Ruckus Wireless WAN Reviews

We use Ruckus Wireless WAN to control our guest users. We brought our traffic on a network. We also integrate Cisco Integrated Network Access Controller with our Ruckus Wireless controller. We use this integration for two purposes: security tagging and to bring users into a group according to the health of their system. If it’s a guest, they should not have access to our critical infrastructure assets. If a user is an admin, they will be placed on the WAN that is relevant to the management WAN of the devices.

Scalability is a valuable feature. For example, if you have a person from the HR department on the tenth floor and another person on the first floor, they should have access to the same VM or network. The Ruckus Wireless controller allows you to control this regardless of where the APs are physically located. You can control it from a central point, which makes it easier to manage.

Huawei is a competitor of Ruckus Wireless WAN solutions. They offer IoT-enabled solutions, and their access points are very robust for outdoor use and can manage up to 500 users. However, their products’ bandwidth and frequency range are not as good as some locally available products, and the cost is also higher.

The GUI interface of Ruckus Wireless WAN could be more usable, especially the drag-and-drop feature. When switching a WAN, users should not have to go into the configuration and manually change the WAN. Instead, there should be a drag-and-drop feature like most other vendors offer. This would make the process easier to understand and complete.

Additionally, Ruckus Wireless WAN should consider adding a special provision for APs. This would be helpful for marketing campaigns, but it is not mandatory.

I have been using Ruckus Wireless WAN for two years.

The product is stable.

Almost 1,500 endpoints, including IoT devices, and one administrator are working with this solution.

Ruckus Wireless WAN has local support, and the local staff and office are very active. They respond to calls promptly, and Ruckus Support is also very good, with a quick response time for emails and tickets.

Cisco is more focused on its branches. Huawei has more customers in telecom operating sectors, such as optical fiber and other devices. Ruckus is the only brand we can test on, with a focus on the app and controls.

You can quickly get help online from the Ruckus Wireless WAN community. You can even watch videos on YouTube on how to install and upgrade your servers. There was a complete series of installation videos, and I could install it myself. It was very easy and convenient.

If you're planning to install Ruckus Wireless WAN and need to research something you can't find anywhere else, the Ruckus community is robust. Simply Google a Ruckus-related question, and you'll likely have an answer within two to three minutes. Other devices, even Cisco’s unified devices, are still relatively new. While Cisco has a strong community, if you're looking for a solution to a problem without contacting support, you may not be able to find much help online.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Many of my company's clients use Ruckus Wireless WAN.

The most valuable features of the solution stem from what my company's clients look at, which includes the solution's bandwidth, data speed, and coverage.

The pricing of Ruckus Wireless WAN is an area of concern. Ruckus Wireless WAN should slash its current price to match the prices offered by its competitors. Ruckus Wireless WAN should offer a competitive price to its potential users.

I have been using Ruckus Wireless WAN for four years. My company has a partnership with Ruckus.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine to nine and a half out of ten.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight and a half out of ten.

My company handles 5,000 users of Ruckus Wireless WAN.

My company caters to the needs of enterprise-sized businesses who wish to use Ruckus Wireless WAN.

I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup of Ruckus Wireless WAN is very easy. I rate the initial setup of Ruckus Wireless WAN an eight out of ten.

The solution is deployed on the cloud and on-premises, depending on the preferences of our company's customers. Right now, most of the people prefer the solution to be deployed on the cloud.

The solution's deployment takes around 15 minutes.

I rate the product's price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive. Ruckus Wireless WAN price is quite high, but if you want a very good product, then it will be pricey.

Ruckus Wireless WAN has every feature that my company's clients need. Lately, Ruckus Wireless WAN has made itself available on the cloud while also offering Ruckus One to cover everything related to the expectations of the solution's users. My company will only have to look into the solution if any of our customers come up with any new requirements related to Ruckus Wireless WAN.

I would tell those who plan to use the solution that it is a good product that is easy to maintain while also offering reliability.

I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.

We use the product to provide WiFi connectivity to hotels and large buildings.

The product’s unleashed feature works as an access point and WiFi controller. We don’t require an extra set of hardware or any licensing with it.

Ruckus Wireless WAN’s most valuable feature is unleashed.

There could be more power supply for the radio features. This particular area of the product needs improvement. They should add a reset factory feature without resetting IP addresses as well.

We have been Ruckus Wireless WAN for at least eight years. At present, we use the latest version.

I rate the product’s stability a ten out of ten.

I rate the product’s scalability a ten out of ten.

I have used HP before. We switched to Ruckus Wireless WAN, especially for its advanced radio features. I have also used less expensive products. We encountered a lot of field failures using them. For our business model, if we have failures in the field, it is a very expensive product.

