Ruckus Wireless Reviews

The system is used in reporting as a vital business tool for collecting, analyzing, parsing, presenting, and storing unprecedented

The solution automatically detects network anomalies. SmartCell Insight uses advanced machine learning algorithms to automatically establish a pattern of normal behavior for each network element. The system requires no input from IT. Its predictive analytics capability automatically detects anomalous behavior in network elements—helping you to proactively address issues that might affect service levels.

The Ruckus SCI has transformed traditional network reporting into a vital business tool, collecting, analyzing, parsing, presenting, and storing unprecedented amounts of user, traffic, session, and location information. Data from the large networks can be stored and retrieved for several years. Ruckus SCI collects and aggregates statistics, providing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) such as upstream and downstream traffic, number of sessions, unique clients, or even the throughput customers can expect to achieve over periods of time on a per-AP basis, and filtered by time as well as a wide variety of other metrics

The most useful aspects include:

• Powerful Wireless Network Reporting and Analytics
• Network intelligence from applications, clients, access points, and controllers
• Predictive analytics powered by machine learning to automatically detect network anomalies
• Variety of standardized reports with drill-down capability for highly granular detail
• Data Explorer tool to customize reports and dashboards with drag-and-drop ease
• Ruckus SmartCell Insight (SCI) is the industry’s first Big Data Wi-Fi analytics and reporting engine that is purpose-built to help service providers make informed business decisions regarding the operation of their Wi-Fi networks. It makes use of Big Data technology and storage innovations found in columnar database repositories which greatly enhance the scale and performance of a system when used to process historical data.
• Easy to integrate/configure with old systems.

I would like to see more location-based services on the Smart Cell Insight on access points.

I've used the solution since about May 2021.

It is very scalable. You can add more controllers as long you have license capacity.

Customer service is excellent and the service is prompt.

You can also raise the level of your issue if you need to.

You can get to choose your type of support and they can communicate with you via e-mail or a direct phone call.

I did not use a different solution just yet.

It is a straightforward setup. There is documentation for the system, which makes it easy.

It was an in-house combination of the IS team and the system users.

I'm still considering other platforms.

This a good solution for an enterprise network.

We primarily use the solution in order to provide public WiFi.

The beamforming has been the most valuable aspect of the solution for our organization. 

Technical support is very helpful.

The initial setup is easy.

We have not had issues with stability.

The scalability is great.

The pricing could be improved. We find the product to be quite expensive for our purposes. You have to pay extra for the support costs as well.

The solution should have more analytics capabilities.

We pay external fees for external third-party providers. It would be ideal if integration could be improved.

I've dealt with the solution for about four years or so. It's been a while. 

The solution has proven itself to be quite stable. It doesn't crash or freeze and we don't really deal with bugs or glitches. it's reliable. The performance is good. 

The solution scales well. We have given more bandwidth as well as extended the network through Smart Meshing and it's been fine. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so. No problem.

You do pay extra for technical support, however, I can say that they are very good. they are helpful and responsive and we have found them to be available when we need them. We are satisfied with the level of support we get from them.

We onboarded Ruckus as the first product in our company. We did not use anything else prior to Ruckus.

The initial setup is not complex or overly difficult. It's quite straightforward and pretty simple. A company shouldn't have any issues with the implementation. 

We handled the implementation ourselves. We did everything in-house and did not need any outside help. We did not require an integrator or consultant. I'm a network engineer. I can handle anything related to a setup quite easily.

The price is high and you do need to pay extra to get support covered under the license. 

Before choosing this solution, we analyzed other products such as Cisco's Meraki. We looked at a few other potential products as well, however, I cannot recall what they were at this time. 

We're not a supplier, however, we do implement Ruckus as a managed service.

We've used various deployment models, including on-premises as well as at the data center level.

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten. We've mostly been satisfied with its capabilities. As long as it works, especially in an outdoor environment, we're happy.

I would recommend it to other individuals and companies.

It's a wireless LAN solution. We are a college. We've got staff, students, guests, and admin staff. We use it to provide wireless internet connectivity for the third category of users usually separated by SA5U. We're using it for bringing on devices as a means by which our students can onboard their devices.

The setup is very straightforward. The configuration process is quite simple as well.

The stability is excellent.

We haven't had any issues with scaling.

It's easy enough to set up by yourself, and if you need help, they are ready to assist.

Their technical support is very responsive.

I cannot say that I have had any issues so far. I cannot recall missing any major features.

The pricing is okay, however, it could be a bit lower.

I've been using the solution for about six years now. It's been a while. I have quite a bit of experience.

The stability has been very good. It's so stable that we have never had problems for the past six years - and it's been running continuously with no issues. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

The solution scales well. If a company needs to scale it, it can do so.

