Ruckus Wireless Reviews

Mainly for large, residential home automation systems. 

It allows us to deploy systems and not deal as much with support, because it just works.

• It's reliable.
• The company is amazing - the support and service are amazing.
• It outperforms anything else on the market.
• It's easy to use.

Mounting options for outdoor access points, I think they could easily improve on that. 

I think that Web management, global management, could be improved. Unfortunately, there's not one solution that does everything. There are something like six different solutions, and each of them do something better than the others.

Very stable.

Not at all. Scalability is one of the things that they excel at, beyond everybody else.

It depends. It's hard for us to say because we have a very close relationship with them, so we have back-channel access to their top people. In fact, we're the first ever gold service partner, so we basically are the support now. For any systems that we sell, we're the direct support for that product. 

I think if you're a new person starting out, you can get close relationships with the local sales engineers, which is great. When I first started, the first time I even looked at the product, a sales engineer met me out in the field, took some demo gear, put it up, showed me everything. Even within that first year, I had an engineer walk three high-rise courthouses for Miami Dade County; walked every single floor with me. I was a new partner and they did that for me, which is amazing.

I think the phone support is okay, if you're just a regular partner. And it works. I would say if somebody got to know their local rep, that would be the best way to get help if you really need it in a bind.

We used to use Cisco's enterprise wireless, but I kept hearing about Ruckus and I just couldn't believe that some upstart company was better than Cisco. Once we started using it, we saw that it outperformed Cisco and, on top of that, the difference in configuration between Cisco and Ruckus is night and day. Cisco is a pain to configure, where Ruckus is pretty much already set up out of the box. There are a few tweaks here or there, but the configuration time is 10 times faster with Ruckus versus Cisco.

An engineer met me out in the field, put some gear up, and it just blew the Cisco away. And it was just so much easier to configure, that it was a no-brainer. It was cheaper. We had better coverage, it was more reliable, it was faster, and it was easier to configure. It's one of the best companies I've ever dealt with in my life. I have nothing but good things to say about them, which is the only reason I'm doing this review, because I think they deserve it.

It's very straightforward.

It's definitely a good value. It's more expensive than some of the other offerings out there, but when you compare it to other enterprise-class gear, it's very well priced. And the beauty of it is, because it has better range because of their patented BeamFlex - which is the way they can send and receive and listen to signals - you can actually use fewer access points. That means that it's a cheaper overall project.

Aruba, Meraki - and this was Meraki before Cisco, at the time. But since then we always look to see what else is out there, see if something's better, and so far we haven't found anything. Once something better comes along, we'll use it because we only want to use the best for our clients.

Don't wait, do it now.

SMB is what we have been using Ruckus for. We have a few clients with multiple buildings and/or larger campuses that this works great with. We have deployed the outdoor APs as well and they are solid devices, especially in our hot summers in Texas.

It really is almost a set-it-and-forget-it solution. Our helpdesk guys can easily administrate it if needed, and troubleshoot with minimal training. Along with our documenting and naming schemes for APs and locations of devices, finding and correcting issues is easy, but rare.

The list of options you have is great:

• throttling guest networks
• the controller dashboards for administration
• on-the-fly configuring, settings, hours of use, etc.

The most valuable is the central administration. Provides quick views of activity, from the number of clients online to signal and noise readings.

The cloud controller needs work. My big issue is that all APs can't set static IPs. Also, adding customers to your dashboard is not that easy at all. I wish I could pop out some reporting from the dashboards as well.

The Unleashed is a 10 out of 10. It's a great price point to push with our smaller clients and still provides top-notch coverage and features. I am not a big fan of the hosted cloud controller, 5 for that.

We are a Credit Union with over 100 employees. We utilize the Ruckus Virtual SmartZone appliance and about 25 R600 access points to provide a secure wireless solution across five branch locations. The Ruckus solution is used as a guest network for third-party vendors while onsite, as well as by staff members to access corporate data.

With a quality enterprise wireless solution, our employees are more mobile than ever. They experience significantly better performance at longer ranges with the R500 access points, compared with our previous wireless solution. Information Technology staff can quickly issue guest passes for vendors and the instructions are very straightforward, requiring very little effort to get connected.

Our staff maintain a wide gamut of products and we needed a wireless solution that works reliably and has all of the features we needed (walled garden, client isolation, 802.1x with dynamic VLAN, guest passes, etc.) at a cost that wouldn’t break the bank (literally). The quality of the hardware and low cost of maintenance are primary driving factors, and Ruckus exceeds in this space by providing great hardware and a low annual operating expense. 

