(I'm not a network guy, so please humor me.)
I want to configure a typical consumer router as an open hotspot. However, the router's internet connection has limited bandwidth. Therefore, I'd like to limit how many people can connect to it simultaneously.
I could set DHCP to hand out a small number of addresses, but additional users could still connect if they specified their own IP address. So I'd rather set a hard limit.
I'm wondering if a subnet mask will do the trick. I (sort of) understand that subnet masks are a way of telling the network section of an IP address from the host part, and I think that means I can limit the number of possible addresses, and therefore users, on the router. So:
- Can I do this?
- Might it screw something else up?
- Is anyone patient enough to list the possible subnet masks and how many users would be able to connect for each one?
Update
The list I was looking (sorry, I wasn't very clear) was this: if the first three octets are 255.255.255, what are the possible netmasks and how many hosts they support? I found this from the link Eddy provided. Answer:
- 255.255.255.0: 254 hosts
- 255.255.255.128: 126 hosts
- 255.255.255.192: 62 hosts
- 255.255.255.224: 30 hosts
- 255.255.255.240: 14 hosts
- 255.255.255.248: 6 hosts
- 255.255.255.252: 2 hosts
- 255.255.255.254: 0 hosts
- 255.255.255.255: 0 hosts
Several of you have pointed out that limiting users is not the same as limiting bandwidth. It's a good point, but in this case, I'm just concerned with limiting the number of concurrent users.
So, my question again: if I simply assign one of the netmasks above to the router, will it restrict the number of possible users effectively, as listed above? Might it screw something else up?