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

[tj2419]

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

[Jawloms]

How big is your ruckus install? 2 Zonedirector 3000s as we are split site and one is used for redundancy, around 30 APs on each campus.
How reliable is it? Incredibly
How many devices you have on it? 200 staff laptops, 250 iPads and 150 student laptops, but we intend to get a few hundred more iPads and are happy it will handle them.
Any problems you have had? Nope
Did you self install or get a third party to install? Third Party. Net-ctrl in Ipswich. They're brilliant.
How would you compare it against the likes of meru? Not used Meru myself, but others who have say Ruckus is the way to go.

[nicholab]

Ruckus would have been 20K to 30K cheaper for us but we went with a MSM760 and MSM422 due to it have HP branding it was not as good.

Ruckus is easy to set up and easy to manage it management interface is very web 2.0.

Go for it I know that truphone deployed it to support demos using wireless as other systems could not cope.

Ruckus can deliver everything required for a school environment. Ruckus is like a DVD player you plug it in and forget it.

Why? Ruckus USP is that they have a patented antenna using standard chipset running their software.

[nephilim]

Had ruckus at the last school I worked at, loved it, easy to use, great interface, great technology, great suppliers.

[localzuk]

How big is your ruckus install? 13 APs
How reliable is it? It just works. Its on and ignored. Ran happily now for about 3 years no issues.
How many devices you have on it? About 50
Any problems you have had? None
Did you self install or get a third party to install? Self installed.
How would you compare it against the likes of meru? A lot cheaper, but it doesn't have *all* the features some of the more expensive solutions have. Its wireless and that's what it does well.

An install of Aruba would have set us back about £35k here, the Ruckus kit cost us half or less than that IIRC.

[nephilim]

This is about my last school

How big is your ruckus install? 10 APs
How reliable is it? It just works. Its on and left to do what it does. It ran happily now for about 2 years with only a slight issue which was fixed within 4 hours with a new firmware patch
How many devices you have on it? About 300
Any problems you have had? 1 issue where N was not broadcasting properly, 1 call to Ruckus, problem solved with new firmware patch 4 hours later
Did you self install or get a third party to install? Self installed.
How would you compare it against the likes of meru? A lot cheaper, but it doesn't have *all* the features some of the more expensive solutions have. Its wireless and that's what it does well.

An install of Xirrus or Meru would have set us back about £15k here, the Ruckus kit cost us half or less than that IIRC.

[witch]

I have Ruckus and Meru and they both work well. Much smaller than what you want though, only 10APs on each.
Overall, Ruckus is slightly more reliable and the costing per AP or set of APs is better.

[pantscat]

How big is your ruckus install? 56 APs with a single ZoneDirector 3000
How reliable is it? Absolutely reliable - I've never had an issue. It's now been running without any downtime since August 2010.
How many devices you have on it? I've got a total of around 250 devices.
Any problems you have had? None whatsoever.
Did you self install or get a third party to install? I did it all myself... in fact, the initial install (apart from the actual physical placing of the APs and the wireless survey) took around 20 minutes.
How would you compare it against the likes of meru? I did a full comparison and trial with other products, Meru, Xirrus, Aruba, Cisco and HP. The Ruckus solution was the best value for money and also offered the best coverage for our environment.

The Ruckus solution I've got now replaced an (inherited) 120-140 deployment of standalone APs... it's literally a million times better. Well, maybe not literally a million times better, but you know what I mean.

[glennda]

Havn't used Ruckus but haved used the Cisco kit which I wouldn't recommend. And Meraki Kit which is really good and tends to "just work", although requires some ports outbound to contact the cloud controller.

[hardtailstar]

This

Ruckus is like a DVD player you plug it in and forget it.

How big is your ruckus install? about 25 APs
How reliable is it? been here 2 years no faults, was installed about 3 years before i joined
How many devices you have on it? about 200 laptops/computers
Any problems you have had? None
How would you compare it against the likes of meru? not sure what Meru is like.

[sparkeh]

How big is your ruckus install? Small, only 4 APs covering a section of a primary (more to come after April )
How reliable is it? 100%, haven't touched it after initial setup.
How many devices you have on it? About 30.
Any problems you have had? None
Did you self install or get a third party to install? Mark from @CPLTD did a survey to identify the number/position of APs and supplied the kit, we then installed.
How would you compare it against the likes of meru? Used to have an HP system in my old school, worked fine but was way more expensive. Also it was an open plan school that required more APs than this old Victorian style school.

[Davit2005]

We went to Ruckus from an older Aruba setup at a previous place. The transition was completely painless, I would say people never noticed apart from personal devices who saw the extra guest network.

Loved the interface, a dodle to set up, done it in a few days including implementing the vLans accross the switches :-). Better coverage and through put than the Aruba system we had due to the newer technology.

[ben604]

How big is your ruckus install? 1 X ZoneDirector 1100, 20 x APs
How reliable is it? Almost faultless
How many devices you have on it? 10 iPads, 150 student laptops
Any problems you have had? We had a dead AP, a few remedial tests to be carried out, then they replaced it FOC. Our issues arise because we use rubbish Samsung NB30 Netbooks which disable their own Wireless connection and take too long to boot.
Did you self install or get a third party to install? Third Party.
How would you compare it against the likes of meru? We tried Meru and Aruba before going for Ruckus - cheaper, easier to configure and better performance/coverage.

[dhicks]

And Meraki Kit which is really good and tends to "just work", although requires some ports outbound to contact the cloud controller.

We have a Ruckus system here - I can't really add much to the comments above, it was affordable, we plugged it in, it works, it seems to manage at least a classroom's worth of laptops (20-ish) in one go with no problem. I did have a look at Meraki yesterday and quite liked the device triangulation feature - track devices, on a floor plan, around you school. I think Ruckus can manage that, too, although I don't know how the two compare on price.

[glennda]

We have a Ruckus system here - I can't really add much to the comments above, it was affordable, we plugged it in, it works, it seems to manage at least a classroom's worth of laptops (20-ish) in one go with no problem. I did have a look at Meraki yesterday and quite liked the device triangulation feature - track devices, on a floor plan, around you school. I think Ruckus can manage that, too, although I don't know how the two compare on price.

The Meraki Kit is good it also has built in ability to span bonjour across VLANS which is quite good.

The main features for me now using Meraki kit is the Auto-VPN technology and also its teleworker solutions, obviously not quite as important for education but in the private sector with users at home it effectivly can replace the need for a private MPLS circuit!