We performed a comparison between Cisco Wireless and Ruckus Wireless based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: As competitors, Cisco Wireless and Ruckus Wireless come in at a close tie. Both products offer a really strong set of features. However, their pricing is where each stands out, with Cisco being more expensive and Ruckus being affordable. In addition, users of Ruckus Wireless report seeing an immediate ROI.
"In terms of reporting, in terms of all the user reports, it's very rich."
"The most useful feature of Juniper Wireless AP is the reporting Marvis."
"The most valuable feature of Juniper Wireless Access Points (AP Series) is the ability to troubleshoot ports on the network. Additionally, when there is an update on the APs they are able to reboot quickly reducing downtime. Other solutions have a longer downtime when updates are done."
"The simplicity is great."
"The solution is pretty generic and easy to use."
"I'm very satisfied with Cisco's technical support."
"Cisco has good support services."
"Cisco Wireless is scalable."
"Cisco Wireless always has the latest technology that supports WiFi 5 and 6."
"Cisco Wireless is highly stable."
"The product offers educational licenses that are priced very reasonably."
"The most valuable features of Cisco Wireless are the level of control and management. I am happy with it."
"It integrates with Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA)."
"What I like best about Ruckus Wireless is that it's a controller-based product, so it's easy to configure."
"The setup is very straightforward."
"Ruckus Wireless is a valuable solution. It's both scalable and reliable."
"Ruckus Wireless is a reliable solution."
"The product can scale."
"All IPs can be managed and monitored by the customer from a single console."
"Ruckus Wireless is more of a plain Wi-Fi solution where it does the basic job well. Additionally, it has good conductivity, easy to use, simple to manage, and its access points can be used as standalone devices which gives flexibility in the SMB market."
"Easy to configure and user-friendly."
"I need a bit more time with it before criticizing the features."
"Juniper Wireless Access Points (AP Series) could improve if the MIST platform had a built-in master key. This would be an advantage."
"The solution is expensive."
"If you want to do more specific stuff, it's a bit limited."
"Juniper Wireless AP can improve by continually improving its reporting and integration with other systems."
"The interface could be better."
"In the next release, they should add a better reporting feature. The reporting will tell you if you have a problem. That will make the diagnostics easier."
"We've recently had hardware issues which have caused us some problems."
"Cisco won't work with any other vendors. That is a significant problem with Cisco."
"Room for improvement wise, the wireless coverage of Cisco's equipment could be better for the price position. That is, I think that the radius for the coverage could be better to make it worth the price that we pay for it."
"Its licensing model and cost should be improved."
"The reporting tool in Cisco Wireless could improve. If I am trying to receive information about a client or user, it's cumbersome to retrieve the information on the controller system. If I'm trying to find out where a client's been, it's cumbersome. You need another tool for Historical logs, but it should be all in one."
"The solution could improve by having more advanced features, such as AI that is able to do diagnosis on the network or detect incorrect configurations and is able to tell you what is the recommended practice. Additionally, it would be a benefit to have smart antennas that are able to track your movement, Wi-Fi 6 support, better transfer rates, low latency, stronger signals that can penetrate thick walls, and zero packet losses."
"The solution lacks a lot of features other solutions provide. If you are an organization that is more focused on security or you need a lot of other features, such as location tracking then Ruckus Wireless may not be the right choice. If you want a solution with more than basic security I would choose Arista or Aruba."
"The solution is sensitive with reference to power fluctuations. This sensitivity should be improved. Additionally, the solution should have more security features integrated."
