Ruckus Wireless Reviews

I work for a small school. In fact, I've worked with two separate schools with different administrations and they both had Ruckus — they both had the same equipment. There's probably one controller and maybe six, seven, eight access points.

We're running teacher PCs, might be about ten PCs on there, and then a bunch of student Chromebooks. We weren't one-to-one at the one school — they had carts they wheeled around. They might have had maybe 40 of them, but now they're one-to-one and they probably have a couple of hundred users — 200 to 300 users on there. The other school's been one-to-one, but it's a smaller school. They probably have a couple of hundred computers on the whole network — Chromebooks. That school's pretty much all Chromebooks.

I have been using this solution for five years.

I haven't heard any complaints about the WiFi equipment at all causing problems. We've had issues with the ISP, not enough bandwidth. At one place, the firewall equipment failed us, but with Ruckus, no complaints on the controllers. It's just been a solid performer for us.

I have very limited experience with support because the vendor takes care of all of that. They're kind of pricey, especially when you look at Ubiquiti. 

Interestingly enough, the vendor who sold us Ruckus is now quoting an upgrade and he's no longer quoting Ruckus, he's going with Ubiquiti. I asked them why they did that, he said "Oh, it's a better value." Maybe Ruckus dropped them and now they're representing Ubiquiti. They have some staff turnover, so we keep seeing new people. And that's the local vendor. I haven't dealt with Ruckus directly at all, so I don't know what the company would provide.

I logged into the system to look at it. That was a number of years ago, so my memory is vague. The only thing I really changed when I looked at it was to set up a separate sub-network for the students. They had a guest network already set up and they already had the staff networks. I set up a student WiFi network to segregate them from the staff.

I'm not the person who really configures them, our vendor did all that. When they first went in, I took a look at the configuration, but I haven't really touched them since then. You can configure them and just leave them to do their thing.

I went in once and set up a guest network — it was pretty straightforward. I didn't even have to look at the manual to do it.

The vendor is responsible for all maintenance-related issues.

With Ubiquiti, there's no annual cost to keep the software upgraded, whereas with Ruckus, you have to pay an annual fee or three-year fee. That makes it a little more pricey.

Ubiquiti is quite a bit cheaper, just on the upfront costs than the Ruckus equipment. I mean the Ubiquiti quote we got, we're not only doing the access points, but we're also doing our switches. If one person is doing Ubiquiti switches and Ubiquiti access points, another vendor's doing Ruckus equipment. We're seeing half the cost with the Ubiquiti equipment. I worked for Ubiquiti on a very small installation where cost was at a premium and they needed to get in as cheap as possible. It worked for them. It was a church. Dropped in about four access points and they were happy.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of seven. The cost is the only thing dragging them down.

We are using Ruckus Wireless for different enterprise networks.

Ruckus Wireless is a valuable solution. It's both scalable and reliable. 

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.

It's a reliable solution. There is no issue, and it's reliable. But you need to improve in cloud services because nowadays, more users are coming to the cloud, not on-premises. Because of COVID, we have more users on the cloud. So, a feature for enhancing visibility will be good.

Ruckus Wireless is a scalable solution.

Technical support could be better. Ruckus support is a little bit slow compared to others. They take time. They need to improve support at the partner end, customer end, and distributor end.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We're a reseller, and we set up and deploy this solution.

We have a yearly license for our multiple mode 200 or 300 Ruckus Wireless systems. It's a good price.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Ruckus Wireless an eight.

The mesh technology is the solution's most valuable aspect. Ruckus originally had the patent for it. They might've lost it because I see now that other people are doing it, however, they were the ones who came out with the smart mesh technology first, which is phenomenal.

Ruckus is superior when it comes to indoor and some outdoor wireless. I use it for some arenas. The T750 outdoor access point is fantastic. The bridges to get to the access points are great. 

Ruckus offers a technology that works with frequencies, which is excellent. That means if there are other access points or other wireless interference in the area, Ruckus has enough frequency band to change frequencies automatically. So they're never being interrupted.

