+3000 SID's makes the Tetra slow

[Thermostaten]

When the tetra is running with +3000 SID's it starts to get a little slow.. 

I would like to add hardware, memory/CPU - bandwidth - whatever it takes - is there any other model bigger than Tetra I can use where it can handle more SSID's 

We are still only talking about max 100 users and feeding them internet via a 150 mbit 4g or sometimes a gigabit wired connection.

Regards T.

[Darren Kitchen]

There is no limit on the amount of SSID's the WiFi Pineapple can have in its PineAP pool – but there are physical limits on how many can be broadcast in any given second.

WiFi uses a shared medium (spectrum) and as such is a best effort protocol. Everything is divided up into time unit (TU) intervals, each of which is 1024 microseconds. Your typical consumer access point will transmit a beacon roughly 7 times per second. Since a beacon is only one frame send to broadcast, it only takes up one of these time units. Technically speaking, once could fill every time unit with a beacon frame - however there would be no time left in this shared medium for any other frames (and you would be likely transmitting over other frames, creating collisions and requiring other devices to retransmit).

With this understanding, the WiFi Pineapple PineAP engine is tweaked for optimal performance – both in a hardware sense, and with appreciation for the shared medium. Its default beacon interval is already orders of magnitude more frequent than typical access points. You will notice a option menu next to "Broadcast SSID Pool Interval" which is by default set to Normal. You may also set this to Aggressive, which will transmit beacons from the SSID pool more frequently, albeit with a higher CPU utilization.

With 3000 SSID's in the pool - they will all transmit, however not all every second.

Now one thing you can do in these more advanced scenarios, is use two or more WiFi Pineapples. The first WiFi Pineapple would be the access point, with its PineAP settings only set to allow associations (with filters per your particular engagement, of course). Each additional WiFi Pineapple will only handle the SSID related functions (Capture SSIDs to Pool, Beacon Response and Broadcast SSID Pool). To do this, set the Source MAC in the PineAP settings on each additional WiFi Pineapple with the MAC address of the first WiFi Pineapple. This is exactly why this feature exists 🙂

I hope this helps answer your question.