Ruckus vs Meru??

[ste1988]

Hi,

 

We are currently looking at replacing our old Trapeze Wireless system and are looking at either Ruckus or Meru.

 

Ideally looking for people to post who have experience of using both systems.

 

We will be having a large deployment of iPads that will be the main need for a good wireless coverage. With a decent amount of other wireless devices (laptops + phones) connected. Maximum of around 70-100 devices.

 

I know there are others available but looking through this forum, and many hours of internet searches, if definitely feels like its between these two.

 

Regards

[snagrat]

As a Ruckus supplier I can't talk highly enough about it. We have been into school that have Meru and it simply isn't working, put our Ruckus demo kit in and instant improvement.

 

Ruckus have 11ac products coming out very soon as I know Meru currently have one out.

[featured_spectre]

It is all dependent on if you are going AC or not. Ruckus AC products (currently) lack compared to Meru. However by August/September time they should be up to par

[FrankJaeger]

I had meru previously, we kept it for three years, it was nothing but a pain for us.

After much persuasion, research and sticking my neck on the line, i convinced the powers that be to go with a ruckus system.

We have had it a while now and you don't even know its there.

It just works. Painless!!!

[FrankJaeger]

Hi,

 

We are currently looking at replacing our old Trapeze Wireless system and are looking at either Ruckus or Meru.

 

Ideally looking for people to post who have experience of using both systems.

 

We will be having a large deployment of iPads that will be the main need for a good wireless coverage. With a decent amount of other wireless devices (laptops + phones) connected. Maximum of around 70-100 devices.

 

I know there are others available but looking through this forum, and many hours of internet searches, if definitely feels like its between these two.

 

Regards

 

Forgot to mention Meru may have an 'AC' Access Point but if you are mainy deploying ipads (which dont have AC chipsets)

and laptops with no 'AC' chipset then it may be worth staying a way from it for now.

Also been told by our contact that Ruckus will be releasing an 802.11ac AP soon and at the moment have been getting speeds of 800-900mbps with beta models.

 

Happy days!

[ste1988]

It is all dependent on if you are going AC or not. Ruckus AC products (currently) lack compared to Meru. However by August/September time they should be up to par

 

Thanks for that, luckily our time frame fits nicely for ruckus AC.

[rad]

Its all Good saying I Love Meru or I Love Ruckus but I am interested too but want to know why you like X rather than Y?

[snagrat]

Speak to suppliers and get some loan kit to try and see how it works for you. Our loan kits are constantly out and it's the best way for us to show off the features and also for the end user to see how it work.

 

The Ruckus is very easy to use which is one reason people like it so much.

[synaesthesia]

Even as a Unifi advocate, I helped trial Ruckus and Meru at a school locally. Ruckus won out on it's ease of use, it really was easy to set up. (This was proven as it was installed by cowboys). Meru seemed just as feature-rich but working it didn't seem anywhere near as intuitive. Ruckus worked as I like it; the more you put into it, the more you got out. If you wanted it simple, you could keep it simple.

[psydii]

I have had a trapeze and a meru.

 

Wireless should be a set it and forget it technology. Set up right initially, and all you might have to do is look at logs, add guest users and perhaps reboot after a firmware update (well maybe, meru actually do that for me)

 

Our Meru network has been rock solid for a mix of laptops and ipads iphones and andriod phones. We have in the region of 200 student laptops and the wireless is the primary access medium for teachers and administrative offices (yes the finance department access their sql based management system over wireless, and all teacher access the file shares, web based mis, and internet over wireless and have NO OTHER means of connectivity).

 

I've needed to log in to the console barely a handful of times in the last 12 months. I have to faff around with switch os command lines far far more often.

 

One time i did need it was when with short notice I was told that a staff training event was going to need everybody on their laptops in the main hall. YouTube and access to fileshares and general internet would be required. 120+ devices in one room. I pinched an AP from another location, set it up onto a different channel (for overflow) and every thing just worked.

 

I would not touch trapeze/juniper again. I have no experience of Ruckus.

 

Meru may have had a rough patch around 2011 with firmware quality, but for us that was compounded for me by a poor initial configuration. Based on my experience since Meru solved that, I would definitely look favorably upon them in any project their kit was proposed.

