Ruckus Wireless WAN Reviews

In terms of the use case for Ruckus Wireless WAN, we have a WiFi First network design, so that's how we connect. We got rid of 50 percent of our ports, so WiFi First, it's mostly enterprise, and then in our malls, it's where we connect to a shopping center's WiFi while advertising and also focus advertising on products and specials inside the mall.

The best feature of Ruckus Wireless WAN apart from its seamless roaming feature where you roam beautifully on the network is its analytics tool that gives you so much insight into your deployment, so it has become more of a business intelligence type of tool as well.

I also like that Ruckus Networks, in terms of WiFi security issues on the WiFi protocols, is also the first company to give you notices of security issues, and also the first to provide patches for those issues. Ruckus Wireless WAN is very proactive and much, much faster than Cisco, Aruba, and Meraki.

In terms of room for improvement in Ruckus Wireless WAN, I cannot find a fault with it. It's pretty decent and it deploys easily. The product is also easily maintained. It has very few issues. The RMA process in Ruckus Wireless WAN also works brilliantly. There is nothing I can think of at the moment. I'm not an engineer.

Pricing could be improved in Ruckus Wireless WAN because obviously, everybody wants things to become cheaper. Another room for improvement in the product is from a delivery perspective, particularly the heavy delivery delays because of the chip shortage that a lot of manufacturers have to deal with. The chip shortage is not coming to an end, but Ruckus Networks has to make a plan because the ETA has slipped out from the average of three months on switches to fourteen months, which is very, very rough on the industry at the moment. Ruckus Wireless WAN could lose business to Chinese competitors, for example, HTC has a good wireless solution that I haven't tested yet, other than on POC, and it works great. I haven't yet experienced the HTC wireless solution in large deployments, so you never know how it's going to go, but HTC has managed to circumvent the chip shortage, so the ETA provided by HTC is much more preferred than the ETAs provided by Ruckus Networks, Cisco, and Aruba products.

What I would love, from a service delivery management perspective, is for Ruckus Wireless WAN to look at things like repeat offenders and best practices such as "your power settings on your APs are too high or too specific". APs are constantly fighting for airspace and it would be good if there was some type of analytics in the background that shows you the little nitty-gritty repeat offenders, instead of always looking at the big issue picture. It would be good for the product to focus on the small issue picture as well.

In the next release of Ruckus Wireless WAN, I would also like it to focus on the small things that optimize opportunities within a wireless network because if you sit with a network with five thousand access points, sometimes two APs are too close to one another or are on the same channel, and though auto channel settings sound very cool, if a third party comes in with a wireless device that's on channel sixty for five gigahertz, then that specific Ruckus AP might try to change the channel to another channel, but then the access point next to it needs to change, and so does the access point next to it, and it becomes a ripple effect of changing channels, just because a third party user is interfering with your channel. This sounds cool, but it creates so much overhead on your resources for your access points that it's not worth it because that person will just move along and then cause more confusion as he works with that device. If it's a static device, then an AP can just tell you that there's a third-party device that is interfering with a specific access point so that you can go to the site, locate the third-party device, and negotiate with the third-party owner to change the channel or lower the power settings.

Ruckus Wireless WAN having a more focused approach than a blanket approach is what I'd like to see in its next release.

I've been using Ruckus Wireless WAN for five years now.

Ruckus Wireless WAN is a very stable product.

Ruckus Wireless WAN is a very scalable product.

I haven't contacted the technical support for Ruckus Wireless WAN, but based on the emails I've read from the engineering department, the response time of the support team is very fast. Technical support for Ruckus Wireless WAN is very proactive, and it's a pleasure working with support. On a scale of one to five, with one being bad and five being excellent, I would rate support five out of five, particularly compared to other vendors.

My company decided to work with Ruckus Wireless WAN because of its price and scalability. Its licensing is very uncomplicated compared to Aruba and Cisco where the licensing structure is much more complicated. Ruckus Wireless WAN is easier to work with from a commercial perspective, and it is a very good technology. Ruckus Networks has a very strong R&D department that's constantly coming up with innovations. The product is a market trendsetter rather than a follower. Ruckus Networks also foresee future utilization. The radios on Ruckus Wireless WAN keep on improving and there's this amazing smart team functionality on radios that minimizes end-user connects and disconnects from the network. There's also a smooth handover from one access point to another. Ruckus Wireless WAN is good technology. My company researched technology and commercials, and on the decision matrix, this product came out at the top.

