Difference between Meru and Ruckus

[Mr_Jiminy]

I have a school looking to procure a wireless upgrade, with quotes sourced for both Ruckus and Meru. The school has a large deployment of laptops and growing deployment of iOS devices.

 

Can anyone guide me on the difference between the Meru AP822i 802.11ac and the Ruckus ZoneFlex R500 Dual-Band 802.11abgn/ac access points? I'm led to believe the Meru AP is capable of 80MHz, whereas Ruckus can only push out 40MHz when 3 or more APs are in place.

Edited September 30, 2015 by Mr_Jiminy

[sonofsanta]

I don't know about the APs, but I do know the difference in the controller is night and day. Ruckus was vastly simpler and more intuitive to use when we demoed each system last year.

[Mr_Jiminy]

Yeah that Ruckus interface is night, which is a plus. However I'm keen to understand the difference in the AP's.

[localzuk]

Your best bet is to speak to a Ruckus seller about it. I haven't heard of such a restriction, for example, and there's no mention of it on the Ruckus product page for the R500.

[Mr_Jiminy]

Your best bet is to speak to a Ruckus seller about it. I haven't heard of such a restriction, for example, and there's no mention of it on the Ruckus product page for the R500.

 

Yep will definitely end up doing this.

[snagrat]

I'm not aware of that of the R500 as we have done a lot of installs with them.

 

Plus, 80Mhz channels may not be required for you anyway. Depends on the number of APs really

[SuperfluousAdjective]

The biggest difference is that Meru runs in a single channel architecture which isn't the best for higher density environments and can cause issues with certain clients. From everything I've read Ruckus has better management and performance. Meru has some marketshare in EDU in Europe, but is generally non-existent elsewhere. Meru was recently acquired by Fortinet for a the cost of a toy in a Cracker Jacks box. If choosing between the two it's a no brainer to give a stronger look to Ruckus. Just don't let them convince you that you need less APs to get coverage as a method of lowering their cost. That's their sales strategy and is FUD. Edited October 1, 2015 by SuperfluousAdjective

[localzuk]

You do need fewer APs though. We have 15 covering our site (would be fewer still but or newest building seems to suffer from poor signal propagation).

 

When we put it in, other solutions were advising 30+ APs.

 

Sure, I have no doubt we would need more if we dramatically increased client density, but for coverage you do need fewer.

[njc235]

A Ruckus seller will not tell you about its limitations!

[njc235]

There are not enough channels for the multi cell vendors (not just Ruckus) to operate at the full capabilities of 802.11ac. As Meru offers a single channel solution, they can fully export the available channels and will continue to do so when wave 2 is fully ratified.

[njc235]

Coverage and density require different AP counts. The original poster required density. Talk to someone like Luton Airport if you want to learn about real density!

[localzuk]

A Ruckus seller will not tell you about its limitations!

 

You either work for Meru, or haven't dealt with any good Ruckus resellers. I've been told about limitations by our resellers for Ruckus. A good reseller will give you an accurate picture of what you are buying, and not just give you all the pretty bits.

 

Also, the age old thing to remember about Meru is that it is a single channel system, that will suffer from co-channel interference. Whilst the system may attempt to mitigate this problem on downlink connections (as it directly controls this), uplink connections (clients) won't. The 802.11 standards did not include a plan for this, and as such any tools for mitigating it are generally proprietary, and as such most clients simply don't know about them and don't use them effectively.

 

Put it this way. When a client wishes to send a signal, it uses CSMA/CA MAC to detect if other devices are already transmitting on that channel. If it detects them, it may well decide to delay sending. If everything is using the same channel, you can see why this would be an issue - there would always be something sending a signal! So, as the density increases, your risk of major issues with co-channel interference increases, and your network performance plummets.

 

The reality of any wireless solution is - you can't really tell how it is going to perform until you try it out. Get trials of each system and hammer them with expected loads. Move them around, try them out in different areas with different construction materials/architecture. Our system works beautifully here, except in 2 places, where we needed a lot more APs than the other areas. For comparison, our year 5 block needs 1 AP to provide 100% coverage. Our year 6 block, which is double the size, requires 4. All because of how it was built. (Note: these are "for coverage" numbers, we have introduced further APs for density now, since running more devices).

