is based on the number of actual IP addresses in the subnet. For 192.168.1.x, that is 254 devices. (1 is used by the router and 255 is the address reserved for broadcasts). The newer Orbi routers use one IP subnet for the primary network and a different IP subnet for the 'guest' WiFi network, so two times 254 = 508 (not 512)
(Yes, whoever wrote that support article was a bit imprecise- sigh)
And, it's not a silly question. There was a post on the forum recently from someone who had installed over 90 WiFi light bulbs and was having problems controlling them. (My entire house does not have 90 light bulbs!)