Ruckus - Who has it? What do you think of it?

[robk]

How big is your ruckus install? 45 Aps since Xmas
How reliable is it? Very, problems only on upgrades which were expected.
How many devices you have on it? Byod so not sure yet planning for 1400
Any problems you have had? Not yet
Did you self install or get a third party to install? Self install
How would you compare it against the likes of meru? Seems cheep but good and reliable.

[glennda]

How reliable is it? Very, problems only on upgrades which were expected.

Problems with updates expected? What sort of updates firmware?

[bladedanny]

How big is your ruckus install? 10 AP + 1 Zone Director
How reliable is it? Very
How many devices you have on it? Usually a minimum of 32 laptops (class set) plus any guest devices.
Any problems you have had? Had one where a powercut stoped it working but a update of the firmware sorted this which was easy to do.
Did you self install or get a third party to install? Cabling done by the electricians during building and self install by me. Very easy to do, setup options and plug in APs.
How would you compare it against the likes of meru? Only used an inherited netgear at another school and Ruckus is so much better.

[bossman]

How does it match up to Aerohive solution does anyone have the data on this as I am looking into Aerohive at this moment for a meeting next week, reasons for this solution rather than Ruckus is that I don't fancy a H/W cntroller which should it go down would leave the school with no wireless,

I also have the single point of failure covered for the cloud controller which Aerohive would use so all in all I would welcome any constructive data on Aerohive V Ruckus,

I have looked into Meraki also and it was a viable solution until Cisco decided to purchase it and this has put me off since their last aquisition of a product ended in that product being taken off the market.

Thanks in advance

[glennda]

I have looked into Meraki also and it was a viable solution until Cisco decided to purchase it and this has put me off since their last aquisition of a product ended in that product being taken off the market.

Thanks in advance

Meraki is keeping its members on the board, so hopefully that shouldn't be the case. They are also keeping it as a seperate arm called the "Cisco Cloud Networking Group"

[pantscat]

reasons for this solution rather than Ruckus is that I don't fancy a H/W cntroller which should it go down would leave the school with no wireless,

I seem to remember I queried this with Ruckus and they said that the APs would continue to function with their current config without the H/W controller for a certain period of time (I can't remember what this was though!). The only proviso was that they wouldn't carry on supporting any RADIUS based authentication as that is all done by the Zonedirector box.

[tj2419]

We had a look at aerohive but our internet connection is dodgy and i didn't like the risk that if our internet feed dies so does our wireless. We are looking at having a secondary controller for redundancy.

How does it match up to Aerohive solution does anyone have the data on this as I am looking into Aerohive at this moment for a meeting next week, reasons for this solution rather than Ruckus is that I don't fancy a H/W cntroller which should it go down would leave the school with no wireless,

I also have the single point of failure covered for the cloud controller which Aerohive would use so all in all I would welcome any constructive data on Aerohive V Ruckus,

I have looked into Meraki also and it was a viable solution until Cisco decided to purchase it and this has put me off since their last aquisition of a product ended in that product being taken off the market.

Thanks in advance

[netadmin]

I managed a Ruckus implementation at the last school I worked at. I was really happy with the system and had no complaints from students, staff or SMT. Many users reported significant speed increases over the previous D-Link Wireless Network. The ability to create time-limited guest passes also significantly increased network security.

How big is your ruckus install? 10 APs, one Zonedirector 1112 controller
How reliable is it? Very. The only time we had any issues was when applying firmware updates, and even those were very minor
How many devices you have on it? The network had relatively low concurrent use. I think the highest concurrent use was about 30-40 devices.
Any problems you have had? Some firmware updates failed to apply successfully the first time or made the controller lockup momentarily. Each time, power cycling the controller and trying the update again resolved the issues.
Did you self install or get a third party to install? We self installed. Our site team ran the network cabling to each AP location, I terminated & tested the jacks, and mounted the APs.

[robk]

Problems with updates expected? What sort of updates firmware?

We had an issue pushing out one of the updates, which we ran out of hours as there's always some downtime.

Ended up with a very long support call from ruckus to get us upgraded, again out of hours so no disruption to users.

Not had any other reports of problems, but I can confirm the commitment of @Net-Ctrl and ruckus support!

[stefarr]

How big is your ruckus install?
->around 24 AP's looking to expand this with another 38 (budget permitting) we have azd3000 and a zd1100 for backup

How reliable is it?
->very, no issues, easy to setup, support from CP Ltd is amazing (have said that before and will continue to say it)

How many devices you have on it?
->any device that can do wireless is using it, 120 staff laptops, 350 or so student laptops, staff and student iPads, iPhones, mobiles etc

Any problems you have had?
->thats a joke question LOL ... but no

Did you self install or get a third party to install?
->self install, its easy, too easy in fact

How would you compare it against the likes of meru?
->cant say but alongside HP its awesome kit, goinf to rip out the HP wireless and replace it with Ruckus

steve

Hi

We are currently investigating upgrading our wireless network, ditching an old 3com system and replacing with a Ruckus system. We would be looking at the Ruckus zonedirector 3000 and about 41 AP's.

What i wanted to check was how good people thought the system is?

How big is your ruckus install?
How reliable is it?
How many devices you have on it?
Any problems you have had?
Did you self install or get a third party to install?
How would you compare it against the likes of meru?

My main concern is that our LEA quoted circa £40k for a wireless network and Ruckus is a lot cheaper. Almost too cheap :P. Just wanted to check around and make sure that it is a reliable system as we use wireless a lot.

Thanks

[john]

I have used Ruckus in three schools now, having just completed my latest installation with the support of @Net-Ctrl. I have never had any issues with the ruckus installation however any operating niggles have been resolved very quickly and efficiently.

The current install is around 30aps.

[truebluesteve]

This thread has been very useful as I spoke to Ruckus and Net-ctrl at BETT yesterday and was very interested in the kit as a replacement for our current Trapeze system. Are people using guest networks with transparent proxies sucessfully with the Ruckus equipment?

[tj2419]

Do POE switches affect the speed of wireless or do they literally just power the AP's?

Cheers

[RTFM]

The speed of the switch is what will impact on the speed (100/1000 or 10/100 etc). The PoE bit I wouldnt have thought would have impact on the speed, it just represents it will do power over ethernet (someone will correct me if im wrong i'm sure!).

We put in some gig PoE switches and its been brilliant.

[RTFM]

This thread has been very useful as I spoke to Ruckus and Net-ctrl at BETT yesterday and was very interested in the kit as a replacement for our current Trapeze system. Are people using guest networks with transparent proxies sucessfully with the Ruckus equipment?

Yes we have Ruckus, transparent proxies and guest networks / BYOD networks BYOD actually pushes to an SSL login page, the Guest network though is transparent.

We've just recently started reception giving out auth codes to the guest network and its extremely simple through the ruckus guest pass page.