Another excellent feature Ruckus offer is, if you have access points or other items in your organization, in, say New York City, and your network doesn' want interference, they can cancel out other access points around there. Especially in a place like New York city, you're picking up stuff from other buildings. With Ruckus, you could block those access points and those signals to make your network the only one that people can see within that network. To this day, I haven't had this experience on Mist or Aruba. You can also whitelist certain networks. It's an excellent amount of control that's provided to you as a client.

The physical device itself is lacking. They're made with plastic and seem a little cheap in construction, especially when compared to other manufacturers and providers.

The company itself has had its time in the sun and may be past peak after so many mergers and acquisitions. They were originally a router and switch company. Then they were bought by one of their distributors. The company is floundering after so many changes to the organization.

The product is great, but the problem is there are other players in the market now. In 2004 when they were founded, they had the market and they were the big name for wireless within an enterprise. The company was also expanding out between buildings and everything. Then all of a sudden, after 2017, you don't really hear their name anymore. 

They have so many products that there are so many different part numbers for the US and other countries. That means it's easy to make a mistake with the licensing. You have to have somebody knowledgeable on the other end with the licensing. If you make one mistake, it can be a $2,000 mistake.

I'd like to see them do some licensed frequency stuff on the 365 gigahertz band, more for service providers, and then on an enterprise level.

I'd like to see them do something with LTE.

I've been using the solution since about 2015 or maybe as early as 2014. It's been about five or six years.

The solution is quite stable, even in large networks. I've sold 50 access points and the client swears by them. They run the largest car dealership in the country. It's very, very reliable.

You can scale the solution as much as you want. There's never a problem with scalability. 

Ruckus used to have amazing support. It was impeccable. Before, when something broke, I had to go through these channels to get stuff resolved under warranty. I still sell their products to select customers that are stuck with them because they won't switch off due to the fact that they use the same management server. They can only use Ruckus access points or Ruckus management servers.

The last time I had to deal with them, I had to go through CommHub. I wasn't impressed with it. It may have been when they were going through an acquisition transition. Still, the level of technical support was awful. It's really dropped off. Their staff needs more training. 

What they need to do is not have technical support under CommHub, They need to keep Ruckus as a separate division for support.

I have knowledge of many different solutions, including Ubiquiti and Mist. I don't use Ubiquiti. However, Mist that does BLE technology and I don't believe Ruckus can do what they do. BLE technology is superb because you could track people with it using their cell. There's a ton of features available if you look at Mist. I sold probably about $300,000 or $400,000 worth of equipment from between 2005 and 2017. That's about $250,000 worth of equipment. Then, all these other players came into market. Ruckus was expensive, but you didn't need as many access points with Ruckus as you did with other access points because they were that good. With the wireless, more doesn't mean better.

I have an extensive technical background with Ruckus, especially on an enterprise level. I was able to figure the implementation out easily. It was pretty simple. To set it up is easy, however, to work with it is more complex. It takes a while to understand all the features. 

Their pricing is expensive. That said, being a partner, their competitive upgrade pricing is phenomenal. 

I don't remember the exact pricing. When we bought it, we bought the warranties with them for three years. We got advanced replacement.

We've been using the latest version of the solution. We're resellers of Ruckus.

Typically, I would recommend the solution. However, their market share has really dropped off and their marketing is terrible from the logo to the name.

Their partner portal is great because you could register as a partner, and, because I'm a partner, I could register easily and use the backend and frontend for salesforce.com. I can log in and register deals with them. 

It looks like CommScope created their own technology with Ruckus technology and an LTE solution. Some sort of small cell. I would advise users to stay away from that because if they were better in the enterprise, they should stick to their wheelhouse and market that instead of going out into the small cell.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

The solution is used for public Wi-Fi. The Wi-Fi solution provides internet connectivity in the public platform.

The tool needs to incorporate training. Also, it needs to improve the range of coverage.

I have been using the solution for five to seven years.

The solution is very stable.

