What needs improvement with Ruckus Wireless WAN?

There is a need for more flexibility in granular access control. Currently, role-based access is cumbersome and lacks flexibility.

I would like to see Ruckus focus less on creating lower-tier solutions aimed at competing with inferior brands. Additionally, Ruckus Support is very slow and could improve response times.

The direct support needs improvement. It would be great to have representatives in the Africa zone to support projects directly.

The wireless access should be simplified. Network access control should not sit on the Wi-Fi device; the backend should handle it. While Ruckus allows this, the setup should be further simplified. Nevertheless, once deployed, it is easy to maintain and manage.

The product could benefit from features like Cisco's, such as improved zoning and analytics tools. A tool combining features from both Ruckus and Cisco would be ideal.

Sometimes, you can't do everything you need on the GUI. Some configurations can only be done through the CLI. It would be nice if everything could be managed through the GUI. Another consideration is the price. Clients are very cautious with their budgets. A few are willing to pay for the best quality without compromising the WAN. While Ruckus Wireless offers excellent quality, the price point can be high. Special registration discounts are available, but the product can be expensive.

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

When it comes to Ruckus, I must say they have their own solution, and their software meets the market standards. However, in comparison to Cambium, I find Cambium to be more robust in terms of performance. There isn't a significant difference between the two brands, Ruckus and Cambium. While there's always room for improvement, I don't believe any major changes are necessary in the market. Proper product development, value, pricing, and division of these elements should be the focus. A well-integrated support system and a limited lifetime warranty, as opposed to fixed durations like five, three, four, or seven years, should also be in place. Clear communication between the product and its pricing is crucial.

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.

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

The product needs to improve its latency and performance.

In Cisco, there is a configuration where it automatically switches from the 2.4 GHz to 5.2 GHz frequency. But with Ruckus, usually, we need to manually define whether we want to use the 2.4 GHz or 5.2 GHz. Another point is that its penetration power is low when we are using it in any location with more walls, as the signal strength diminishes. So, the signal strength and the penetration power of the signal should be improved. It is not like Cisco. We are using Cisco APs also, but Cisco APs perform better when we compare them with Ruckus. In future releases, I would like to see automatic switching between 2.4 GHz and 5.2 GHz frequencies. We should not have to set it manually. It should automatically change its frequency based on the load. For example, if the number of users increases, then its frequency should change automatically, switching to the less congested band.

The interface has to be more automated.

We had a problem with the delivery of the solution.

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.

What needs improvement in Ruckus Wireless WAN is the initial setup. It could be easier. Availability is also another area for improvement in the product. Another huge disadvantage of Ruckus Wireless WAN is the cost you must continuously pay for the licenses.

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.

Technical support is something that needs to be improved. Ruckus needs to develop newer models that support cloud technologies. For example, they have a physical controller for these devices but I would like to see a cloud-based controller.

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

I don't see anything which I can say there was a negative point for this product. In the last few years, we have never experienced any failure or any problem with this product. The initial setup is complex.

So far, I find Ruckus Wireless WAN okay in terms of the technology and existing business network, but licensing could be more flexible, especially the IoT license that was changed to adapt to the IoT Controller and sensor subscription. The previous licensing method for Ruckus Wireless WAN was better. In my opinion, it wasn't a good decision to change it because the customer prefers the previous licensing over the current licensing. It's not only about the money in terms of licensing, but also about flexibility. The latest license change isn't as flexible. I also found the cloud solution not partner-friendly, so that could also be improved. Another area for improvement in Ruckus Wireless WAN is answering partner requests because currently, it doesn't seem easy for them. What I'd like to see in the next release of the solution is the AP having its MQTT forwarder. Ruckus Wireless WAN AP supports IoT modules now and to use the IoT modules, you need all IoT data to pass through the IoT Controller. If I could forward that IoT data directly to my environment, similar to what you can do with other solutions, that would be great.

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.

The solution could be more stable.

Asset tracking

There's nothing that anyone else is doing that the Ruckus doesn't do. If you compare to the market, I don't see room for improvement, to be honest. There's nothing feature-wise that I see with Ruckus that I think can be improved at the moment. Of course, we'd always like it to be cheaper, but that's for every product.

It would be nice to some analytical features built into this solution.

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 can't think of any area that needs improvement. It's an easy product to use, the dashboards and interface are very good. They could include a firewall feature in the next release but even there it's not really necessary because if you have a wireless solution you have a firewall and all the network components. But if I have to come up with something that needs improved, it would be the firewall.

User access control is done through a third-party, RADIUS, which is not an easy system for IT professionals to use. It is used by larger enterprises, so if you want to deploy on a small to medium scale then you definitely require integration from Microsoft. In the next release, I would like to see better integration with other products. Integration with AirMagnet, the design software, would be good because it takes the layout of a building and positions the access points accordingly, based on the areas and the construction materials. Active integration with AirMagnet would be very useful. There should be support for a local database in the zone directory for people who do not want to use the RADIUS access server.

The overall management of the solution in general needs improvement. The solution could use a better user interface.

The support could be faster. It takes time for them to reply. I also think the solution should be more user friendly.

Most vendors offer built-in Wi-Fi. So from this point of view, I would like to see built-in Wi-Fi with this solution also, so that we can save money by not having to buy two different components. I would also like to see built-in firewalls. One thing about Ruckus products is that you have documentation based on the scenarios. All the documentation features are explained well, so when you try to figure out some examples or scenarios, you have multiple scenarios and snapshots to follow so that you can build your own setup. I didn't find that kind of documentation with this solution from Ruckus. For the switches perspective as well as the Wi-Fi perspective. The documentation from other vendors like Huawei, Cisco, Aruba are very unique. What they do, is to start with the technology, and then they explain everything to you step by step. Then they give some scenario examples. Another thing that Ruckus lacks, is the certification part. They have very basic online exams but not expert level exams. I would like to be able to do a very professional career-based program with Ruckus. The last thing that needs to improve, is to have direct contact with a support engineer if one has technical issues.

Ruckus is not keeping up with the features that some of the competitors have implemented. Compared to other vendors, the analytics has to improve a lot. We would like to see support for different captive portals with the basic solution. The captive portal should be more customizable because right now, it is very limited. You can only change the icon. The market is asking for more improved captive portals. Support for multiple tenants or multiple users with ZoneDirector would be an improvement.

The technical support for this solution needs to be improved. This product needs a point-to-point, bridge solution. The network access controls should be improved. The Cloudpath feature should be improved.

I hope that they will be expanding the market. I have some friends who have not heard of Ruckus but are aware of other competitors. They should expand it in the Middle East and other areas and make offers for others to make comparisons. I would like to see more offers for smaller businesses.

The pricing needs to be reconsidered because it's expensive.