Why is 8 the max client support in wireless AP mode

[RGlau]

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000006057/network-and-i-o/wireless-networking.html Frequently Asked Questions about Intel® Wireless Adapters

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000006057/network-and-i-o/wireless-networking.html

According to the FAQ question "How many clients are supported when using an Intel® Wireless Adapter for a hosted network?", "The Intel® Wireless Adapter can support a maximum of eight clients on a hosted network."

I have a Linux educational project I want to run on a NUC8 box as a content server and wireless router/access point. It needs to support multiple dozens of wireless clients.

The Intel NUC models NUC8i5BEK and NUC8i5BEH comes with a soldered-down Intel® Wireless-AC 9560 + Bluetooth 5.0 M.2 card.

Is it limited to 8 clients as the FAQ says generally about Intel Wireless Adapters?

I have this project currently running on older NUC5 hardware on Linux with an M.2 Atheros wireless card used in AP mode (access point), and it works fine supporting multiple dozens of connecting wireless clients. But when considering an upgrade to the NUC8, and reading the above FAQ, it says Intel supports a max of 8 clients.

Is the max 8 clients a hard limit? Can I change this to support multiple dozens of client connections like the Atheros card?

[idata]

Hello rglaue,

Thank you for your joining our Intel ® community.As you may know, based on the https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000006057/network-and-i-o/wireless-networking.html Frequently Asked Questions about Intel® Wireless Adapters , our Wireless Adapter support a maximum of 8 clients on a hosted network.The reason behind this is to avoid system instability.Technically you can connect more than 8 clients; however the performance of the Hosted network will decrease, causing issues related to the connection.Please let me know if you happen to have another inquiry.Regards,Diego Sanchez Campos.Intel (R) Customer Support TechnicianUnder Contract to Intel (R) Corporation

[idata]

Hi rglaue,

To get further assistance on your inquiry I recommend you to visit our Linux https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/drivers/iwlwifi community All the best,-Chris

[RGlau]

I don't understand how my linux server on a NUC box will experience system instability if more than 8 wireless clients connect to the Intel Wireless Adapter in AP mode.

We currently have multiple-dozen wireless clients connecting to an M.2 Atheros Wireless Adapter in AP mode, and the Linux system has never experienced any issues.

[RGlau · Accepted solution]

I contacted Intel at: linuxwifi <</span>mailto:linuxwifi@intel.com linuxwifi@intel.com>

This was our summarized correspondence:

[ME]

We currently use Linux on the NUC5 with our own half-height Atheros M.2 wireless adapter that we have tested to support multiple-dozen of wireless clients.

We were considering upgrading to the Intel NUC8... which comes with a soldered-down Intel® Wireless-AC 9560 + Bluetooth 5.0 M.2 card. (NUC8 has one less M.2 slot as a result)

I would like to know how many clients the IW AC9560 card can be supported in AP Mode (Access Point Mode).

[linuxwifi@intel]

We can support up to ~12 clients.

[ME]

How can that max 12 clients be increased?

Is there a licensing option to open that up?

[linuxwifi@intel]

This is a firmware / hardware limitation. So no. No secret password, backdoor, etc