Ruckus Wireless Reviews

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.

We are a reseller, our clients' use cases are quite broad but mainly focussed on SMB with multiple locations. A main office and satellite branches. This is where the cloud controller comes into its own.

The solution is very easy to deploy.

The product is extremely easy to manage after it is implemented.

Ruckus is very innovative as a company and they currently drive improvements to the WiFi standards themselves. Their range of products is broad. It covers all the requirements I have, which aren't as broad as the whole market. We don't do many outdoor installations, for example, however, they cover outdoor as well as point to point and they seem to work well.

Whilst vendors are always working to improve the features of their products and make them more attractive than the competition, I cannot identify any core features which are missing. Of course, today the product offers all kinds of features, many more than our specific requirements demand.

The solution isn't the cheapest option on the market. However, you are getting a quality product. Cheap is not always best. Cheap can come back and bite you.

We have sold Ruckus wireless for the past ten years at this point. It's been quite a while, way before they went public. They have been bought and sold a couple of times in recent years but the quality remains. They have fantastic people and the product is exemplary.

When the new cloud controller came out it was functional but lacked some of the finesse of other solutions. That did not matter as much as it was an excellent product from an AP perspective. The refinements in the interface have come and Ruckus continue to innovate. I prefer a good AP over a fancy interface any day.

The solution is very easy to scale. Once you have the cloud configured and set up, you can post a single access point to remote location. Plug it in and off you go or you can pre-provision hundreds of them in advance for a mass deployment.

If there is an issue, the support is very responsive. Very helpful, never failed me in ten years.

We have used other solutions in the past. Occasionally, we do installations for clients that go against our advice and then often we have issues, however, with Ruckus, this is never the case. Never, in all the years.

The initial setup isn't complex. It's pretty straightforward.

Obviously, you have to mount access points and in the right locations. You've got to screw holes in the wall and stick it to the wall or ceiling or whatever. Once the physical installation is done and it's connected to the network/internet, which, again, is part of any kind of hardware deployments. It takes about 20 minutes to deploy a new access point from scratch.

Obviously, there's a cost factor. It's not the lowest cost solution, however, from an engineering standpoint, which is what we're more interested in, you have to ask does it work? Does it work well? The answer is yes and yes.

We continually monitor the competition. In enterprise WiFi there are about 4 or 5 contenders from my point of view. In the past Ruckus did not have a cloud management solution and that was an issue. Now it's not an issue.

We are an authorised reseller of the product.

The reason that we sell Ruckus Wireless is that, in my opinion, it's the best-engineered hardware solution. Ruckus are innovative and define many standards in wireless technology, they apply those standards to their products and their products work very well.

We stripped away all the marketing blurb that various companies do when they're jockeying for position. The proof is in the deployment, how happy the clients are, how easy it is to deploy, and how easy it is to manage afterwards.

This solution has one of the easiest deployments. Obviously, whether I recommend it or not depends on my clients' requirements, however, I would wholeheartedly recommend Ruckus over other solutions. Having had firsthand experience of Ruckus, as well as other solutions, we do prefer it.

Overall, I'd rate the solution nine out of ten... I don't do ten!

We are internet service providers. 

We use Ruckus in our business hotspot deployment. We sell to a customer who might have a coffee shop for example, and we would install one of the Ruckus access points so that they could deploy Wi-Fi to their patrons.

The reason we picked Ruckus, in addition to our long-standing relationship with them, is pretty much that the RFS characteristics of it seem to be the best. That's what we find useful. 

Also, we like the more remote deployment aspects of things as well.

The price is an area that requires improvement. The pricing could be better.

In the next release, I would like to understand more where presence analytics is going and IoT support. Is it going to be multi-way for IoT support?

I would like to see IoT presence analytics. 

Our company has been using Ruckus Wireless for five years.

This is a stable product.

Ruckus Wireless is a scalable solution.

We have deployed 350 indoor access point solutions, and 650 outdoors.

We have 5,000 people in our company, but we are not the ones who are using this product. We sell 50 to 100 per month. We are incorporating it into our solution and selling it.

Technical support is good. They are supportive. 

We don't call them often, and we don't really call them for technical support, we call them for integration support.

It's a different organization, we deal more with the enterprise support group.

The initial setup was complex although it wasn't a problem with Ruckus, it was our problem.

We're not using any of the Ruckus cloud features. 

We're completely integrated into our own kind of a management portal and our own management system, so the issues are on our side, not theirs.

We outsourced installation, but we design and support solutions ourselves.

