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ENGINEERING · WIRELESS

Wi-Fi AP Capacity Calculator

Estimate the number of enterprise access points required from client density, concurrency, throughput demand and practical AP capacity.

Client demand
Devices that need wireless service in the design area.
Clients actively using the WLAN at the busy period.
Mbps of application traffic per active client.
Extra capacity above calculated peak demand.
AP engineering assumptions
Usable aggregate application throughput per AP, not the advertised PHY rate.
Planning limit for simultaneously active clients on an AP/radio design.
Planning ceiling applied to practical AP throughput.
Read: Wi-Fi Fundamentals →802.11k/v/r roaming →

Engineering assumptions

This is a capacity-planning aid, not a predictive RF survey. The practical AP throughput figure should come from your AP platform, client mix and testing. The calculator treats aggregate throughput and active-client density as separate constraints and uses the larger resulting AP count. Coverage, wall attenuation, channel reuse, airtime utilisation, DFS availability, 2.4 GHz legacy clients, PoE and backhaul capacity still need to be designed separately.