Reason why this came to me. I recently was using a digital audio board in a room with 300 people/cellphones, police/fire/emt with radios and multiple wifi networks. My ipad refused to connect to the audio board. So this got me thinking if it was possible to have too much wireless clutter in the air. Added bonus if anyone can explain how to avoid this problem but understanding if and how it happens is most important. Thanks!
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Yeah, absolutely. Wi-Fi and (any other wireless signals, for that matter) can overcrowd the airwaves, much the same way too many people speaking in a room can make it difficult to hear anyone.
Ideally, a Wi-Fi access point can communicate with only 5 or 6 client devices simultaneously. That’s if all of those devices are chatting on-air 100% of the time with no breaks, which is almost never the case. If devices took turns talking (and they do) you could realistically cram a few multiples of 5 or 6 devices onto the network with little issue. Beyond that, though, signal quality is gonna fall off a cliff, as the room starts getting too noisy for anyone to be heard.
There’s also the matter of routers only having so many IP addresses to hand out. How many that is can vary a lot depending on how it’s configured, but by default it can be anywhere from 50-ish to 250-ish. Could be more, but someone would have had to go out of their way to set that up. If these are all taken and you try to connect, the router will tell you to go kick rocks.
Think of connecting to Wi-Fi like you’re at one of those fast casual restaurants where you order at a counter and they bring the food out to your table. When you order, they hand you one of those table tents with a big number on it, so they know which customer you are. For the duration of your visit, you keep the number. When you leave, they take the number back. If you come back again another day, you get a new one, with whatever number happens to be on top of the pile at that moment. They only have so many, though, and if they run out, they can’t take any more customers until some of the other customers leave first.
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