Can Mesh/WDS wlan services help support more endpoint wireless devices

[Seth_Bean]

I have a few locations that occasionally have several hundred more endpoint devices that appear during events. These locations are mostly open spaces (cafeterias, gymnasiums) and already have 4-5 APs installed. Will installing more APs with a Mesh/WDS WLAN help things (lack of wire drops to add more directly connected to the switch) or hinder things. My inclination is that it will not help things because it will be more channel traffic where there is already an established channel plan, and it will be more stress on the existing APs to pass traffic to the Mesh or WDS WLAN. I would just like to verify this with the community.

[Hawkins__Bruce]

Also, for high density deployments of APs ... you will probably be best off configuring the 5Ghz radios for only 20Mhz wide channel widths and to use an All Channels plan, and possibly turn on no more than 3 of the 2.4Ghz radios in each "room" choosing channels 1, 6 and 11 for those radios as they are the only 3 non-over lapping channels in the 2.4Ghz spectrum.

[Hawkins__Bruce]

AP Load groups ... that allow the APs to balance the number of users connecting across the APs in the group ... sound like more what you would want in this scenario.

Here's a link to a KCS article that provides more detail about that:

https://gtacknowledge.extremenetworks.com/articles/How_To/How-to-set-up-a-Client-Balancing-AP-load-g...