joshbrowne

Oh OK, I'm really only going on what I've read. This is the article that started my thinking: Interview: Selina Lo, CEO of Ruckus Wireless - TechDay Particularly with regard to: ''TD: That’s obviously why you’ve chosen to remain a niche company rather than go into other areas. SL: Yes. If we were to stay in the enterprise wi-fi business, we would have to do a lot more things like firewalls – basically, we would have to copy what Cisco and Aruba are doing. Then we’d also have to compete with them head-on in terms of the size of the sales force and so on. I just didn’t think that strategy would pay off that well. However, the mid-tier enterprise had really taken to our technology, so I didn’t want to abandon it either. So we decided, let’s stick with the mid-tier enterprise and focus on the technology that mattered to them – which is how robust the RF technology is – and then let’s look at other markets where that technology really is necessary, and be the first one there. That was carrier wi-fi.''

The issue with Ruckus is that they've even admitted themselves that they're focussing on the carrier market, not enterprise wifi. My concern would be whether or not they will continue to develop the features of the network once you've purchased it?

But then why do they have a controller at all? From my research you lose at least some of the functionality of the network- for example, if CWP is stored on the Meraki server and you lose connection, obviously you cannot authenticate users that way. I would argue that the features that aren't lost probably aren't there anyway, i.e. , L3 roaming, load balancing etc. With regards to local data traffic, if access to the controller is lost, local forwarding only works for those already connected. If they then try to roam, they'll fail, the same goes for if they try to reconnect. If you're going for a controller based solution, it's better to go for a physical device on site IMO, it's less likely to go down that your net pipe.