Upgrading to N access points

Question

Currently we have 2 WISMs that handle approximately 100 AP's. We are looking to replace our 1242 AP's with the new N 1142's. I was wondering how many clients these 1142's can support compared to the 1242's? Most of our company laptops do not have N cards in them yet so besides being better prepared for the future, what benefits can we expect?

Answer 1

I disagree with leolaohoo- if bandwidth demands per user remain constant, then more bandwidth means more users. For example, if your users need 2 mbps apiece then you can support a lot fewer of them per AP on 802.11g (54mbps datarate ~= 25 mbps IP throughput) but a lot more on 802.11n (300 mbps datarate ~= 200 mbps IP throughput).
Mind you, it's not a purely linear division... as you get more users per AP, you get more contention and protocol overhead, so each successive user consumes more and more of the available bandwidth. And, when you have more bandwidth available, each user will tend to consume more bandwidth: people may start streaming video or downloading ISOs from Pirate Bay where they would not do so before.
But that doesn't mean that there's no improvement. It just means that the improvement isn't as much as the nominal datarate changes would indicate.
There's also the ClientLink technology to consider. As of the 6.0 code. 802.11n APs will provide a much better connection to existing a/g clients than an a/g access point can, by using beamforming technology to improve RSSI for distant clients. See link here:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/wireless/ps5678/ps10092/white_paper_c11-516389.html