Add another frustrated user to the list... After about 16 hours on hold for tech support over multiple days, I got sent a new Blue Curve gateway as a solution. It is extremely frustrating to have "solutions" provided before the support personnel have even understood the root cause of the issue.
@CanadianAME, I believe you are on the right track, and I would agree with @PirateSwayze that there is a limit to the number of wifi devices that the Blue Curve Gateway will allow to connect at one time. As usual with a device made specifically for a service provider like Shaw, finding the actual answers is difficult.
I have been adding smart home devices to my residence. I have added about 8 Google Home minis to the house, a Google Nest doorbell and camera, two August door locks, 20 or so Sonoff smart switches, and a handful of various smart bulbs. This is in addition to the gaggle of laptops, tablets, cell phones, and other various wifi enabled devices that live here, or come and go as people (used to) pop over for a visit.
All was going well until I added a couple smart bulbs to the basement, and then things fell apart. Random devices would go offline. My cell phone, or my laptop wouldn't connect to the wifi randomly.
While I am typing this, I have 41 wireless devices connected to my gateway. This can be seen on the Gateway | At a Glance page. At the top, hover over the word Wifi that is just under your logged in username, and it will give you the wifi status and number of connected devices. We resorted to disconnecting a number of the smart home devices to get the number of wifi devices down below the "magic" number. I suspect it may be arbitrarily set at 50. This is not a solution as I want to add about another 20 or so smart devices to my home.
While there are indeed 254 usable IP address in a /24 subnet (255.255.255.0), this is not the total number of wifi devices that the Blue Curve gateway will support.
If you Google for "maximum number of concurrent wifi connections" you will find a fair bit of information. Many will talk about not putting a lot of wifi devices on a router because of bandwidth considerations... but for smart home devices that just control lights and such, these devices use little bandwidth, they are more concerned with just having network access for control. Obviously you can't stream 250 Netflix movies over a single wifi access point at once, but 100 devices just sitting there waiting for a command, or waiting to send a status packet don't use a lot of bandwidth. You may run across someone with a tidbit of insight such as this:
Some home routers include a feature that allows administrators to control the number of clients that can simultaneously connect. Many Linksys routers, for example, set a default maximum of 50 devices.
Aha! This is exactly the issue that we are probably up against in the Blue Curve gateway. Whether that 50 devices is wireless or an aggregate of wired and wireless is unknown. This is the key bit of information we need from Shaw support.
@shaw-tony Does the Blue Curve gateway have an arbitrary maximum number of devices allowed? If so, what is that number? Is it combine wired and wireless, or each connection type? Is there a way to modify the maximum number of devices supported?
I have contemplated getting the pods to see if that will help, but there is a dearth of information on the way the pods work. All that you are told is they will help extend the range of your network. I have good coverage in my house with the gateway where it is located. I have one smart switch in the master bedroom closet that is right on the edge of coverage, but other than that, I am good. All except for the fact that I seem to have hit an arbitrary limit on the number of devices that can be supported at one time.
Your suggestions provided to @PirateSwayze are as follows:
- Make some changes to your wifi configuration, and then remove as many wifi devices from the 2.4GHz network as possible.
- Add some pods to your system (and bill), then use those as remote wired ports to remove as many wifi devices from the 2.4 GHz network as possible.
- Purchase and install a third party wireless access point that you can control, and that will support more devices than the Shaw Blue Curve Gateway, and forget using the Shaw provided device.
So, rather than provide an answer to the question "Is there a maximum number of wifi devices that can connect to the Blue Curve gateway?", we get remove as many wifi devices as you can from the wifi network, or go buy a third party product that can support the number of devices you want to use.
There is no shame in not knowing the answer to a question. I deal with a lot of tech support personnel in my work life. The ones that tell me "I don't know the answer to that question, but let me see if I can find out for you." garner a lot more respect than the ones that will give you a "canned" response, or try to appease you with an "answer" that truly doesn't address the issue, or that just blatantly give you a completely wrong answer. Even coming back with a "We don't have an answer to your issue at this time" is much better than being given some useless answer just to get you to go away.
Shaw has consistently been able to leave me shaking my head at the lack of useful technical support over the years. Hopefully this interaction will break that chain.
