How many Wireless devices to a router?

[Shovel]

So, I've got a two year old SMC wireless router powering the network at home. Everything in the house is now connected wirelessly, and in the last few days I've started to find some stability problems.

At most, we can have six devices all trying to use the wireless connection at once, although most of the time it's only four.

I'd have thought that's a reasonable ask, isn't it? But could it be that two years ago three or four devices was the limit, and now technology is better? Or is it likely that the hardware itself is just packing up?

I'm a bit unsure of where to start debugging, really.

 

[Kryten]

Really shouldn't be a problem - it's not a big ask at all, even for older wireless kit.
How do you mean "stability" issues though? poor connection performance, dropouts etc?
If that's the case it'll be worth using one of your wireless PC's to run a wireless survey of the area (grab Netstumbler for that) to search the area for wireless devices in range - it's quite possible that some more wireless users have popped up in the local area and you're system is suffering from interference.
So, do a survey, find out what channels the other wireless folks are using and change yours to a channel as far away as possible.

 

[Chilly]

Connection quality drops in a non-linear fashion with the number of devices active on the network due to the packet scheduling algorithms in use for a broadcast network.

High end cisco/hp business wifi thingies have multiple radio units in a single box so they can handle many more connections than a single radio would - one of the reasons they cost more.

 

[Shovel]

@Chilly, thanks for the technical explanation.

@Kryten. It's exhibiting as some of the devices getting errors when trying to connect to the network, and periodic, irregular drops from the network. Your mention of Netstumbler reminded me of what I've not done lately, which is to check if any of the networks are on the same channel. Thank you for that; I'll give it a check (with iStumbler on OSX) and see if there's a clash.