Ruckus Wireless WAN is easy to set up. It's very quick to deploy. Once you set up your wireless LAN controller and you start deploying access points, you can deploy the product out-of-the-box. Ruckus Wireless WAN has a self-updating function, and it immediately knows where to go. It's very easy to deploy.

The deployment of Ruckus Wireless WAN was done in-house. You can deploy an entire hotel in one day from installation to commissioning, etc. If your backbone is working and your routing is up, then the product is very easy to deploy. It's definitely not a long, painful process.

Licensing for Ruckus Wireless WAN when you compare it to other vendors, it's on par and not expensive. For me, all licensing is expensive by default, but you do get lifelong licenses, and what's cool about it is the license for Ruckus Wireless WAN, especially on the LAN controller, is not linked to an access point. It's just a quantity access point deployment, so you can rip out old APs, and put new ones in and they'll work on the wireless LAN because the license is not linked to a specific access point which is much easier to work with.

I evaluated Cisco, Aruba, and Meraki.

I'm not an engineer, but I do manage the Ruckus Wireless WAN deployment project and the network, and I've used it myself. My company is still using the product.

At the moment, some of the customers are already on the new version of Ruckus Wireless WAN. Some customers are upgraded and are on the old version because the nice thing about that product is that you can use it for ten years, but the upgrade paths at a point stop for an old device, so you'll see you can only upgrade it to a certain point. My company maintains that until the customer embarks on a network refresh where you rip and replace your old kit with the new kit, so my company works on various versions of Ruckus Wireless WAN. It all depends on the model number. Currently, in the region, my company has fourteen thousand Ruckus access points under management, and then for SmartZones or Virtual SmartZones or controllers, there are approximately eighteen wireless LAN Ruckus controllers under management.

In terms of how Ruckus Wireless WAN is deployed, for some customers, it's on the public cloud, while for some, it's on-premises. Some have hybrid cloud setups. It all depends on what the customer requires. Some customers want full control over everything, while others share a Virtual SmartZone with other customers, just under different zones.

Everybody in my company uses Ruckus Wireless WAN, and from a customer perspective, eighteen big customers use it. Customers are in the food deployment, hospitality, hospitals, and schools industries. Schools use the product a lot. Private schools in South Africa use Ruckus Wireless WAN a lot because these days, COVID has forced education to go online, so my company had a massive rollout on those access points.

In terms of why someone would not use Ruckus Wireless WAN, wireless LAN is an expensive exercise, so on the day that you submit your tender, it would still depend on what the customer looks for. The customer might look for a cheaper solution. It would depend on what solution the customer chooses, but a big company usually chooses between Juniper Mist, Aruba, and Ruckus Networks. It could also be because the company has invested so much in Cisco that it just doesn't make financial sense to go with another solution or because the company uses Cisco Meraki across all offices that it could be an international decision. You have those companies that have invested so much in technology and stick to that technology, even though it's not necessarily the best or the cheapest. It will just be too expensive to go to another solution.

I would give Ruckus Wireless WAN a high rating simply because of the ease of setup, deployment, and management. It's a simple solution. Commercially, you can compare the product to other enterprise networks very well. I would give Ruckus Wireless WAN a rating of eight out of ten. There's always room for improvement, so I can't give it a perfect rating.

My company is a Ruckus partner.

We primarily use it for enterprise environments, including home, hotspots, and hot zones.

The product performs exceptionally well. They provide stable performance. While there might be limited information available, they are among the best Wi-Fi solutions I've encountered.

Pricing is an area for improvement. The devices are relatively expensive.

I have been using it for a couple of years. 

Stability is very good and rock solid. I would rate the stability a nine out of ten.

It's highly scalable as long as the licenses are in place. You can expand it easily.

We primarily set it up for customers, and we have deployments of up to 2,000 users.

We do have plans to expand the user base.

We considered Extreme, Cisco and Juniper before choosing Ruckus.

The setup is quite straightforward and very easy.

The deployment involves setting up the controller and deploying the wireless units at the specified locations. It's relatively straightforward.

