wireless comparison - Ruckus or Netgear?

[mm3]

hello all,

 

we are about to redo our wireless we have 2 options:

 

Ruckus ZD1112 ZoneDirector supporting up to 12 Access Points

 

Ruckus 7363 Mid Range Dual Access Point

 

or

 

WMS5316 wireless controller

 

Wnap210

 

I have already deployed ruckus to 2 schools and cant find a single fault with the product, but due to budgets i have been advised to look at the netgear solutions (not happy!)

 

 

really i am looking to find reviews on the netgear solution compared to the ruckus, i understand there will be a difference in the price.

i have had a survey done by net-ctrl and have been advised to get 12 ruckus AP's and that will cover the whole school, would netgear be the same coverage? or will i need more AP's?

 

Cheers

[nicholab]

It depends what they what to do with wireless but if it is unreliable it will cost more in wasted time!! I would get some Cisco quotes if they what to see expensive. Ruckus AP generally can support 30 laptops per AP. The other alternative is don't get wireless the budget can't support it. Edited May 16, 2012 by nicholab

[mm3]

It depends what they what to do with wireless but if it is unreliable it will cost more in wasted time!! I would get some Cisco quotes if they what to see expensive. Ruckus AP generally can support 30 laptops per AP.

 

the whole school will depend on the wifi ict suite has laptops also 3banks of 30 laptops and every class will have tablets etc in the near future, this is a primary and does not have a onsite tech to solve day to day issues

[nicholab]

Well if you can't afford the wireless the tablet are worth less!! If that is the plan I would really consider Ruckus it might not be worth going for dual radios as most stuff is in the 2.4Ghz band. I would chat to your supplier about it.

[AngryTechnician]

I've deployed Netgear business wireless in the past (though not those models) and it's pretty shonky compared to Ruckus. We're gearing up for a wireless project here over the summer and I intend to compare solutions from Ruckus, UniFi, and Meraki. They all have different price points, but I know the performance will probably vary greatly so will be making detailed functional comparisons to determine which is the best value.

 

tl;dr: Comparing on price alone is a mistake. Make sure the keeper of the purse understands this.

[snoerre]

Please, if you consider buying of these, then feature wise, take Ruckus. Netgear´s software support is sadly very basic. The time when Netgear had a good wifi platform was, when they had OEMed Aruba devices (Aruba MC800 == Netgear WFS709TP) for sale.

Talking about a low budget solution. I´d prefer Ubiquiti Unify over Netgear, then.

Edited May 17, 2012 by snoerre

[winng]

+1 for Ruckus all the way

[sted]

the netgear wireless g stuff was ok the wireless n stuff is total and utter junk cost us a lot of time and money. The cisco culeterable aps do work well though and are reasonabley priced iirc (you can only cluster 10 together but you can have multiple clusters)

[SYNACK]

The netgear business ABGN stuff was shocking the last time I tried it, zero support, failed to connect with certain toshiba laptops, dodgey signal power levels, individual VLANs failing out while others would continue - on the same ap. No firmware upgrades etc.

 

In summary, Ruckus.

[stevenlong1985]

+1 for Ruckus