Ruckus Wireless WAN Reviews

The primary use case is to provide indoor and outdoor connectivity to our network.

The best feature is its ability to act as an outdoor local access point. We can deploy it on a tower or building, supplying local network connectivity. It is not restricted to an indoor environment, as is the case with some vendors.

The connectivity, speed, and reliability are very good.

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 had been working with Ruckus Wireless WAN for two years.

My current company does not use this product.

Stability-wise, it is perfect.

This is a scalable product.

The technical support team needs to be improved. They should have field engineers, as opposed to only people available to support the backend.

Having the ability to arrange for a reliable on-site engineer would be helpful.

I would rate the technical support a four out of five. 

Positive

The initial setup is easy. It took us approximately 30 minutes to deploy.

I would budget between 30 and 60 minutes for installation and setup.

This product is worth the money that is spent on licensing fees.

In summary, this is a good product and I recommend the Ruckus outdoor devices. They have good support for this line of access points.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

To be honest, we're not high-end users. We're schools, so as long as we can connect our iPads and laptops to the solution and join the network, then it works well for us. 

We use things like VLAN and all the multibeam features that are built in, but at the end of the day, the most important thing for us is to get a good signal and site-wide coverage. We probably don't use a great deal of the features that are offered.

We've just awarded a contract to a company to put the new Ruckus solution in, and that includes their cloud controller technology. We haven't had much experience with that yet. I suppose one of the things that I would've said is to move away from on-prem controllers to cloud-based stuff. Really, it's just about centralizing manageability across multiple sites, but like I said, that's me commenting on the old product that we've got. I know they've addressed that now with cloud controllers, but that would've been my main thing.

I have been using Ruckus for about seven years.

The solution is very stable. In all the time that we've used it, we've had no issues at all with it.

It is very much scalable. When we've had new areas of school added, we've been able to add additional access points and we've had no issues expanding it.

We haven't had experience with tech support because we pay a Ruckus partner to do the support for us. I believe they're an implementer because they do Ruckus installs for us as well.

The setup was very straightforward.

We awarded a contract to a local third-party company who did all the setup for us, and then they gave us some training on how to use it day-to-day.

ROI works a little bit differently in education, but we generally work off of a 
five-year replacement strategy for infrastructure, but with Ruckus, we've been able to stretch it to seven. To be honest, it would probably run for another two or three years if we wanted it to, so I'd say from that point of view, it has been a good ROI because we haven't had to replace it as often as we normally would.

We pay maybe a couple thousand pounds a year for support across our sites. Then, on average, an implementation at one of our high schools will be a one-time payment of about 25,000 to 30,000 pounds for a standard high school.

There is a change in the licensing model a little bit now, because we have to pay annually for the cloud licenses, so I think it'll be about 5,000 pounds a year moving forwards.

My advice would be to make sure that you properly survey your sites first, because with any Wi-Fi system, not just Ruckus, you've got to make sure that you take into account the fabric of the building and where you want your signal to reach, and the speed of the connection you need. I would say, make sure you do that first to give you the most stable implementation, but that's not unique to Ruckus, that's just general advice.

For a number of reasons, I would happily rate this solution as a nine out of ten. The support is good. The product, in terms of stability, reliability, and all of those things, has been very good.

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.

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 use the solution for data application and internet access. 

Ruckus Wireless WAN is simple to use. Its coverage is better than other tools. 

Ruckus Wireless WAN needs to improve its pricing. 

I have been using the product for 10-15 years. 

I rate Ruckus Wireless WAN's stability a ten out of ten. 

I rate the tool's scalability a seven out of ten. 

The tool's deployment is easy and can be completed in half an hour. One engineer is enough to handle the deployment. 

I rate the tool's pricing a seven out of ten. 

I rate Ruckus Wireless WAN an eight out of ten. 

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.

The solution is used to provide network access to users.

The solution can scale well.

The stability of the solution could improve in an upcoming release.

I have been using Ruckus Wireless WAN for approximately one year.

The solution is stable but could improve.

I rate the stability of Ruckus Wireless WAN a seven out of ten.

We have 30,000 users using this solution. The solution is being used extensively.

We did contact technical support.

I have not used a similar solution to Ruckus Wireless WAN.

The solution took a couple of hours to deploy.

Third-party assistance was required for the implementation of Ruckus Wireless WAN. We used two to three people for the deployment.

I have seen an ROI from using this solution.

There is an annual license needed to use this solution. The pricing model is based on how many access points are used.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Ruckus Wireless WAN a seven out of ten.

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.

I have been working with Ruckus Wireless WAN for about two to three years.

My experience with technical support has been good. Issues, such as license imports, were resolved within half an hour.

Cisco excels in radio technology and troubleshooting, though it is more expensive. Ruckus is more cost-effective and user-friendly for basic needs.

Cisco is easier to integrate with third-party solutions due to my extensive experience. However, integration with Ruckus is also feasible.

The solution has been reliable in our setup.

The platform's key features that impact network performance are multiple SSIDs, local switching, and mesh functionality. However, mesh is not recommended for high-traffic environments.

Its benefits include efficient zone deployment and access point distribution, simplifying network management.

I recommend it to others and rate it a nine out of ten.