TL;DR: Is there a limit to how many devices can connect to the WNDR4300 through a single ethernet port? And if so, what is that limit?
Okay , I know I have kind of a wierd setup, but still, I can't see why it should cause so many problems. Here goes:
I have a (non netgear) Mesh system to cover the entirety of my house without the need of running cables. The management interface of the mesh system kinda sucks - for instance I have trouble doing port forwarding to static IP adresses and reserve DHCP adresses ot specific devices.
For this and other reasons I have chosen to set my mesh system in bridge mode and use my WNDR4300 as the router, enabling me to do my port forwarding and such. The mesh system is, of course, connected to the WNDR4300 via a cable to one of the ethernet ports, and any device connecting to the mesh system therefore appears in the WNDR4300 as a wired connection - same as if I had had a multiport switch and connected all my devices with wires through that.
I have had some issues with devices not keeping a connection, if enough devices are connected through the mesh system. They seem to get kicked off the router and are unable to connect again until they are rebooted - which then in most cases cause something else to get kicked off.
If I instead move some devices over to the WNDR4300's wifi then there are no problems (until enough devices connect to the mesh again). The range of the WNDR4300's WiFi is sadly not enough to just use that around the house - that's why I went with a mesh system instead.
Furthermore I am unable to see all mesh-connected devices on the WNDR4300's "attached devices" page. It seems that the magic number is around 25. I have never seen more than 25 wired connections on that page. But if I keep the number of mesh-connected devices below that, and instead connect whatever I can to the WNDR4300's wifi, then I can just barely keep a steady connection all throughout.
It could, of course, be the Mesh system, that cannot handle the number of connections I need (I have about 40-50-ish devices on WiFi - Yay, smart home...), but from what I can read each node should be able to handle 20 connections - and I have 4 nodes. None of the nodes are even close to that capacity.
So my question is: Is there an upper limit to how many wired devices can connect to the WNDR4300? Has anyone ever tried with a wired switch behind it and just loaded it up with devices and not had any issues?
I'm not so much looking for a solution to my problem right now, I just wanted to know if I'm right in my assumptions, or if I need to start figuring out another way to do my network setup.
Cheers.
Model: WNDR4300|N750 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router
