Replacement Wireless - Ruckus?

[chrischambers]

Hi,

 

We're looking to plan for the replacement of our elderly MSM765 and HP 425 wireless network. Based on the old Colubris system that HP abandoned shortly after we purchased as they decided to gobble up Aruba as well I guess.

A couple of resellers have come back with Ruckus AP's with a VM controller.

Any schools with feedback on Ruckus would be welcome!

 

Thanks,

 

Chris

[localzuk]

We use Ruckus at most of our schools. Have been using it for about a decade at this point. Can't fault it.

 

Good kit, good support.

[Jawloms]

Ruckus here and at my last place. Almost begrudge paying the annual support of a couple of hundred quid as we never have to call them.

[DJ-1701]

Ruckus equipment has been extremely reliable, the Primary I work at got theirs via @Net-Ctrl, who have been brilliant. Though we have the older hardware controller, I believe the VM controller is a subscription based model.

 

I will say that a lot of people on Edugeek here also praise Ubiquiti, which has a controller you can install on a server. @DalekSec I believe knows more on this.

[Net-Ctrl]

We have always found Ruckus to be a great solution. The virtual SmartZone is their most popular controller, although we have recently installed Ruckus Cloud into a number of sites that didn't want to have, or were moving away from hosting their own virtual environment.

[DalekSec]

I love UniFi, i use it at home but when it came to using it on site there was too many bugs and issues we encountered. I remember at my old site i had to regularly go around and restart UniFi points, not had to do that once with Ruckus.

 

Ended up going with Ruckus for 2 main reasons 1) we already had an old ruckus system and was easy enough to upgrade and 2) price, yes more expensive than Unifi but compared to others it was well priced.

 

We have around 90 Aps and 2 Virutal Smartzones, they run their own linux based instance so don't need to fire up a windows server etc. We also went with @Net-Ctrl

 

p.s if you ask nice you might get a ruckus dog!

[chrischambers]

Thanks - That sounds really promising.

We did the whole comparison thing last time and it was all a bit of a lottery, some being silly expensive.

Ruckus seems just the job this time round.

[bald_pig]

I run Ruckus at work and at home!

[Wubbalubbadub]

I have always used ruckus at secondary schools. I agree with others, it's pretty solid. I have had a few issues with the two sites I have installed ruckus in, I think the support is pretty bad to be honest. Which I appreciate is against the general consensus.

I also don't agree with the subscription model pricing.

 

I have always gone for ubiquiti for our primary schools, solid affordable kit and support has always been amazing.

 

That being said, I'd be hesitant to install ubiquiti as a full site solution in a secondary school. Can't justify that though.

Edited July 27, 2020 by Wubbalubbadub

[Primus]

We’ve got circa 100 Ubiquiti Unifi APs and around 45 of their 48 port switches. We’ve had zero issues. It all just works as expected and was so much cheaper it was a no-brainer.

[hardtailstar]

We have Ruckus here, no issues, well except that the console didn't like Chrome and windows 10. A firmware upgrade solved this.

 

It was installed in the three primary schools I used to work at, never had an issue at either site in the 5 years I worked at them.

[PlantHead]

Ruckus here as well. 124 AP's and just looking to expand that to cover some outlying buildings. Solid and we have had very few problems with the system.

If we could have afforded it I would have preferred to go Meraki or Aruba for the extra features but they cost a lot more. Ruckus is a happy midway point.

 

Everytime I have contracted support they have been good.

[Net-Ctrl]

I have always used ruckus at secondary schools. I agree with others, it's pretty solid. I have had a few issues with the two sites I have installed ruckus in, I think the support is pretty bad to be honest. Which I appreciate is against the general consensus.

I also don't agree with the subscription model pricing.

 

Depending on whether your support is direct with Ruckus, or through a Ruckus partner if you're not happy with it you could either look at moving to a partner support model, which is also cheaper that going direct to Ruckus, or if currently with a partner for support move to Ruckus or to another Ruckus partner. Could be worth reviewing on your next renewal.