The tool is scalable. We have over 300 users for the solution. We plan to increase the number of users.

The tool’s technical support is good.

The number of people required for the tool’s deployment depends on the circumstances.

The tool is a good investment.

The tool’s pricing is competitive with other alternative solutions’ pricing.

I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. I would definitely recommend the solution. It's a robust solution that can help people to achieve their goals. You need to be properly trained to use it. The product brand can grow with online training and certification.

It is generally deployed in hotels and sometimes for VIP customers.

In my experience, Ruckus devices are much more reliable than other vendors when it comes to consistency, coverage, and client density. Ruckus is very simple to configure and troubleshoot.

I've been using Ruckus Wireless for almost six years.

The stability of Ruckus Wireless is better than other solutions. I never hear complaints about coverage, connectivity, or speed. I've worked in the wireless field for almost 17 years, and I've only received one call about Ruckus. During the same time, I've received four calls about other solutions from other vendors.

I've deployed in JW Marriott Hotel with almost 900 access points. And I deployed it in one house with just 20 access points. So working with both big and small projects, I've had good customer feedback. Since I'm not receiving any complaints, I feel like it is working fine on any scale.

In one of the hotels, it stopped broadcasting SSIDs, so I opened a ticket with Ruckus support. They upgraded the software of the controller and performed some configuration modifications, then it worked fine. I only faced that one issue, but this was their own issue. It was delayed too for the RNA. 

For Ruckus Wireless, the setup is simple. The time for deployment has been increased somewhat. And deployment also depends on the quantity, but the solution is very easy to implement overall. Physically installation and configuration are simple. The access point is also much lighter than other solutions. 

We sell both Ruckus and Aruba. Aruba is more complicated to use and less reliable than Ruckus, but it's also much less expensive. When we're quoting prices, we'll send the customer two quotations, one for Ruckus and one for Aruba. So for example, if a project costs $2,000 with Aruba, the same project will cost around $3,200 or $3,500 with Ruckus. It is very difficult to convince the customer to choose Ruckus because of the price. 

I would rate Ruckus nine out 10. I'd also point out that Ruckus Wireless is high speed. And with Ruckus, you can use standalone or cloud-based. Standalone is much better. 

I am a Ruckus reseller and this wireless product is one that we provide for our customers.

My customers are all in industrial environments, so I have worked with a lot of different controller-based models. I primarily handle warehouse management and manufacturing, so these are installed in big warehouses, the oil sector, solar-powered Wi-Fi, and other businesses.

Many of the wireless devices are by vendors like Honeywell and Zebra. They are handheld units and the network packet size is small.

The most valuable feature is the coverage, which is exceptional.

I feel that the vendor needs to have better control of who is selling the product online, especially when the reseller doesn't know anything about the product. It is frustrating when customers tell me that they have found it on Amazon for a cheaper price.

I would like to see newer on-premises controller-type models, similar to the 3000. 

We have been working with Ruckus Wireless for about nine years, since 2011. I have about 24 years of experience with wireless solutions in general.

I haven't had any issues with maintenance, long-term. They have never had any trouble holding up in the environment that they're in.

The scalability of Ruckus is excellent. I have some very, very large customers.

I have experience working with Cisco, Aruba, and other types of Wi-Fi that my customers have installed.

For somebody who knows what they're doing, the initial setup is very straightforward.

Sometimes, people take an easy approach to implementing the system, but it is not as efficient as it could be. Generally, I find that you can put it in the easy way or the right way, and you need to have a little more skill than just plugging it in to get it working efficiently.

My advice for anybody who is considering this solution is not to become obsessed with bandwidth or throughput. It is more important to look at coverage and roaming capabilities than simply the bandwidth. I find that when it comes to schools, people who are implementing wireless usually overdo it.

For me, this is the best wireless product on the market. Every customer where I have put it in to replace an existing system loves it.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

I sell this solution to customers so that they can achieve their wired and wireless networking equipment and software tools to meet their needs. We are a networking company that focuses entirely on network solutions, such as switching, switch Layer 2, 3, Wi-Fi allowing access points, cloud and software products to mobile carriers, broadband service providers, and corporate enterprises. I sell to the hospitality industry. 

