I&#x27;ve been downvoted, probably for not giving enough information.<p>A lot of the time the WAPs only have 16-32mb of RAM and some kind of hardcoded limit to the number of DHCP leases they can give out (if they don&#x27;t just exhaust the range instead)<p>Your local Starbucks probably has half decent Cisco gear, but the independent coffee shop around the corner bought the cheapest WAP in the last Black Friday sale. The firmware hasn&#x27;t really been touched since 2008 and is running a buggy version of dnsmasq, miniupnpd and an out-of-tree Ralink driver on top of kernel 2.6.<p>If you think I&#x27;m lying, have a look at the firmware of any non-802.11AC DLink or Netgear router. Both companies are getting better but they&#x27;re at the mercy of the SoC manufacturer (Broadcom, Ralink etc).<p>802.11AC routers seem to be getting better, mainly due to the bandwidth requirements finally getting beyond 200-400mHz  MIPS chipsets. Although [1] might be taking it a little too far.<p>[1]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dlink.com.au&#x2F;home-solutions&#x2F;taipan-ac3200-ultra-wi-fi-modem-router" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dlink.com.au&#x2F;home-solutions&#x2F;taipan-ac3200-ultra-w...</a>