We have an in-house engineer who handles the deployment. We mostly use on-premises deployment.

The ROI is quite good, despite the initial cost being somewhat expensive.

There is licensing involved. For on-premises, it's a one-time purchase, albeit relatively expensive.

You only need to pay for license management. There are no additional costs. 

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten. I would definitely recommend using this solution.

We use Ruckus Wireless as a wireless solution here and for switching as well. They are also great for outdoor connectivity.

It's great for the hospitality industry. We mainly deployed it here in the hospitality industry as they are very concerned about their customers in hotels. They stay there for leisure, so they don't want any complaints about their WiFi solutions. We mainly deployed them in five-star hotels and in sports facilities. 

We deploy them in our universities where there are a large number of students with multiple devices (laptops, mobile phones, smartwatches). They need a strong, robust solution for WiFi, so we use Ruckus Wireless. 

We rate them very high. We found it a very robust solution.  

I like the smart roaming feature. It is very valuable for us. Nowadays, people use video conferencing on phones and for Zoom meetings, so, while walking on campus or in a hotel, people experience no disconnection while using Ruckus Wireless. It literally helps us give a better experience to the end user.

The initial setup isn't complex. 

It's stable.

The solution can scale. 

The solution offers good security.

The pricing is fair. It's competitive. 

We found the technical support to be helpful.

In my region, I want to increase its distribution channel. We have one sole distributor here in our region. To have multiple distributors here would be very helpful to improve the supply chain. We need better access to stock.

I've been working with the solution for around seven years. 

It is a very stable product. We work on Cisco, Huawei, Aruba, and different wireless solutions, however, as a technical person, I find that Ruckus is one of the most stable products I have experienced.

It has great scalability options. They have controllers that support 3000 APs, so it is more than enough. 

The number of users can easily be ten to 20,000 in a larger-scale network. It is not an issue having a number of users. It is a very scalable solution.

We have used support and find them very helpful. We get service from nine to five, and even after five, if we need assistance, we can get help.

We also work with Cisco, Huawei, Aruba, and different wireless solutions.

We use Cisco here mainly in the market. Cisco was the leading product in switching and wireless before, or rather, Cisco and Aruba. Aruba is HP, and Aruba is a very strong product. However, when we started doing Ruckus, we grew more satisfied selling Ruckus as the more stable product. With a better product, we win the customer's trust and their businesses.

Initially, it's not so complex to implement. For a technical guy, it's normal. It's like every other solution; it's not very complex.

Depending on the setup, for a normal deployment, which would be two to five devices for a smaller-sized office, we can do it in one day.

We have five to ten team members trained on this, and multiple other products (including Sophos, FortiGate, and Cisco) and they can perform deployment and maintenance tasks.

How much staff you need for each deployment depends on the magnitude of the project. Normally, one engineer and one technician are enough for a deployment, which contains WiFi configuration in placement. However, in a case where cabling and infrastructure are needed, we need a different team. It depends on how much cabling is required. Depending on the requirements, we plan the project accordingly.

We can handle the setup in-house. We don't need any consultants to help us.

The licensing has different versions. Licenses are perpetual, you have to only buy one. However, they have support costs that are charged yearly for three years or five years. You have to buy the support for the license.

If you compare it to a similar kind of solution, the pricing is very competitive.

As a service provider, we have deployed many Ruckus solutions here in our country.

We mainly use its newer versions, which are WiFi six supported R550 and R650. These are the fastest-selling products. We normally sell R550 and R650 to our customers.

I'd recommend the solution to others. I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. 

We use Ruckus Wireless WAN for mobile users only to access data from the server and use the server space.

Wireless six is the most valuable feature of this solution right now. It has supported the most recent laptop model.

It is good, and the Antenna position of the device is very good.

I have not found that there is anything that needs to be improved on the Ruckus side. It's good for me, and overall it is good in comparison. It is a good product.

I would like to see IoT device support available with WiFi six. IoT is used by all businesses. They are now using IoT devices. It is required.

Ruckus Wireless WAN should support IoT devices.

I have been working with Ruckus Wireless WAN for four years, and the 510 models for the last three.

We are using the 510 and 550 models.

Ruckus Wireless WAN is stable. 

I have had my Ruckus device for over four years and have never complained about it. 