In fact, currently, we're actually in the process of increasing the number of access forms.

We have about 1300 users on the solution currently.

We've dealt with technical support in the past and found them to be very helpful and very responsive. You can reach them easily via chat or email. We are satisfied with their level of support.

The initial setup is very easy and it's quite a straightforward process. It's not overly complex or difficult. If you run into any issues, in any case, their support is right there to help.

The installation process doesn't take too long. It's only about a couple of hours or so if you are doing a setup from scratch.

We have two admins and four engineers that can assist with any deployment or maintenance. 

The pricing could always be a bit lower.

You do need to pay for an annual support license.

We were using that B3000, we are moving to BXV now.

We've been quite happy with the solution and are even expanding it out right now. I'd rate it at an eight out of ten overall.

I would highly recommend the product to other users or organizations.

Our clients use this solution for hotel and restaurant management, stadium management, and other forms of retail — typically for large environments. Still, for clients that don't have the resources for this type of hardware, we are looking for a cheaper solution or another enterprise-level access point.

Our clients are typically large businesses. They consist of a lot of major hotels; they all require huge deployments. We're talking hundreds, if not thousands of users. 

We have access points with EOL (end of life) — actually, they are working very well nowadays. Still, with the new technology, we need to improve these agreements because the new data rates need to be parallel with the new technology. That's the only reason the old access points are working so well.

Performance-wise, it's great. The throughput of the speed base and the capacity when it's operating in a high-density environment is outstanding. 

As an elite Ruckus partner, we get a big discount. That said, the analytics could be improved. Some of our engineers prefer the IQ platform in Extreme. They like the analytics and all of the information that they can validate from its cloud platform.

It would be nice if there was a way to compare access points and hardware so you can always get the same level of performance.

The platform that we have with version 5.12 has only just begun supporting R320. This makes things a little slow, especially in regard to the cloud menu. The analytics or maybe the kind of information that we can get about it could be better. We should be able to click on an icon for more graphics and less text.

The company I work for has been using Ruckus Wireless for roughly 12 years. Personally, I have been using this solution for six years. 

Stability-wise, Ruckus Wireless is great. 

Scalability is good. The SmartZone controllers have been working well. We know that they had a manufacturing issue with the first order as they had a lot of problems with the hard disks, but they seem to have resolved that problem. With the cloud, our clients have the capacity for a lot of systems.

We haven't had any issues with the technical support.

Personally, I think the deployment is easy. With Ruckus, there is a lot of documentation included to assist you with the initial setup. 

We are the owners of the equipment. We rent out services to our customers. We pay for all of our devices and rent them out. We have contracts from anywhere from 36 months to five years. 

Many of our customers also test and evaluate the analytics of Meraki. Analytics is very important to our customers. Ruckus has the ability to connect and get analytics, but you need to pay for that. With other platforms, we can get a lot of information for free. With Meraki, you need to pay for a license on a year-to-year basis.

With Ruckus, even if you have a big environment, you can get great performance with only one access point. 

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of nine.  

We are using it for hospitality and private companies. I have a private cloud server acting as a controller, and I also have it on-premises for some of the clients. Some of the clients also have it in the Unleashed mode, and they're using the embedded controller on the access point.

Our clients have significantly improved their functions by reducing the number of access points and avoiding downtime, disconnect issues, and other issues.

I was trying to solve a problem for a client who had multiple access points to cover an area. There were several issues, and a colleague of mine suggested using Ruckus, and it was a revelation. It resolved all our issues. We changed from 12 access points to 3 access points, and everything started to work.

Zero-handoff is one of the top features. The client balancing between the access points is good. Its security is also fine.

Its pricing and licensing can be improved. Its UI can also be more user-friendly.

Currently, in the Unleashed mode, the information that you have about the switches that you add to the controller is quite limited. I would like more information regarding switches. In this mode, an access point acts as a controller, so you don't need a controller. It is for deployments with less than 125 access points, and you can use an access point as a controller.

I have been using this solution for the last five years.

It is quite stable.

Their technical support is fine. When and if I need something, they respond instantly.

I have used several solutions. In some cases, I am still using Ubiquity. If I have advanced requirements or need an enterprise solution, I go for Ruckus.

I have cloud and on-premises setups. Most of them were straightforward. Some of them were complex. In general, it takes a few hours for a site.

I am a reseller and system integrator.

It depends on the client. You have an initial license cost that you need to buy to bind the access point with the controller. This is a one-time fee. You also have to pay the support fee that, if I remember correctly, is about $25 per access point. Its pricing and licensing can be improved.

I am mostly using it as an access point. I plan to increase its usage and increase the number of companies. I would advise others to test the product. It is a fantastic product.

I would rate Ruckus Wireless a ten out of ten.

