The question of how many literal connections a wireless router can handle is anywhere between 50 and 253 depending on manufacturer. (Quick question answered: It’s not 255 because the router has to assign itself a few IPs.)

The question of how many usable simultaneous connections is a different story altogether because that number is drastically smaller. Continued

What exactly is a “persistent” install?

With a normal Live-CD boot of Ubuntu, you can’t save your session settings on exit of the OS. And if you boot off USB stick from a transferred CD image (such as one created using the Unetbootin utility), that won’t save your settings either because the OS is still in Live mode on boot.

A persistent install to USB stick does allow you to save your live session settings. Continued