Router to serve content to a local network

1

I want to serve text based content to 300 people in room, but not allow them to access the Internet. The idea is to reflash a router and run a web server on it. These 300 people connect to the router and can only access the text based content (for about two hours). They can also send back responses, which are then logged.

My biggest question is: With 128 mb of ram and 32 mb of flash memory, as well as a usb stick of whatever sized memory, is it possible to deal with a full 300 people reading and writing to the web server running on the router?

If not, how many routers might be necessary, and what kind of routers should I be looking for?

Other small questions: Do routers typically allow a whole 300 people on? What IP address range am I supposed to be working with to allow more than 255 people?

mdenton8

Posted 2014-10-06T04:44:40.653

Reputation: 111

Can you get any more specific on what hardware is available? – Daniel B – 2014-10-06T05:53:24.920

Any hardware or router, preferably at the price of a small business kind of router. – mdenton8 – 2014-10-06T06:32:43.403

Answers

1

It depends on how active 300 people will be. Important thing is not the number of users but a number of concurrent connections. Anyway, Very powerful router such as pfSense can run on 256MB RAM. Since you are serving text based contents and will disallow internet access, I guess the router will be enough to serve them. However, you might want to deploy lightweight web server such as nginx.

To serve more than 255 people, 1) either using bigger subnet such as 255.255.254.0 or 2) using multiple subnets and make firewall rules to allow traffic between them.

Jihun

Posted 2014-10-06T04:44:40.653

Reputation: 141

Thanks. So if each user had one device and was to be connected at the same time for one router, do you think it could work? – mdenton8 – 2014-10-06T05:39:43.230

Yes, it will work even for 300 people if the subnet(s) is configured correctly. – Jihun – 2014-10-06T05:43:17.557

Do you think we'll need more than one access point, or is one router enough? – mdenton8 – 2014-10-06T05:55:49.820

One router is enough, technically. I mean, people may feel it is slow but, anyway, there is no technical problem to serve 300 people using one router.

But.. oops. Access point? Will you using WiFi? That's a totally different and more complex problem. You didn't mention WiFi in your question. Anyway, you may need multiple access point(+ one router, of course) to serve 300 WiFi clients.. Check this question

– Jihun – 2014-10-06T06:10:16.360

Yeah, I meant wifi, sorry that wasn't clear. But thanks! – mdenton8 – 2014-10-06T06:32:06.737

Asked: 2014-10-06T04:44:40.653

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Active: 2014-10-06T05:38:11.127