The BeamFlex Adaptive Antenna Technology feature allows the client user to have a more reliable throughput and connectivity for their daily access point usage. This provides clients with a good continuous signal. There are no throughput issues with their WiFi connectivity. Their WiFi is quite stable now. If a client wants to connect to the internet or set up a LAN over the wireless network, everything runs well for them.

The most valuable feature is the signature feature from Ruckus; the feature is called the BeamFlex. BeamFlex adaptive antenna technology takes a more adaptable approach allowing the access point to continually sense and optimize for its environment. The signals can be sent in a particular predetermined direction as desired. The technology allows for electrically manipulated antenna properties creating optimal antenna patterns for each device with which they communicated: the signal is focused, where the user is positioning. 

The biggest adjustment improvement will come from a price adjustment because the price is quite high; it feels like premium pricing. I suggest shaving off 10 percent to 20 percent. That would help grow users and increase the number of clients.

I'd also like to see some sort of product costing and billing ability. Because not all of the users have their own producer version. We can take care of this on our end. Once we are able to bill clients for this service I think deployment will potentially go smoother.

The solution is very stable. I've been quite impressed because the product is really, really good on the CLT among other things. The tool responds very well during deployment and it's adaptability is excellent when it's being used.

I'm quite impressed with the scalability. The solution can be deployed from a single SMB protocol dialect to a large number of users. The functionality is especially impressive when you have thousands of end users that you need to deploy to and the tool can support that level of functionality. It really doesn't matter the size of the enterprise from small, to medium, and large organizations the tool is equipped to handle them all.

Just as an example of the scalability of this product Google here in Indonesia used this solution to provide WiFi in remote locations. Last year the Asian Games were held here and several stadiums used this tool as their access point. 

Technical support is also great. They have a portal and you can ask for open tickets. They offer a lot of options there and they also have a service provider here in Indonesia so you can meet the Principal. You are able to ask them directly or you can even direct them to your user. The support is quite good.

Our clients used several brands prior to making the change such as Cisco, HP network, and Dell EMC network as well. They changed to Ruckus because they didn't feel satisfied with the product they were currently using. The majority of the problems stemmed from access point issues; the access point offer through these brands wasn't adaptable and compatible with their needs.

The initial setup was quite straightforward. There is an initial need to arrange a lot of the setup on the user side such as setting up the controller and setting up the access point, but all in all, things are straightforward. 

Deployment depends largely on project size. If you are talking about a small office, using ten to twenty access points could take between one to two weeks. We provide the initial setup, then we set up the controller and all the access points. When the unit is in place that's it for us on the client end. The only thing left is to set up the back end; the controller to connect to the user's network.

The work is managed by engineers and technicians.

I've used serval integrators for deploying the solution. I used one of the best integrators here in the nation called GIF. They are the biggest integrator solution partner for hospitality in South East Asia. I can recommend them.

The pricing is quite expensive. If you were to compare the solution, license, and pricing with another brand, I think Ruckus still have the most competitive pricing cost per feature rate among them all. For instance, drawing comparisons with similar products offered through HP or Dell EMC, Ruckus' price reasonable.

The licensing is great; it's more flexible than the other brands as well. For example, we can buy the license for upgrading the controller on an as needed basis. The other brands don't offer this option.

Before settling on Ruckus we evaluated every big tender. One of our main competitors is the HP network, as well as Cisco. 

The setup is straightforward. Our company goes to the client's location. We set up the POC for the client. Then we pass the throughput so that our access point can communicate with the provider and in with the POC, we can tell the access point through Ruckus is preferential.

I recommend finding a good system integration partner to assist with the job. If you don't, the strategy for deployment becomes confusing and the result can be disappointing.

I rate this product a strong 9 out of 10! The product is excellent, the support is very good, the hardware is good, and the software powering the hardware is also very good.

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).