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 100+ concurrent connections. Are they using devices interchangeably with clients? Which one is it? 40, 512 with 100 active?
I am trying to understand what the real limit is for the number of devices that can be added to the router. I have been upgrading many of the light switches and adding cameras and the number of devices is increasing quickly.
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!)
