Maximum users on hub3

[Bethshan]

Hi there,

I am hoping someone here can help me as the people on the BT helplines don't have the information I need.

We are a church that has offices in one end of the building and an auditorium at the other end of the building.  Currently we are conencted on BT business broadband using an ADSL router HGV2701.  The router is in the offices and we have around 12 connections to this by members of staff using a combination of computers and iphones etc mainly on wireless.  We then have a wired line that runs through to the main auditorium and in there we have another router (a netgear one) whch is set up as a sub router and allows people in the church to use free wireless in their during conferences etc.  This has had up to around 30 connections at one time, and whilst it is slow hasn't given us any problems at all.

We are now at the end of our contract and we have had a call from BT Business broadband offering us a move onto infinity to get a 40GB download speed with a hub 3 box.  The lady on the phone assures me that this router is much better than our current one, but that that you can only ever have 4 connections to this box at any one time (wired or wireless).  I said to her that surely that cannot be correct as I could connect a switcher to a wired port, or could have lots of wireless connections using DHCP but she says 4 is the maximum number of users ever.  If this is the case then this hub and BT infinity is useless to us and so i am hoping their is someone here who can give me a definitive answer on this as to whether or not it will work for us.

Cheers everyone.

[MHC]

The figure of 4 is certainly wrong.       I would expect it to be something like 127 or 255 ... and certainly in the tens of users.

But why change?     The 2701HGV has a WAN port and you just connect the Modem to that and off you go.    No need for the hub 3.    I have a 2701 on an Infinity connection and at present quite a few users.

One point to note:   The service will be 40 Mb per second -  Mega bits per second.    And not 40GB (Giga Bytes)

b - bit

B - Byte

[MHC]

To add.           If you continue to use the 2701 then there will be no need to change te set-up in anyway.  Tha additional Netgear will stay connected,   the existing users MAC addresses will remain recorded and allowed &c.

And you could add the BusinessHub3 to teh 2701 as another local WAP to improve the office coverage if you wish.

[Bethshan]

That is really helpful MHC.  Many thanks for such a quick reply.

[MHC]

And if you have any problems/issues on set-up, which I don't believe you will, the Business Tech support are totally versed in using the 2701 on an Infinity connection.

[wajbsb]

For clarification the hub 3 has 4 ethernet (wired) ports - exactly the same as the hgv 2701! You can add to this with a switch, as you mentioned.

This has no effect on the wireless connections, which will be again much the same in capacity as the 2701.

The hub 3 is more up to date so includes wireless 'n' technology as well.

Naturally, in the same way as the 2701, as more devices are connected to the hub, there will be a incremental decrease in speed for each device!

The main difference between ADSL (phone line broadband) and fibre/infinity (fibre optic broadband) is purely the way that the broadband is delivered to your router - once it reaches the router, the wired/wireless connections behave in exactly the same way as your current service.