The initial setup process is very simple.

The product generates a return on investment for us. We have been using it for eight years and it is still working. 

The product has competitive pricing, but always a little low price is better.

We haven’t contacted the technical support team, as we don’t have failures in the field. It is a solid product. I advise others to do a site survey and a well-thought-out design.

I rate Ruckus Wireless WAN a ten out of ten.

I am using it to cover routers in the company.

I have found that WiFi coverage is the most important aspect.

I would like to see the billing system improved by adding a billing system integration.

I have been using Ruckus Wireless WAN for over ten years now.

The stability provided is very nice.

There is no problem with the scalability.

Before moving to Ruckus Wireless WAN we were using Aruba and Cisco.  We switched because of company standards.

The initial setup was straightforward and the process took one week to complete.

I would rate Ruckus Wireless WAN a ten out of ten.

We install the technology and network for our customers and then we manage the network, like a managed service. Our preferred combination is Ruckus Wireless together with Ruckus Switches. We can combine it with other switches, and we do. It works with Extreme Switches, for example. Still, the preferred combination is Ruckus Switches and Ruckus Access Points because we have one window for support, and we can manage both the switches and the wireless system through the same management system.

With Ruckus we have been able to deploy and manager Wireless installations very efficiently.

The strongest point for Ruckus has always been the radio hardware. They have specific hardware to handle the wireless connections, so on the hardware level, the connectivity works very well. 

Over the years, they have added more and more features to the SmartZone system. At the beginning it was fairly basic, but nowadays we can pretty much do everything that we can do with Extreme or other vendors.

They did improve the reporting feature already, but it's still a separate system. We used to have to install another virtual appliance because we use the on-premise management system with the virtual machine. Now the reporting feature is integrated into the cloud analytics platform, but you still have to buy an extra license for it. It's getting much better, it's pretty good now actually, but it still has to be bought separately. 

If you choose the Cloud Management system instead of the on-prem VM, Analytics are included, but it doesn't have all the features that the virtual machine has. 

Ruckus should also improve its integrated guest management because, right now, the guest portal feature is quite weak.

I have been using this solution for eight years now.

I consider this solution to be stable. The wireless hardware is very, very good. We do have some issues every now and then. Most of the time it needs some fine-tuning, which we have to do with any wireless solution. Sometimes we need tech support and more in-depth tuning, but that's quite rare and happens more in complex scenarios.

The scalability is very good. We can easily add more access points, and if we are hitting the capacity limit of a virtual appliance, we can add another one and operate in a cluster, which can grow quite large.

About two years ago we had a few issues that we had to escalate, but that was more on the switches side. We had some issues with switches and hardware failures, and it took a while to get to the proper support level and get proper answers. In general, however, if we contact support for anything about the wireless solution, we mostly get knowledgeable answers.

I would rate the technical support as a four out of five. It's pretty good, but a little improvement can be done. 

Positive

I wouldn't say that the setup is complex. It might not be as nice optically as the nice GUI that Extreme has, but they did some good improvements with the last update. For example, we can do the provisioning routes through the GUI platform now. 

It's partially because we know what we are doing and we have templates set, but I would say that overall it is pretty easy to set up. I would give the setup process a five out of five.

The solution is very competitively priced. We've always been able to get better pricing for our customers on Ruckus compared to Aerohive from Extreme Networks. We also work with Cisco Meraki, and the pricing is similar, especially the running costs, but the support costs are a bit lower. I think it's interesting that analytics portfolio reporting is included with Extreme, but we have to pay extra for it with Ruckus.

I would say the pricing has always been good, but there is one thing I need to mention. Earlier this year, Ruckus announced that anything that had not been delivered by the middle of May, even if it was ordered last year, would have the prices raised backwards.

We had huge switch deliveries, still outstanding, where Ruckus had told us at the end of last year, "Order now so you can secure the price and we can deliver in six months." They didn't deliver in six months, but they raised the price. That was not very popular. We had to go back to customers and say, "Sorry, this is the situation." We were able to solve it all, but it wasn't very popular. I think it was a major mistake by them because when everyone else was raising prices last year, they didn't, so they gambled on the wrong side and thought they could stand out, but then realized they couldn't.

If we're talking about the pricing itself and not the politics around it, I would rate the price as a four out of five. 

We also offer Extreme to our customers.

There is a feature that Extreme calls a Private Pre-Shared Key, and Ruckus calls it a Dynamic Pre-Shared Key, which is an individual Pre-shared Key for each user. They both have this feature and it had been always a very strong point for Aerohive, now Extreme, but with recent deployments, we've seen that it's now better with Ruckus. If we need to assign different WLANs for each key, it's a nightmare with Extreme, but it's much easier with Ruckus.