The device is functional. It does not hang. 

We have not had any issues, in the four years that we have used it.

The scalability of Ruckus Wireless WAN is good. We have not had any problems.

We increased to 11. Only four were deployed; seven were required.

We have approximately 100 users. All levels of positions are using this solution, we have engineering using it as well as others.

I am satisfied with the service that technical support provides.

I would rate the response time a four out of five.

We are doing a demo with Cambium. Ruckus is much better than Cambium.

I use Ruckus, Cisco, and Netgear. It is a common brand.

The device was deployed by the service provider. Only we purchased the device.

Our service provider installed the device, and it is now operational. We are currently using four devices, and everything is fine. However, we are now recording seven devices.

The service provider had one person install the device. It took one day to complete the installation.

It is less expensive than Aruba and Cisco.

I am comparing both models, a total of four. Aruba, Ruckus, Cisco, and Cambium.

Ruckus is more convenient for me because it is cost-effective compared to Aruba and Cisco. Also, the technology is different.

I would recommend this solution to others who are interested in using it.

We are a manufacturing company. I'm not any business partner. Only this company is in the automotive sector. We are end-users.

I would rate Ruckus Wireless WAN 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 have not found any issues with the solution so far. Whenever I encounter an issue, I chat with support and open a ticket. I have found the communication, hardware, and time to be fine. I have not found any issue in communicating and getting a service. However, the pricing of the solution is very high. I have found Aruba to be cheaper compared to Ruckus. I believe that there should be a reasonable difference in price in the market.

I have not used the location services feature. I don’t know how to monitor it. Cisco has a working Aruba where the latter also has a server. I have not used the monitoring tools either.

I have been using Ruckus Wireless WAN for more than ten years. We are resellers of the solution.

The tool offers stable, reliable, and consistent connectivity over WiFi.

The solution is scalable.

Technical support was helpful. I had sought technical support over one report three to four months back. They were fine. I would rate the technical support between eight to nine.

The initial setup is very easy and you can customize it as per the customer’s LAN and WAN requirements. The installation is different from client to client. It depends on the physical condition to install or finish the project.

I have a couple of people who do the physical deployment while I handle the configuration and server settings.

We do a survey where we ask customers about the kind of WiFi service that they are going to use like voice service, data service, etc. After the survey, we generate a heatmap using my account in the zone planner. I forward the report to the presales team after which they forward the quotation to the customer. If the customer approves the quotation, we go ahead with the installation.

The point where we get stuck is when the customer asks for multiple quotations. When we provide multiple quotations, there is a high chance of customization.

I am not satisfied with the pricing of the solution.

I would rate the solution a nine out of ten. We are the resellers of the solution and we work with it on an infrastructure level. I have experience in the installation of the solution. I have installed ZoneDirector 1200, SmartZone 100, Wi-Fi 5, Wi-Fi 6, and a couple of access panels. You can trust and rely on the consistency and reliability of Ruckus Wireless WAN on the WiFi. I had instances where customers had asked me to replace the competitor products with Ruckus.

I have been working with WiFi for more than 17 years. I am not able to convince customers because of the pricing of the solution. Otherwise, we could have sold lots of this tool to the customers. We provide maintenance to our customers. There is also no specific maintenance required for this solution since I have installed a couple of solutions for customers and they are working fine. There is no maintenance required to upgrade until the customer complains that ‘We do not upgrade anything and all the soft software is available on this.'

Ruckus has multiple radios. Therefore, it supports high speed for users and clients. Other vendors have fluctuations in speed. The main thing about Ruckus is that you can trust it and rely on its speed. I am simply satisfied with it.

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 radio frequency status is very good, and coverage is good. There are concurrent users for other Wi-Fi products.

The pricing could be cheaper.

I have been using Ruckus Wireless WAN for seven years.

The stability is excellent. I rate the solution’s stability a nine out of ten.

Its concurrent capacity is 12 users.

Support's latency is very low.

Deployment depends on two different categories: indoor and outdoor. It is quite easy indoors or outdoors. Configuration takes a maximum of ten minutes.

The pricing is average.

It is a very good product. It is a good and efficient wireless product. Its controller, billing, and user duration have artificial intelligence functions. Its life cycle longevity is longer.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.