The Virtual SmartZone appliance is easy to use and quick to deploy, which helps to ensure our staff is focused on actionable results instead of constantly fiddling with wireless configuration or contacting support to resolve troublesome issues.

While the Virtual SmartZone appliance has improved in the last few years, it isn’t without issue and the performance of the Web page leaves something to be desired.

Additionally, Ruckus seems to have removed the built-in help from the appliance, urging the user to log on to the support web site to obtain it. This is simply a nuisance if one wishes to look up what a particular field on the configuration page does, for example.

We are using Ruckus Wireless in different Zomato corporate offices (restaurant search and discovery service). We are using ZoneDirector 1200 and ZoneDirector 3000 with ruckus APs (R600, R700, R300).

Before Ruckus we had to buy additional devices for client performance and monitoring, but now we can do all such monitoring and improve our client performance.

• Integrated WiFi client performance tools
• Sophisticated user access controls
• Easy and understandable controls and interfaces

APs should be more adaptable to denser client regions and, most important, the logs on the ZoneDirector should be classified into groups, such as type of logs and alerts.

We are a Ruckus Big Dog reseller. We sell and install into small retail shops that want to market their free public WiFi hotspot, manufacturing environments where new obstacles are constantly introduced, offices that need LAN-like WiFi, hotels, and event centers that need high capacity installations with 200-500 people per AP.

It requires very little maintenance (unlike competitive products we have sold) and provides a consistently great WiFi environment.

BeamFlex works great in changing environments by bouncing WiFi signals around obstacles.

They need more products in the lower-end range for smaller clients.

Very stable. We have this in very dense environments (like stadiums and manufacturing floors). The only issue we had is that Apple devices hate band-steering so you should setup separate 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz SSIDs.

No issues with scalability. The product scales very well and eliminates co-channel interference. Very easy to add licenses to the controller to scale larger or add redundant controllers.

Technical support is about a seven out of 10.  Not bad, but not wow. Better than most. We don’t need support often.

• Cisco enterprise - expensive and complicated, more APs needed to cover an area.
• HPE Colubris - unreliable.

Pretty straightforward, if you know what you’re doing with wireless. The only thing that is tricky is understanding that the controller does not get installed on a trunk port (different than most other solutions).

Pricing is very competitive for an enterprise solution. 

Licensing: Always carry the support contract on the controller (not needed on APs).

Just about everything out there. It was between Ruckus and Aerohive, but ultimately, Ruckus BeamFlex performed better with our testing (fewer APs needed, worked around obstacles in changing warehouse environments, supported high density).

It's a very good product, excellent technology that requires fewer access points than competitors, it's easy to manage, and cost competitive (compared with other enterprise WiFi solutions).

Try it by using the virtual controller or the unleashed product (controller equivalent on an AP).

I was an executive with a managed services company specializing in high density WiFi deployments. We designed, installed, and managed wired and wireless networks primarily in student housing environments. This included apartment style housing and dormitory housing. Many of our installations were cinder block and steel constructions with known WiFi inhibitors.

As a tech company, we used Ruckus in our own internal system which resulted in 100% up time on our network. This ensured our Internet service was always up, allowing us to serve our customers 24/7.

Reliability. We rarely had access points fail in the field. They were rock solid, durable, and had the best signal penetration from any we tested.

The cost can be prohibitive for many as it is a high-end product in the WiFi market.

We thoroughly tested every wireless access point on the market to ensure the success of our deployments. We intentionally selected Ruckus Wireless as our product of choice due to its robust capabilities, antennae array, ZoneDirector controller system, and support. While they were not the cheapest products on the market, they were ideally designed for the harsh WiFi conditions in which we needed them to function.

We are in the wireless ISP business. Among others, we deploy Ruckus Wireless equipment on several sites of our backbone and backhaul network. Performance and quality of Ruckus Wireless APs and switches is more than satisfying.   

• Tremendous throughput and easy installation, configuration, and monitoring.
• Comprehensive availability and performance of monitoring and reporting for WISP network monitor.
• Analyzes real-time, in-depth network performance.

Wi-Fi with more than basic connectivity to improve operational efficiency and engage customers. The Ruckus Location-Based Services (LBS) Solution is the highlight that enables businesses to enhance the way of interaction with their customers on the basis of precise location.

I would like to see more detailed network performance, monitoring, and reporting tools or information. This would improve the deployment of multi-site networks and help administrators to progress on a timely efficient manner.

There is some strain with Ruckus because of various buyouts involving the company used for data centers and the cluster.

I don't have any problems or improvements to suggest for this solution. I would rate it as nine out of ten.