We have a big company deployment right now where we have lots of locations and every location connects with the same wireless name, but everyone has their own key and they get their own VLAN network. With Ruckus, we have more flexibility, it's easier to do, and we can use external Pre-Shared Key third-party vendor services, which we can't do with Extreme. With Extreme, the GUI might be a bit nicer, but there's not a big difference anymore. The integrated Guest Management, however, is much better with Extreme. 

I would rate this solution as an eight out of ten. 

The solution is mainly used by carriers or for government usage. It's not really designed for normal usage.

The most valuable aspect of the solution is the size of the outdoor access points. It's great and you can disguise them quite well.

The solution is quite simple to use.

The virtual controller is doing a fine job.

For outdoor usage, I prefer Ruckus. It's the best of all the solutions.

The only issue with the solution is that there is quite a lot of strong competition. It's very difficult to get a government or large public enterprise to buy Ruckus or Aruba over, say, Ubiquiti, which is the standard here. For example, we just lost a Ruckus deal against Ubiquiti.

At this stage, there are only minor improvements needed. Overall it's a very good product.

I've been using the solution for two to three years. However, I only use it occasionally. It's very rare that I actually use the product.

We've had absolutely zero technical issues. The solution is very stable. It's worked fine ever since the integration entered into ClearPass. Ever since then, the radius attributes work fine now.

We haven't had any issues with scalability. The solution has been fine in that sense.

I haven't been in regular contact with technical support. The last time I might have contacted them was about three years ago. We had an issue when we were trying to integrate Ruckus into ClearPass on Aruba into the ClearPass radio system. That was solved, however. The issue was that at the time Ruckus didn't accept all the attributes.

These days, it's my understanding that they are very good at assisting clients. We're satisfied with their level of service when we need to work with them.

Integration, if you're lucky, only takes a week or less.

We're implementors as well as resellers. We handle the implementation for our clients.

The pricing, when compared to Ubiquiti, isn't competitive enough. If you want to have a Government or Public sector client they will ask why they should pay 200 euros if they can get something for 40 euros.

We're Ruckus reseller and implementors.

This solution is very high-quality. I'd advise other organizations to look for the best solutions for their situation. However, I know how difficult this is to sell. It's difficult to sell quality when organizations just want to see the price tag. This is especially true in the government and public sector, that are always constrained by budgets.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

It's a very good product. It's a high-end product and it plays in the right league. We do have customers who are willing to spend money, but it's very difficult to find these jobs nowadays.

We use Ruckus Wireless WAN for connectivity.

Ruckus Wireless WAN is an easy-to-use solution.

The solution's AI offering and pricing could be improved.

I have been using Ruckus Wireless WAN for three years.

I rate Ruckus Wireless WAN ten out of ten for stability.

Around 400 users are using the solution in our organization on a daily basis.

I rate Ruckus Wireless WAN ten out of ten for scalability.

The solution's initial setup is easy. I rate Ruckus Wireless WAN ten out of ten for the ease of its initial setup.

We implemented the solution through a third-party integrator. Two people are required to deploy the solution. The solution's deployment took a few hours.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten.

The solution is maintained by one person in our organization.

Overall, I rate Ruckus Wireless WAN ten out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for the controller and the switch. We use it for multiple access points. When we need to access the network wirelessly, we can use this product. 

We have seen some benefits while using here solution. We've been able to deploy it for 150 users without any issues or lag. The connectivity is great.

The connectivity is good. There's no lag at all in service. 

We like how easy it is to manage everything from the console on the cloud version. 

It is stable. 

The solution can scale. 

It is not too hard to set up. 

The solution needs to offer more analytics. 

We would like it to be easier to troubleshoot the network. It's a bit complex to do so right now. 

I've been using the solution for over ten years. 

The stability of the product is okay. Sometimes there are hardware failures, however, the company does provide replacements. 

The solution is scalable. I'd rate the ease of scaling at an eight out of ten. 

We have about 50 clients using the solution. 

We likely will increase usage in the future. 

We can reach out to support via the support portal if we need to. 

We did previously use a different solution in the past. I cannot recall the name of the company.

The implementation process is straightforward. It's not complex. You just follow the guide.

Deployments don't take long; however, it depends on the requirement. 

One person can manage the deployment. You don't need a big team. 

The solution is worth the investment. 

The pricing is moderate. It's not overly expensive. There are no extra costs or hidden fees.

We are Ruckus partners. 

I'm not sure which version of the solution I'm using. 

I would rate the solution nine out of ten. We are mostly happy with its capabilities.