What's the difference between these two? How many wireless connections will WAPs allow?

WAP is a wireless switch. Wireless router is a router. A router typically has NAT and DHCP service, where as a switch doesn't. A switch just forwards packets to their destination. A router has a firewall. Most routers have a built in switch. Meaning you can disable DHCP and NAT and it functions as a network switch. If you already have a router, then just buy the WAP. If you don't have a router, then buy the wireless router. I suppose a wireless device can support up to 255 devices, because that's how man IP addresses it can possibly assign. I would imagine real life would be much less. It would depend mostly on how much network traffic the wirelss devices produce. That would more than likely limit how many clients it can have. I personally have had 4 wireless and 3 wired devices connected at one time without any issues. That's my two cents.

A wap is generally connected back to a switch on a network and does not handle certain functions like nat . Most home users have a wireless router usually with a 4 port switch builtin , this device converts the one incoming address from your ISP to many private addresses . Most can handle about 254 addresses or connections though I certainly would not want to have that many on cheap home unit . It's like anything else , the more connections the slower it will be . Other than the routing functions a wap and a wireless router do generally the same thing . For the home you want a wireless router .

You two seem to have overlapped. Dave said 255 connections, Viperegg said 254. Both were correct, Dave just forgot the router needs an address for itself. The manual for my wireless router says it should usually support 30 to 70 users at the same time. That would be 70 verrrry patient users.