I just have to put in my two cents here.........

I am a WISP with long range clients. I have several Mikrotik APs with around 100 (+/- 80 clients) where all
of the clients are hidden from each other. AKA - no client can hear another client talking to the AP.

What I have found works best for APs in my network is the following:

All client APs are set to use RTS/CTS with a hardware-protection-threshold set at 32

- note 100% of nearly 1,000 clients system wide all use RTS/CTS and the RTS threshold is set at 32. Any
client wanting to send anything bigger than 32 must use RTS first and wait for a CTS from the AP.

My APs do have hardware-protection-mode set to NONE.

note - do not even try using "cts to self" or "rts cts" on an AP like my load/distance because it will kill the
throughput for everybody.

edit - add another note--- APs set to not use RTS/CTS will still respond to clients asking for a RTS by
sending the requesting client a CTS. When a CTS is sent to a client, all clients on the AP stop transmitting
which gives the client a clear and clean channel to send data to the AP (the client does not get stepped
on). Without this RTS/CTS setup in place - there can be a ton of clients all transmitting at the same time
and then nothing makes it to the AP from clients or from clients to the AP.

RTS/CTS does slow down the network - but - if you have a serious hidden node problem (where clients
on your AP can not hear other clients on your AP) and you have more than 20ish clients, then give this a
try.

I have played around with RTS/CTS settings for more than 5 years on large WISP networks and this is the
only thing I have found that really works.

FYI - I have about 100 APs which range from customer connection counts from 30 to 150+ clients each
Tom Jones - a WISP up here in North Idaho