We have two customers where we implemented on-premises solutions with Ruckus Wireless, making use of Ruckus Unleashed and access point models R510, R610, and R320. 

Our one customer is a small-medium business and they have 50 to 100 employees, and the most recent solution that we implemented was for a government client where we installed 17 access points.

In the years that we have worked with Ruckus, we have found it to be a very comfortable solution for both my own company and our customers. Ruckus enables us to give organizations better wireless access to their network, and can support many devices.

With Ruckus, alongside some Aruba products, we are able to more easily solve communication problems in the companies we work with.

For me, the most valuable features are good integration with the customer's existing network and the ease of deployment and configuration. Ruckus products are also easy to learn to manage and deploy for not only our own staff, but also for the IT workers in the customer's organization.

Ruckus products, overall, have a wide range of useful features, however not all customers have the budget to buy a corporate Wi-Fi solution. Most of the time, it's far too expensive for our clients to consider going with Ruckus, and they might like to see cheaper solutions in the Ruckus range.

I have been using Ruckus Wireless for five years now.

Ruckus products are very, very stable. We have clients that can go one or two years with no issues at all, and with other clients we tend to see only minor issues with the wireless network.

Up until 25 access points, things are very simple. When you get to more than 25 access points, you need a controller and it is sometimes an issue for clients because they generally don't want to spend more buying the controller. 

The support from Ruckus Wireless is acceptable. When we open a support case, they normally respond in a short amount of time.

The setup is easy. 

Our implementation process is very quick, and it normally takes only one or two days. It's especially quick to implement when we already have all the equipment and cabling ready to connect and configure on the customer's premises.

Not all of our clients can afford a fully corporate solution like Ruckus. But for many of our clients, pricing is the only factor that prevents them from choosing Ruckus, as we have found Ruckus to be a very suitable and reliable solution for integrating wireless access points to a company's network.

Normally, here in Medellín, Columbia where we work, the clients consider Ubiquiti or TP-Link first because they're cheaper. 

Ruckus incorporates the latest technology in their products and they are indeed very fast performance-wise.

I would rate Ruckus Wireless a nine out of ten.

We are a solution provider and Ruckus is one of the wireless networking products that we implement for our customers. In this context, we are a managed service provider because after well sell the package, then deploy it, we manage it for them.

This is a full solution including Rucks Access Points, Rucks Switching, Ruckes Cloud Controller, and we have a point-to-point set up in these installations. It's multiple locations, but they're all pretty similar to each other.

As a managed service provider, we are a little different than a reseller. Our relationships are not with the companies that are selling us the equipment, it's more with our customers. So, we're trying to put ourselves in a position that we're making those decisions not based on a relationship with a vendor because those can change as technology changes. Today it might be Ruckus, tomorrow it could be Cisco Meraki. It's all based on customer needs and what they're looking for. Though, the vendor relationship is also important because, obviously, we need to support all of this stuff

The most valuable feature is the performance. It works great.

The second most important feature is that it is super easy to deploy. As an example, we deployed this without having any of our physical techs on site. We basically used a contractor to put stuff where we asked for it to be put, but there were no real technical people on site, due to COVID. It is a very large processing plant, so they have maintenance people that we were able to ask to plug things in and place hardware. Pretty simple stuff. After that, we were able to remotely configure and optimize the setup remotely. Again, we didn't buy it because of that, but that turned out to be a huge benefit to going with this product.

The management software is cloud-based and they're constantly revising their cloud software, so there's always room for improvement.

I would like to see this product made a little more economical because it's very expensive. If I look at the percentage of my customers that I can sell it to, it's under 5%.

Our deployment for Ruckus Wireless started several months ago, at the beginning of this year.

Ruckus Wireless is extremely stable.

This product is very easy to scale and I have a couple of pretty decently-sized Ruckus deployments.

The one that we are currently working on is a very physically large deployment and it's a mix of indoor and outdoor access points. Inside the single physical location, there's a pretty large distance between the location itself and an offsite, which is the reason we have a point-to-point.

There is the main physical location and then there is an offsite a couple of miles away, which is part of the deployment. The offsite doesn't really have any physical structures, though it does need the ability to have wireless. So, we're using a point-to-point to connect the two.

The technical support is tiered. Their first level of support is very responsive, maybe not super technical. But again, depending on the size of the problem, they are pretty quick to offer more advanced, technical support or escalate technical support pretty quickly.

We ran into a few issues during this deployment, where stuff wasn't working the way we thought it should be, or we were having some difficulties configuring things, and they were very, very responsive to get involved in it. It seemed like that response was also pretty much on demand. So, even if we would call late in the day or at night, they were able to get someone on support. We rarely had to wait until the next day to get anything resolved.

It is set up as a public cloud, with the vendor's controller on its cloud. All of the equipment is on-premises but managed remotely through the cloud.