"Their support has been lacking a little bit and needs to be improved. I have had a ticket open for a month, and it is really hard to get a resolution out of them. They haven't really come out with anything that is much of an improvement in a long time. It has mostly just been fixes and things like that. We used to have a ZoneDirector or a physical controller for the wireless network, and that was kind of end of life. It was very old, and at the time, we were expanding the wireless network, and we didn't want to rely on one piece of hardware that was pretty old. So, we went to SmartZone Cluster, which has two VMs in a cluster. Unfortunately, we lost the feature ability for guest networks and other things that we were using before, and Ruckus just kind of told us that they weren't supporting that feature in the newer product, which is not really great. I was told initially that SmartZone was an upgrade to ZoneDirector. It is the logical thing to think that it is going to have all the same features, but it didn't. The issue that we have right now is onboarding BYOD devices. It is not really great for us, and we're looking for a new product to make that easier. We did have Cloudpath, which was a product that Ruckus purchased from another company that was an onboarding solution, but it just didn't really work very well for us. So, we discontinued using it, and it actually created more confusion for people. They should make BYOD or guest network portals a lot easier and better. In some areas, we have been having issues because there are just so many WAPs that are so close that we had to manually turn down the radio of power because the automatic feature of the AP wasn't really doing it right. It should also have a little bit better RF analysis capability to be able to see on the controller side. The front end for our staff, students, and guests has also not been quite as good as we had hoped."
"Some customers have issues with the price because it's more expensive than Ubiquiti, but they can accept the cost because it's reliable and has more features."
"It would be better if there were more visibility on the cloud. We have some lack of visibility because of wireless interference, and you have to do some troubleshooting for the packet capture. They have a built-in packet capture, and we can monitor the application. You can see all things over the cloud. They also provide an on-premise solution, so they need to improve the on-premise version and ensure an output with more visibility. Live monitoring in a live environment should be good. What is happening with wireless is that the wireless client is not connected due to interference, and there should be a shield zone on their wireless cloud. If they give us more features on both Ruckus Cloud or on-premises, that will be best. Nowadays, security is more important for everyone using wireless technology. If they implement a little bit of reduction and prevention features for some packets on the wireless cloud, some features like web filtering and some prevention for blocking will be good for the network."
"I wish that Ruckus Wireless were more affordable for customers."
"It would be ideal if the solution offered more features."
"The solution should have more analytics capabilities."
More Juniper Mist Wireless Access Points Pricing and Cost Advice →
Cisco Wireless is ranked 3rd in Wireless LAN with 55 reviews while Ruckus Wireless is ranked 4th in Wireless LAN with 41 reviews. Cisco Wireless is rated 8.2, while Ruckus Wireless is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Cisco Wireless writes "Robust with a good level of performance and very helpful technical support". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Ruckus Wireless writes "Reliable with good performance, good backend, and good ability to provision the devices". Cisco Wireless is most compared with Aruba Wireless, Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN, Ubiquiti WLAN, Huawei Wireless and Alcatel-Lucent OmniAccess Stellar, whereas Ruckus Wireless is most compared with Aruba Wireless, Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN, Ubiquiti WLAN and Fortinet FortiWLM. See our Cisco Wireless vs. Ruckus Wireless report.
See our list of best Wireless LAN vendors.
We monitor all Wireless LAN reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
They both do a great job. But it depends on the application scenario.
For corporate environments probably Cisco will perform better not only because of Cisco Wi-Fi features but especially because you can be integrated with all Cisco infrastructure and manage it all.
In heavy-duty environments, like public hot-spot, stadiums, exhibition centers, etc, Ruckus should be considered. In this type of applications, pure Wi-Fi performance is more important than management features or security, and therefore, it could be the better choice.
If you care more about performance and stable communications, Ruckus Wireless is definitely better.
Ruckus Wireless APs have;
- Adaptive antenna technology (called BeamFlex). This technology analyzes different paths to reach the client and electronically turns itself to a directional antenna, choosing the path that gives the best performance to reach each specific client. If the client is mobile or if the environment changes (such as a warehouse) the selection of paths/direction also changes instantly.
Transmitting in a directional way allows a good Signal-to-Noise Ratio and also causes less interference for other nearby APs outside the path of the directional transmission.
- ChannelFly technology. This technology chooses the best channel based on performance rather than background scanning for noise.
- Polarization Diversity. This technology allows the clients not to lose signal strength when held at different angles (important for mobile devices such as tablets and telephones).
- Better receive sensitivity compared to the competitors.
All these features make Ruckus Wireless a better choice than any other competitor (better performance, better coverage area, more stable and surprise-free communication especially in not so easy conditions such as noise, too many clients, too much traffic).