I took a look at the hardware specification of some mid- to high-end Linksys devices, and compared to the Ciscos. Their hardware specs were a match. Think “crippleware” in the Linksys, to target them out of the enterprise.

What I’m getting at, instead of spending 1000usd on a Cisco Aironet, you could achieve a similar result buying a Linksys WRT600N at 200usd, replacing its firmware with DD-WRT and you have a device with performance exactly identical to (if not better than) some of Cisco’s Aironet products at one fifth of the price.

We have also tried to stress-test some of the APs in our collection at one of the previous conferences. It was a Linksys WRT160N (running DD-WRT). It performed well with a maximum of 35 concurrent users, and did not seem to be stressed hardware-wise. Its only killer was when we tried extra-heavy torrenting through it.

http://serverfault.com/questions/72767/why-is-internet-access-and-wi-fi-always-so-terrible-at-large-tech-conferences

It is about tech conferences, but the basic problem of getting lots of people on wifi in a single space is covered by the solutions.