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I installed a Wi-Fi access point in a school hall. About a thousand iPad App is going to use the iPad App via this AP to submit information to server.

How can I ensure the AP is sufficient for such use case? Is there any stress test I can perform via Wi-Fi?

Note: Bandwidth is not a problem; 1G bandwidth is prepared.

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  • Are you planning to use just one AP for 1000 iPads? :-O What hardware are you using?
    – Fox
    Sep 29, 2015 at 10:19
  • If it is one single AP for 1000 ipad, I don't think you even need to do any stress test. It will most likely fail because AP are normally collision domains. When you have over 1000 devices then it is going to suffer.
    – lbanz
    Sep 29, 2015 at 10:49

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No single access point can handle thousands of users. Furthermore, this question is way deeper and more complicated than a simple, or even long answer here can cover, but at least I'll try to explain why:

  • on a large number of users, the main problem is shared media that gets flooded with great number of transmitters and receivers: imagine several hundreds of people shouting at one person, and that person is your access point. Even if they would speak normally or even whisper, there's a loudness/distance threshold, and no communication is possible after crossing it
  • so the main approach is to split the area into a set of areas, so every one will be handled by one access point
  • there's great number of considerations when calculating how many access point you will need
  • there's a great number of considerations when calculating the power level for every one of these access points
  • there's a great number of considerations when choosing access points and their antennas - including, but not limited the ability for clients to roam, sectors coverage and signal amplification.

As an example of such considerations I can recommend a white paper from Cisco, just to understand how complex it can be: Cisco Wireless LAN Design Guide for High Density Clients in High Education

However, I suppose that without proper experience you just cannot ensure your first wireless installation will handle thousand of wireless users. You don't need a stress test for that. Furthermore, there's no such stress test that would simulate thousands (or hundreds) of transmitters in one area.

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  • Well, actually we're using the AP, which is an enterprise grade for around few hundreds of iPad devices at the same time. Works fine at this moment. Maybe I should add few more APs to serve my purpose. Thanks for the advice.
    – Raptor
    Sep 30, 2015 at 2:04
  • I doubt any enterprise-grade AP can handle hundreds of associations. I guess you are overestimating real number of active clients. Anyway, what AP is that ?
    – drookie
    Sep 30, 2015 at 3:27
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You might want to look into IXChariot. While not free it has a full featured demo. IXChariot should do what you want.

For as far as I know there's no easy way to have one device generate 1000 AP associations, or take up 1000 IP address leases - which is part of what you're after in "stress testing" this network.

Without 1000 physical devices the best you could do is estimate X amount of MB per device x 1000 devices = you need an XXXXMB connection (not including overhead and other potential variables).

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  • Bandwidth is not a problem (we have 1G bandwidth), but the response time might have issues. Thousands of users click on the iPad at the same time will definitely cause a traffic jam. I just want to check out whether the web server or the AP can withstand such stress.
    – Raptor
    Sep 29, 2015 at 10:02
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    While IXChariot is still something you might want to look into. You can find a plethora of stress testing tools on Google for load testing a web server.
    – Joni Hulsmans
    Sep 29, 2015 at 10:11

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