Do more satellites add capacity for more connected devices?

[eematt]

According to the knowledge base artical below, an orbi system has a maximum capacity of 250 connected devices.

https://kb.netgear.com/31097/How-many-devices-can-my-Orbi-system-support

My question is does having more satellites increase the performance of local network traffic within the orbi system given all other factors are the same? Or in other words, does an Orbi system with four satellites handle 250 active devices better than an Orbi system with one satellite? For this thought experiment, please assume the signal strength seen at each connected device is the same and all other factors are the same between the two senerios.

It is my assumption that having extra CPUs and resources will help distribute some of the workload increasing performance when pushing the 250 device limit. And, perhaps traffic between devices connected to the same satellite will tax mainly the satellite and not the router.

However, on the flip side I see the router processes only running on the router and having extra satellites doing nothing to help manage those processes.

Thanks,
Matt

[mdgm-ntgr]

You should only have the satellites you need to cover the area you want to. Too many satellites will create problems e.g. clients switching between the router and satellites too frequently.

To send data wirelessly between the router and satellite(s) the dedicated radio is used, so for LAN only traffic the backhaul bandwidth would be a limiting factor. As you increase the number of satellites you could well start to decrease the backhaul performance.

If you’re pushing the limits of the 250 users guide we gave you’re probably getting to the point where our wired Prosafe Access Points with wireless controllers would be worth considering. You can set things up with some failover that way so that hardware failure or crashing hopefully causes minimal inconvenience. If a hundred employees can’t work because the Wi-Fi is down this would become very costly quite quickly.