8 users/connection allowed?

[agoralive]

Is this the maximum allowed users?

Is there a way to expand this?

[billz]

RaspAP gives you control of hostapd's max_num_sta setting. As the help text clearly states, 'The default and maximum is 2007'.

[agoralive]

I have 8 units connected to the AP, and then it allows no more.

Connection is just refused for extra devices, and I have this 2007 in the max_num_sta, so definitely not 2007 allowed connections?

Or is there something I just don't understand?

Merry Christmas by the way :)

[agoralive]

I have tried to set the client number to 2007, 100 and 10

No difference, it allowes only 8 connections :(

[billz]

The bottleneck is likely not hostapd, but rather a limitation of the brcmfmac driver. Other RPi users have reported substantially greater maximum AP client connections, so I'd hesitate to say it's a hardcoded limitation of brcmfmac. Available RAM, under voltage and other factors come into play. You don't mention which RPi you're using, but I would not, for example, expect more than this from a Pi Zero W.

Related discussion here raspberrypi/linux#3010

Merry Christmas :)

[agoralive]

I am using a Raspberry Pi 3B+

[billz]

Have you tried running hostapd in debug mode while you connect clients?

sudo hostapd -dd /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf

[agoralive]

Had not tried, I have now. This only throws everything off and disables wlan0.

No I will "just" live with these 8 clients, was just hoping for a way to connect 16-20 devices....

Maybe I will look into the esp_wifi_repeater, to see if this can do something....

[agoralive]

I know I closed this, but would more connections be possible if I added an USB Wifi Adapter?

[billz]

It would not hurt to test with an external adapter. If you're able to connect >8 clients with the same kernel and hostapd config, it's reasonable to infer that the bottleneck is at the Broadcom WiFi chip supported by the brcmfmac driver.

[billz]

Closing this, feel free to reopen if you have more info to add.

[agoralive]

Just as a comment, adding another wifi adapter to the Rpi, did nothing :(

Does anybody know how many the Rpi 4 allows to have connected?

I have just conducted tests today with a Rpi4 4Gb RAM and I wasn't able to connect more than 8 devices. Same with the 3b+. Both were running latest version of Buster.

I conducted the same tests 1 year ago and the results were quite different with Stretch:
19 users with a Rpi 3b and 14 with a Rpi 3b+...