 

I should say that I have 24/7 support, which is great when a power spike/brown out has corrupted a config, its 5pm and you need the network to be up at 7am the next morning!

 

Probably also worth mentioning I'm running on 2009 era hardware.

Edited March 5, 2014 by psydii

[Steveduk]

Hi,

 

I have experience of both. We had a Ruckus system (20 APs, ZD1000) with about 1000 users in an old building with about 90% coverage and it worked flawlessly. This was replaced under BSF with a Meru system(90 APs!) which took Meru 12 months to fix after diagnosing problems with client adapters, drivers, settings, Windows configuration, Meru firmware and Meru configs (all worked on the Ruckus). The system finally worked best after single cell and half the APs were disabled, i.e. turning it back into working like a Ruckus system does. After being NM at the school for 13 years, the Meru system was a big push for me to change jobs as the increased workload in a BYOD school caused by a flaky WiFi setup was awful..... by chance my new employer uses Ruckus and it just works.

 

If you want more info please pm me. Happy to talk on the phone.

 

[theriver]

Slight hijack - the school where I am a governor is considering a ruckus setup. I am interested in @snagrat's comment there - is it common for vendors to loan out kit? As far as I know this hasn't been offered as an option to us.

[Steveduk]

Hi theriver,

 

I would definitely recommend testing various vendors kit with your devices. NetCtrl used to have loan kit (I assume they still do). Do your own throughput, density and coverage testing. I tried to borrow Meru before BSF forced it upon us and was unable to either obtain evaluation kit or a reference site with high density usage similar to what we required.

 

Steve

[TheTechieUK]

Hi Steveduk,

We too have been forced to use Meru under BSF and its crap.

 

Ruckus gave us no issues

[Net-Ctrl]

Hi @theriver , if you would like to look at loaning some Ruckus equipment we can certainly help. Please feel free to PM me for more information

[s1d972]

We primarily offer Ruckus however will and can supply meru if requested. We favour Ruckus due to its ease of use, flexibility, cost effectiveness and most importantly reliability. We are mainly Education based and feel Ruckus fits the bill perfectly for this sector. You are not paying for bells and whistles that are not required.

 

Hope that helps.

[psydii]

Hi Steveduk,

We too have been forced to use Meru under BSF and its crap.

 

Ruckus gave us no issues

 

BSF brought its own baggage, and prevented transparency.

 

I wouldn't be at all surprised if the problem wasn't Meru but:

A) poor implementation of wireless configuration

B) poorly chosen clients (they really need to be duel band 2x2)

C) flakey MSP management software

D) underlying network issues that are masked by sheer speed of the wired connections of your desktops.

E) the fact the MSP didn't buy support from the hardware vendors, instead believing that they could do the job alone- leaving the school on outdated firmware

F) change control getting in the way of troubleshooting.

[Steveduk]

BSF brought its own baggage, and prevented transparency.

 

I wouldn't be at all surprised if the problem wasn't Meru but:

A) poor implementation of wireless configuration

B) poorly chosen clients (they really need to be duel band 2x2)

C) flakey MSP management software

D) underlying network issues that are masked by sheer speed of the wired connections of your desktops.

E) the fact the MSP didn't buy support from the hardware vendors, instead believing that they could do the job alone- leaving the school on outdated firmware

F) change control getting in the way of troubleshooting.

 

The school I was at didn't get a managed service. The facts are that a working Ruckus system with about 18APs was replaced by a Meru system with 80(Now over 100) APs to achieve a slower client throughput. The system required a Meru engineer to be flown in to work with a UK based engineer for two days to get the thing working!

 

It's only tax payers money!

[TurnItOffAndOn]

I can only talk about meru, but we had 49 ap's and a controller installed last July. We have the best and most reliable wireless we have ever had. With our old netgear setup, it would take 30 laptops with 2x2 cards in them 15-20 minutes to login. Those same laptops with no changes except the ssid now take 2 minutes.

 

We find it just works. It is all down to setup of the system. We had SwitchShop in to implement our setup. We had various ssid's setup for different purposes. I would say it is down to setup, get this right and you should have no issues.