200 wireless clients, temporary location

I just got more information.  This is completely temporary.  It is going to be just a wireless network with WPA.  They will have 1 server sending updates to the wireless clients.  I think the will have 1 or 2 wired drops from the sever and the others will need to be connected to those wired drops wireless.  I cant run any cables to the other ap's because the client doesn't want a bunch of cables running around.  I would like to be able to connect those wireless.  No splash page.  Just WPA

Would WEP lighten the load on the wifi device?  I think the devices are 200 iphones.  I currently own about 10 apple airport extremes but i am not sure this will do the job.  My biggest issue is the wireless bridge connection where i cant run a cable to it.  I dont know if i will be able to use the devices you recommended.  Do you know of any 3com, cisco, or sonicwall devices?  Is netgear completely out of the question?

Airport, netgear, 3com and Cisco are all going to work fine, and 10 airports should cover a large room better than 1 "anything" but if you are limited to 1 device, you need something with a higher broadcast power.

Most "consumer grade" APs (netgear, airport, etc) have an AP with 60 to 100 mW outpout. The commercial gear that I was referring to is 600mW, and good for several miles links. Commercial grade AP's will also handle more simultaneous connections. A netgear will most likely drop significant number of packets by the time you get 25 users connected, where you might see over 100 connected users on a commercial "carrier class" AP before you see that kind of problem.
Most retail consumer "home" routers and AP bridges like what you describe have a 100mhz processor and 16M RAM. The Routerboard I described has 512M RAM and a 1333Mhz Power PC Processor. You can run RouterOS on more RAM and a faster (intel, AMD) processor if you need more connections/fancier routing.

http://www.mikrotik.com/wireless_faq.html

Another advantage to using a Mikrotik Router is that you can limit each user to a slower connection speed, and get more users on at a time. Since you are talking iPhones (802.11G), you can limit each connection to 256kbps instead of 54000kbps and make more simultaneous links than with an airport, since the airport will link 54Mbps with each unit, and only has a 100Mbps (or even 1Gbps) link to the server, so 2 or 20 connections will max out your ethernet pipe anyway.
200 256k users will only use a max of 512Mbps, which should negotiate over a gigabit link back to the server.

I don't think you will find a retail "consumer grade" AP with that capability. What happens there, is that without a speed limit on the AP, with EVERYONE connecting full speed, packets get dropped. 200 users sending and receiving data at 54Mbps will mean that the 1st 10 to connect will get a mediocre connection and most will get nothing. 200 users with 200 relatively slow queues will probably mostly all get some bits.

Instead of WPA or WEP, since the link is just to connect the iPhones to the private server to get firmware upgrades, is there a reason you don't want to leave it wide open? Any encryption that you do on the wireless side will slow your overall  throughput a little. A little x 200 turns into a lot. Besides, that you will have to (it sounds like) have to give an encryption key to 200 individuals in this event. You won't have a lot of real hacker defense on the wireless side of things anyway, I wouldn't think. Securing the server data would be a higher priority if this is an event for the "public" anyway. Without knowing more about the venue, I cannot really make encryption recommendations.

You could also take a look at dd-wrt on linksys wireless routers. You could slap on high gain antennas for increased coverage.

the DD-WRT will improve the power level, but you won't have the queue control, and you are still dealing with a 16M or 32M RAM limitation.  

I see.  I am not limited to 1 device.  This is all going to 1 ballroom with the sever serving some kind of information update to the a iphone app.  I can use as many ap's as i want, but some of them will have to be connected wirelessly to other ap's.  i am thinking of using WDS.  

I took a look at the links you provided and i am a little confuised on how that setup works.  These ap's look like they go on top of a building.  And if i am correct you are saying all i need is 1 ap for all 200 clients?  

No I would recommend budgeting no more than 40 clients per AP, but if you need to connect all 200 to 1 AP, you need a very robust one.

WDS should work, but will double your wirelesss traffic for each WDS AP you implement, since EVERY AP rebroadcasts EVERY packet for it to work properly. (i.e. it will seem slow and choppy) If you do WDS, every AP will be on the same channel. If you can wire every AP, you will want to use channels 1, 6 and 11, with all of the channel 1 AP's as far away from the other channel 1 APs as possible, etc. For example, if you can run wires around against the walls, possibly in the ceiling, placing one every 50 to 100  feet, use channel 1, then 6, then 11, then 1, then 6, then 11, etc all the way around.

The links I gave were for WISP type equipment, which can mount outside, and shoot to clients up to several miles away. They work indoors as well.

Can you list all the products and quantities i would need.  Even accessories.  I need to put a quote together and come up with a rough estimate on hardware.  How difficult is it to configure?  Is it web based or would i have to use a command line?

The site I sent you to is a reputable WISP equipment vendor. If you call them, they can quote you on a turn key package with all of the configuration already done. If you tell them what you are planning to do, they should be able to give you an exact quote. I don't hesitate to recommend them.

Do you think i can use a few of these to do the job?
Cisco Aironet 1140 Series Access Point-Dual-band 802.11a/g/n