Our in-house team is responsible for deployment and maintenance.

This is a very expensive solution.

Ruckus has a very specific niche and is surely not the cheapest solution. You have to have customers that are willing to spend that kind of money. If they are willing, then it's a really good solution.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

I primarily use the solution for pretty much everything worked-related and for e-commerce and studying. 

It basically allows you to go everywhere in your office or at your house or even outside your house and be connected. If you wanted to go do a Zoom right by the pool, you can go Zoom by the pool. Or in your office. Basically, I live in a house that's got a lot of trees around it and I've got some outdoor APS. I can pretty much conduct business from wherever I want without having to worry about a lost signal or drop-off.

I use the Wave 2 platform. It'll get up to close to approximately 800 megabits or something to that extent. It outruns whatever internet connection you have.

The wireless is just very fast, and it has a frequency set that can work around local interference that houses have even if some of their cheaper routers are broadcasting on a given channel. We can tune our wireless network and open up a lot of channels with DFS and stuff like that.

It's a pretty solid product. Once, at the hospital I worked with, they had a model and they went from a 300 to a 310. The 300 had a certain power output range, and everything was designed perfectly. Then, as it turned out, 310 didn't cover as much. We had to replace it with the next model up which is the 610 to maintain the coverage we expected. They were good about it and didn't charge us for the change.

I really don't need anything faster right now. However, if I would like to get a faster speed eventually. I have a gigabit at my townhome. I'd like to be able to get an APX to add a whole gig on.

What would be interesting to see is if they had more of an ability for their customers to capture revenue. They should offer some sort of gateway functionality that you could tie through radius authentication, so you can bill the customers. That way, when you go in, you could just have a device and set up a hotspot, and it's a totally billable tool at that point.

I've been using the solution for a couple of years. I pretty much use it all the time.

The solution is very stable. I've worked with it at a hospital before, where we deployed it all over the hospital. It worked everywhere and continuously worked flawlessly.

Sometimes they have their own glitches when there's a release of new software, like any company. However, once you get them stabilized, they're really good systems. 

The solution is very easy to scale. That's, what's nice about it. In our office, we only had to have one AP to cover the whole thing. Their whole business strategy is, for every five APs you might install another grid or eight to double. We do it for three, due to the fact that they have such great independent technology.

I have about 20 users at home and maybe ten users in the office.

I just got an internet connection in my house at a 400 megabits download speed. If I max it out on it and I think I did, on my laptop, I'm going to move to the next evolution of the product. I plan to increase usage in the future and I plan on deploying it in the future on other projects I'll be working on.

While technical support is very good, I'd advise that you need to make sure that whatever you do, you have a good backup.

Technical support, in general, is not too hard to get to, however, depending on the difficulty of the problem, you need to get advanced level support. If you need them, you just have to ask them for it, beyond talking to the first guy you get on the phone.

I've used a variety of different solutions in the past. I've been using Ruckus for quite a bit of time now. However, before that, it would be just a router that I bought. For example, a Linksys or Ubiquiti, or something like that. 

The initial setup is not straightforward per se. You really have to know what you're doing. At my house, I use a commercial-grade solution. I loaded this special software onto the product (that they have on their website) to make it like a standalone product with their own small standalone network. I have basically programmed everything myself. You have to really be pretty smart at it, to be honest with you. It's not just something somebody can just pick up. However, I've worked with it for ten years, so I know the equipment inside and out.

In terms of deployment, for what I had to do, at the locations I'm speaking of, it was very simple. The only thing is that the house is that I have a porch on the second floor overlooking the pool, and then it looks into this wooded area behind my house. It's got a pretty good set up. I have an AP sitting on a tree out there and I'm running power to it. It's like filling in that whole area, mesh unit, wireless swings, so I can get power to it from the pool. It's just awesome to have wifi everywhere.

I handled the deployment myself. I also handle the maintenance, if any is needed, on my own. It's not too hard as I have a good background in the technology.

For me, licensing is zero. You don't really need to have any licensing for what I own. The only thing is, unless there's some software update that you need, you don't have the support. If you're stable and it runs, you don't need to do anything. However, if you need those software updates they'll make you pay. 

I'm a consultant. I was a partner of Ruckus at another company, however, right now, I am just a customer.

I've got the solution installed in my office and directly connected to an AP. Then, at home, I've got a mesh network. I basically meshed three of these solutions together.

They do a lot of stadiums and outdoor areas and works very well.

I'd advise others considering the solution that, when you're implementing your wireless products or area of coverage, make sure you test it. Also, make sure that you have the proper signaling to the outer edge where you want coverage. That's what I would say, no matter what product you bring in. Just test its capabilities to make sure it does what you need it to do.

Overall, I'd rate the solution ten out of ten.