 

Don't buy into the manufacturer blurb. Linking this back to the 802.11ac stuff - whilst there are a limited number of 80Mhz channels you could use, and in high density environments you may see a drop in performance due to overlap, this may or may not be worse than the drop you see in a single channel system in your physical environment.

Edited October 1, 2015 by localzuk

[Mr_Jiminy]

The reality of any wireless solution is - you can't really tell how it is going to perform until you try it out. Get trials of each system and hammer them with expected loads. Move them around, try them out in different areas with different construction materials/architecture. Our system works beautifully here, except in 2 places, where we needed a lot more APs than the other areas. For comparison, our year 5 block needs 1 AP to provide 100% coverage. Our year 6 block, which is double the size, requires 4. All because of how it was built.

 

One step ahead, we have a Meru trial going in today , following which we're going to request the same with the Ruckus equipment.

[Asgard]

A Ruckus seller will not tell you about its limitations!

 

Challenge denied.

 

I agree with localzuk our original ruckus reseller who sold us the kit in 2009 told us about any potential limitations and our new reseller is equally as honest.

 

We have just short of 90 APs, a menu guy told us we needed at least 130APs for our campus.

 

A school in our academy trust has a 80 AP (AP320i) Meru installation and were in discussions about moving it to a 50AP ruckus system.

[njc235]

I didn't want to start a war! There are plenty of reasons for choosing Ruckus and equally as many for Meru. I would say try to find a reseller who partners both vendors.

[Mr_Jiminy]

I didn't want to start a war! There are plenty of reasons for choosing Ruckus and equally as many for Meru. I would say try to find a reseller who partners both vendors.

 

What kind of deployment are you using at your site?

[njc235]

We actually have HP and Meru deployments on our site.

[witch]

I have Ruckus at one site and Meru at the other - my preferred supplier does both now

Can't say I see a lot of difference - both seem to work very well.

[mhowell]

Mr_Jiminy

By all means contact me directly [email protected], or direct message me. Yes Fortinet did recently acquire Meru, and we are obviously now very pleased to have a company with significant resources and people to further our research and development (which is more than be said of some other wireless vendors right now), and coverage within the UK & Ireland

There are a number of posts of this thread which are not accurate technically so if you do want to know more accurately about our solution then I'd be happy to chat to you

Meru has been chosen by over 4000 schools in the UK & Ireland so please just direct message me and I'll happily put you in touch with some local schools, colleges or Universities who would be happy to host you.

Over 400 schools so far this year have deployed our solution so despite the continual misinformation that is shared on here about Meru, we continue to dominate in the UK Schools Market

You will see us at BETT as FORTINET, and we are currently planning and recruiting for a big push in 2016, and expect to see some exciting new developments to the product range

Kind regards

Mark Howell

[darkest_star]

What ever flavour or WIFI you choose in my opinion the Vendor who installs the system is as important as the system.

 

If the Vendor is not up to scratch your experience of any system will be poor. All the systems mentioned have pros and cons and are in some way limited by their own technology stance.

 

I would be looking on here for preferred suppliers and make sure you get what you pay for. clued up engineers are worth more than just throwing more AP's into an area.

[localzuk]

There are a number of posts of this thread which are not accurate technically

 

I would love to know what was technically inaccurate in this thread.

[Net-Ctrl]

What ever flavour or WIFI you choose in my opinion the Vendor who installs the system is as important as the system.

 

If the Vendor is not up to scratch your experience of any system will be poor. All the systems mentioned have pros and cons and are in some way limited by their own technology stance.

 

I would be looking on here for preferred suppliers and make sure you get what you pay for. clued up engineers are worth more than just throwing more AP's into an area.

 

100% agree with this.

 

We have been contacted countless times by Ruckus users that have had a company install a system, and it's not doing what they expected it to. We've been in, assessed the deployment, made changes to their AP locations and set-up and got it all working as it should be. I'm sure the same can be said for all the manufacturers.