[paulellam]

Ruckus has been an excellent investment in our school, had no problems with the system and it just does its stuff perfectly.

[MatthewL]

We're in the process as our Aruba AP's fail or we get issues with replacing them with Unifi. We have hundreds of them out there with zero issues, a number of sites have Unifi switches and USG's with a VPN back to the data centre. Cannot fault the Unifi stuff one bit.

[Primus]

I do find these threads interesting - I'm not interested in vendors answering this but fellow education IT managers and technicians - what features does Unifi not have on the WiFi side that led you away from them?

 

Similarly what bugs/issues have you encountered (some referenced this)?

 

I'm genuinely interested since when we did our comparison 2 years ago Unifi checked every single box and was so much cheaper it was incredible really. Since then we've never had a moment where we regretted going with Unifi for our WiFi and PoE switching - a year later we added a load more of their none-PoE 48 ports and the money we saved at the edge allowed us to up-spec the core.

[Simcfc73]

We used to have Ruckus but switched to Unifi when I went to AC.

 

I like the simplicity of it and obviously the price but its got some niggles. Random AP's stop responding and at present I've got some weirdness where the AP's don't respond to pings or SSH's which I can't solve.

 

Its better than the Ruckus stuff though as I had issues with that too (especially the £2k controllers we bought)

 

I'd replace all our switches for UI stuff if I had the wonga too as the switches we bought are great.

[TechMonkey]

The issue it is all down to individual experience.

 

So I have just put down to renew our Ruckus system as I realised I had forgotten about it and everything was either coming to or actually EOL. I literally installed it, added some more APs after a year and it just sat there doing it's thing. I was going to look around at all the others but thought if the system worked so well that I have managed to forget about it why change? There lies another issue, yes I could have gone for Unifi for cheapness but if there were issues I would have kicked myself for leaving a platform I know to be stable and work.

 

We are in an old building with walls stouter than Comic book guy and Ruckus has handled everything we have thrown at it. Suppliers who have been in for other things have been surprised that we cover as much area as we do with the number of APs we have due to these walls. Having heard the tales of constantly needing to restart APs or them being used as consumables as they break but are cheap I just felt my, and my teams, time is worth more than having to keep chasing bugs. I also don't like the way Unifi seems to funnel you to getting their whole stack, but that is a personal annoyance and I'm sure this could be a massive benefit to some.

 

But I can understand that if someone has had issues, even niggles, with Ruckus then they would be more open to shifting.

 

All of the above applies the same for Unifi, if you have had no issues why change and if you have had issues why not jump ship

[Primus]

Funny as I’ve experienced zero niggles. Zero APs needing rebooting etc.

 

I still think people are incredibly dismissive of Unifi without properly considering it and some of this definitely comes down to resellers trying time and time again by hook or by crook to push people to much more expensive solutions.

[snoerre]

Good old MSM765 802.11n access points. Nice.

- Do you still have IEEE 802.3af PoE switches for them? If so why not save some money and buy current IEEE 802.11ac (Wave 2) access points which run with 802.3af?

- Don´t buy expensive IEEE 802.11ax access points for now (year 2020). Wait for Wifi6E.

- I like Aruba´s Instant access points and its inbuilt cluster management, i.e. no licensing costs

- So for now for a quick and dirty replacement I´d suggest you to take a look at Aruba IAP-315 access points.

Edited August 8, 2020 by snoerre

[CraigM]

Have 29 Ruckus AP's at my school and apart from the 1st ever buggy firmware (10.4 branch) this year, the system has behaved really well. Unfortunately price has shot sky high here in my country which has erased a lot of the value proposition Ruckus used to be known for locally.

 

I know of or have read about many schools here in my country going with Ubiquiti based kit and I can't say that I've heard terribly much in the way of complaints. The cost factor alone no doubt also makes people happy even if the system isn't quite as bulletproof as Ruckus is generally known for.

[Guest Guest]

We've just deployed 25 Unifi APs after we installed them in our new build last year. So far they've been great