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I have configured Raspberry Pi 4 as a WiFi hotspot with hostapd on Raspbian Buster. I connected 10 clients, no problem. I want to use it as a Free WiFi.
So, I concern to know how many clients could be connected without any essential problem?

I searched about this title but I got nothing. Additionally, the WLAN Hardware of the Raspberry Pi 4 B is Broadcom BCM43455.

Any experience?
Thanks in advance.

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  • @Ephemeral Thanks for the response. So, by default, the max number of connected clients is 255 which can be further to e.g 400 by changing the config file, right?
    – M. Rostami
    Jan 10, 2020 at 15:06
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    You're welcome. Sorry it's 2007 per default. IEEE 802.11 has a limit of 2007 # different association IDs, so this number should not be larger than that. : So yes you can !
    – Ephemeral
    Jan 10, 2020 at 15:07
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    @Ephemeral Alright, so, the value of max_num_sta can't be more than "2007".
    – M. Rostami
    Jan 10, 2020 at 15:09
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    @Ephemeral Yes, I can widen the number of connected clients by DHCP server or IP address subnet mask. I configured the IP address range to /16, which means "65534" client can be connected. Thanks.
    – M. Rostami
    Jan 10, 2020 at 15:17
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    In this case, just "254" of clients can connect to the hotspot sorry but no, in this case 500 STAs can get association and only 254 clients can get an IP addr
    – Ephemeral
    Jan 10, 2020 at 15:27

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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From the hostapd.conf file :

# Maximum number of stations allowed in station table. New stations will be
# rejected after the station table is full. IEEE 802.11 has a limit of 2007
# different association IDs, so this number should not be larger than that.
# (default: 2007) 

max_num_sta=255
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  • Sorry, it helps me to configure RPi if the software sight is just important. I need some experimental information about this question because there is some limitation on hardware sight.
    – M. Rostami
    Jan 10, 2020 at 15:30
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    Sorry I don't know for the hardware side.
    – Ephemeral
    Jan 10, 2020 at 15:47
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    BCM43455
    – Ephemeral
    Jan 10, 2020 at 16:02
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As mentioned in a related question on the RPi3 the number appears to vary from less than 10 upwards - dependent upon firmware version/config? - see the Raspberry Pi GitHUb issue on the matter. An alternative is to use a USB WiFi adapter.

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