More addresses?

[craiggsmith]

I've been running out of addresses in one building for the past month. We currently have 2 blocks, a total of 177. Is there a reason not to request another block, such as the fact that we only have a 6 Mbps connection? Some Sundays we've been pushing that limit, others not. Should I just convert the clerk machines to static and just leave the rest it be?

[harddrive]

Well converting the clerk's computer will free up one more address. However, if you are running out of IP addresses at 177, then you could ask for another block, or just let them be. The question becomes is your ward that big that it takes 177 addresses or is it because people have iPads, iPhone and other devices connected to the network.

[russellhltn]

Is there a reason not to request another block, such as the fact that we only have a 6 Mbps connection?

I don't see limiting the IPs as a good way of allocating usage. Bandwidth usage and the number of IPs isn't that solid a relationship. It's all about how they're using the connection.

[craiggsmith]

I agree, there is no specific correlation between bandwidth and connections, and I hesitated to post this, but wanted to get other opinions. My initial thought was just that opening up more connections would potentially add even more traffic to a fairly saturated network (it certainly wouldn't reduce it). But it's not fair to those who really need to access the internet for a church use but can't just because another ward got there first, so I guess I better add some.

I'm not sure I understand your question harddrive -- certainly the connections are used up by people's personal devices, only a small fraction of which are really needing that connection for church work. But there is no way to control that. We have 3 wards with two overlapping for at least 3 hours, and my ward in particular is growing quite large. In our stake center when I asked for additional addresses they automatically gave me two extra blocks for 250+ and we've never used them all, but have gone into the 3rd block, so I was surprised we hadn't in this other building. The other two buildings have commodity wireless APs so I can't see how many actual connections we have, but that is changing now so we'll see.

[Mikerowaved]

The other two buildings have commodity wireless APs so I can't see how many actual connections we have, but that is changing now so we'll see.

You should be able to track your connections and BW usage on TM, assuming you have the right calling to access it.

[craiggsmith]

You should be able to track your connections and BW usage on TM, assuming you have the right calling to access it.

Only if you have the church standard equipment (or other equipment set up similarly). A separate wireless router is invisible to TM and just shows as one connection. Bandwidth though will show OK of course.

[russellhltn]

And I've posted my journey of discovery where TM isn't necessarily an accurate reflection of if you've run out of IPs or not.

[Mikerowaved]

You should be able to track your connections and BW usage on TM, assuming you have the right calling to access it.

Only if you have the church standard equipment (or other equipment set up similarly). A separate wireless router is invisible to TM and just shows as one connection. Bandwidth though will show OK of course.

OK, but you said they were configured as AP's, not wireless routers with their own subnets. We use home routers for AP's also, but the DHCP functions are turned off and the WAN port not used, making them into true AP's.

[pcardelli]

Take it from a network engineer, DHCP leases tend to get used up. I'm not sure how long a lease is on the church equipment but usually it's 8 hours to 7 days, also they auto renew at half life. Even if the members of the earlier ward leave you would have to wait for the DHCP Leases to expire or be released several hours or days later.

So I agree that the number of leased IP's does not always correlate with bandwidth usage, and usually causes unneeded denial of service. Now if you had 177 users at the same time might experience some slow connections, as APs can only handle so many devices especially the consumer brands. On the church Cisco Aironet 2X3 mimo access points you should be able to handle 60-70 users per AP. Consumer grade APs that are designed for home use can have issues with anything over 10-20 devices and may freeze. So if you have enough AP coverage to balance out the 177 users within the building you should not have a problem.

Now onto the bandwidth issue. From my experience with commercial networks with several hundreds of users, 3Mbps slow, 6Mbps slow, 10-25Mbps download with 370 users seems to be optimal. Currently we host web servers with over 100,000 active end users on the internet side and 370 employees on the intranet side, while we increased to 50Mbps our utilization is still under 6Mbps on average but the extra helps keep traffic bursting and avoid buffering or traffic jams (also we use proxies and reverse proxies which keep bandwidth consumption down).

If your lucky like me your busy ward buildings have great internet connections at 20/3 Mbps, and service offered now at even cheaper speeds at 60/5 Mbps. If not then you probably have DSL, in which case you will have to wait until cable, or other options become available for that region. Until then there are not many options, and I would limit the wireless coverage probably stay wired until you can support the bandwidth. Good luck hopefully this info will help someone.

[Biggles]

Take it from a network engineer, DHCP leases tend to get used up. I'm not sure how long a lease is on the church equipment but usually it's 8 hours to 7 days, also they auto renew at half life. Even if the members of the earlier ward leave you would have to wait for the DHCP Leases to expire or be released several hours or days later.

From memory, the Church Firewall leases are set for 30 minutes.