We don't pay any licensing fees, we purchase them.

I would recommend Ruckus Wireless to others who are interested in using it.

I would rate Ruckus Wireless an eight out of ten.

We are a big church, so we have to cover a 100,000 square foot building plus another 3,000 square foot building. We have Ruckus Wireless in two locations. We are on Zone Director 1200.

Our other office is running over a VPN, so it keeps connected to the Zone Director via VPN for any information that is needed, but it still works. The nice part is that they work on the internet connection that is local to the office that they are in. They work independently. Nothing comes through the controller. They just use the controller to authenticate and know what is going on with the unit.

Its roaming capabilities and the fact that we can have redundant backup controllers are the most valuable. There is a backup controller that is heart beated to the primary. It is also fairly easy to install.

Its interface could be a little bit more user friendly.

I have been using Ruckus Wireless for six or seven years.

Its stability has been acceptable.

I have contacted them. So far, so good. There are no major issues with them. They have been pretty responsive.

We used SonicPoint, which is with SonicWall. The only reason for switching was that it wasn't their main thing. They were more of a firewall, and they had it as a secondary thing. We needed something that was much more robust with more capabilities per access point. We have 250 or more people on an access point.

The initial setup was easy.

We paid for a three-year contract last year. I am not sure about what we paid. It is certainly less expensive than Meraki.

I would advise looking at the cloud version. If we had not renewed our licensing for the standalone, we would probably look at going with the cloud solution because it is easy to support.

I would rate Ruckus Wireless an eight out of ten.

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.

We use Ruckus Wireless for hospitality customers, education customers, healthcare customers, banking customers, and public venues.

Ruckus Wireless has a high ROI because it needs fewer access points due to BeamFlex technology, which means less civil work, less cabling, and less licensing. This significantly impacts the total cost of ownership of the project, making it very attractive for investors and increasing the ROI.

The most valuable feature of Ruckus Wireless is the simple interface of the SmartZone platform. This platform is very effective and easy to manage. It does not require experienced employees or IT managers to handle the system. BeamFlex is a part of every Ruckus AP, making it a leader in coverage area compared to other vendors.

The cloud solution is not mature enough.

We have been using Ruckus Wireless for more than twelve years.

The stability of the Ruckus Wireless solution is rated very high.

The solution is very scalable. It works well in very dense environments and provides good coverage.

Customer service and support are somewhat lacking. Sometimes the technical support team is not experienced enough to handle cases effectively. They tend to go in loops when fixing problems and often miss asking crucial questions that could make troubleshooting more efficient. It feels like the support is being outsourced to someone else who is not fully aware of the product.

Neutral

The initial setup is very easy, rated a nine out of ten.

Ruckus Wireless provides a high ROI because fewer access points mean less civil work, less cabling, and less licensing, which lowers the total cost of ownership.

Ruckus Wireless is not cheap, and they have recently increased their prices. However, the product is worth it.

I would recommend Ruckus Wireless to others because it provides stable solutions. The wireless access points are very stable, provide good coverage in dense environments, and have many reasons to be recommended.

We use the solution for our wireless network services.

The solution manages and updates itself.

The price has room for improvement.

I have been using the solution for ten years.

I give Ruckus Wireless's stability a ten out of ten.

I give Ruckus Wireless's scalability a ten out of ten. We can install 100 APs before installing more, which is enough for a small business.

We also use MikroTik as a cheaper option for customers that can't afford Ruckus. 

Configuring MikroTik is more complex compared to Ruckus, where we only need to create an SSID, and the rest is automatically handled in the background.

The initial setup is straightforward. I give the setup a ten out of ten. The deployment takes up to 15 minutes to complete.

The implementation was completed in-house.

The price is high and I give the price a four out of ten.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

The solution is for small and medium clients.

For customers that can afford Ruckus, it is a great product and I recommend it.

Our use case is for public Wifi. I'm a system integrator. 

The product is easy to configure and user-friendly. The technology is very robust. 

I'd like to see some analytics features in the control itself. 

I've been using this solution for 10 years. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution is scalable. If one controller is not sufficient, you can add another.

We have access to technical support and they are generally quite good. 

Positive

The initial setup was very easy, it's just a matter of configuring the access point. 
It's recognized by the controller, and when you onboard it on the wireless network everything is done automatically. One access point takes about 10 minutes to deploy. Other than for the software, there is no maintenance required. 

Licensing costs are reasonable and we can pay extra for additional support. 

I highly recommend this solution and rate it nine out of 10.