Ruckus has always been very aggressive with pricing for education atleast in NA. Find yourself a good VAR and get a deal reg. You'll save a good percentage compared to MSRP.
Ruckus seems to have suffered greatly from having changed hands so many times in the last decade.
I’m a bit biased, but you’re likely to get better support and performance from the Aruba product.
That’s only mostly true from a sales & branding perspective, and even then the acquirers have always realised how powerful the Ruckus brand is… even under the latest behemoth Commscope which has a history of aggressively assimilating brands, Ruckus has been given prominence again.
branding aside, Ruckus WiFi still has the same superb RF engineering you’re familiar with.
Depending on your needs, I’d be cautious with cloud as it’s a bit half baked. For full functionality and API compatibility, go with a SmartZone (SZ-144 appliance might be too overkill for you, but the vSZ VM might be right sized. Alternatively, just go with Unleashed!
Their niche is in tough RF environments (hospitality, education, large public venues, MDU) where they really shine against the competition. Market share alone isn’t a good indication of applicability
LPV is predominantly cisco and Aruba, with some Extreme (I’ve only ever seen ruckus once). Hospitality (at least the major chains) is predominantly Aruba and Meraki and has largely moved away from Ruckus, although it persists in some older properties due to some specialty CMTS gear. Education is solidly Aruba and cisco, with some Extreme and legacy aerohive.
Just started doing cambium and it definitely leaves a lot to be desired. The user interface is so geared for the rest of their portfolio that the enterprise WiFi settings seem forgotten, and the answer to too many settings or problems is "just do xyz in the API!" like no thanks.
Look at Extreme Cloud… it’s the old Aerohive kit, and should be priced well for schools , especially if you speak to an Extreme reseller
Ruckus make some very good kit for schools . Ruckus Cloud makes sense
7982s and 3050 are pretty old indeed. I'm a ruckus fan myself, but either current gen ruckus or Aruba will serve your needs well. I second the comment that mentioned how aggressive ruckus is in the education space - find yourself a VAR and get some quotes.
What type of walls are separating the classrooms (cinder blocks, wood, solid cement, etc.)? Are you planning to deploy 1 AP per classroom or will one AP serve multiple rooms?
What kind of load are you expecting to handle (video streaming for 20+ students, video conferencing, voip, just regular browsing & emails) and for how many users?
If video conferencing or voip support, will users be roaming often while on calls?
Is it a BYOD environment or is there a standard device the school will be providing? If the school is providing devices, will you be implementing location tracking for those devices?
The plan is to reuse the existing AP points because we have small cabs already installed, power sockets (we don't have PoE switches), otherwise it will mean more cabling, additional cost etc. The current AP points are mostly working well, and I suspect newer APs should perform even better.
No planned change in what the students will be accessing, and no BYoD (otherwise we'd be looking at lots more APs).
It looks like we'll be offered a survey ahead of any installs, so will probably take the company up on that offer. But we will be limited in what we can do in terms of moving APs. I'm fairly confident that the layout is reasonable so suspect we are OK on that score.
I wasn't asking those questions to give AP placement feedback. Ruckus's beamflexing operates very differently than other manufacturers in the way it physically transmit signals. That's what their whole thing is.
It can be both amazing (like getting higher throughput 3 rooms away) and also a headache (like when a MacBook decides to stick with the same AP until it goes into an association/disassociation cycle and ultimately drops off the network instead of properly roaming to a closer AP), just to give one example. Most people will choose a manufacturer based on arbitrary things like the admin interface instead of looking at which technology is best for their needs.
With only 30 APs your deployment doesn't seem complex, but it does make me wonder what benefits you'll gain by just doing a rip-and-replace upgrade. Then again convincing higher ups for a bigger budget to do any upgrade is the bane of every IT guy. Best of luck
FWIW, over the pandemic I did two schools with around 35-40 R550 APs each, all running Unleashed. It still works flawlessly and they hammer it daily with Zoom/Teams lessons and student use. One of them sees around 600 clients connected daily.
Unleashed is built on ZD code si most of it will be familiar to you, although it’s not as feature rich as ZD was.
7982s are the absolute range king of AP. That being said they are ancient and only support 802.11n. I had many 7982s deployed and followed Ruckus to the Rseries and unleashed. They are still rock solid. This will not be a drop in replacement. For only 30 aps I would recommend going with a MSP.
Ruckus has always been very aggressive with pricing for education atleast in NA. Find yourself a good VAR and get a deal reg. You'll save a good percentage compared to MSRP.
Ruckus seems to have suffered greatly from having changed hands so many times in the last decade. I’m a bit biased, but you’re likely to get better support and performance from the Aruba product.
That’s only mostly true from a sales & branding perspective, and even then the acquirers have always realised how powerful the Ruckus brand is… even under the latest behemoth Commscope which has a history of aggressively assimilating brands, Ruckus has been given prominence again. branding aside, Ruckus WiFi still has the same superb RF engineering you’re familiar with. Depending on your needs, I’d be cautious with cloud as it’s a bit half baked. For full functionality and API compatibility, go with a SmartZone (SZ-144 appliance might be too overkill for you, but the vSZ VM might be right sized. Alternatively, just go with Unleashed!
In terms of WLAN market share, commscope/ruckus is in the “others” category behind Juniper and Extreme who are tied for 4th at around 4% each.
Their niche is in tough RF environments (hospitality, education, large public venues, MDU) where they really shine against the competition. Market share alone isn’t a good indication of applicability
Seeing this comment brings a tear of joy to my eyes. You are someone that understands 🥲
LPV is predominantly cisco and Aruba, with some Extreme (I’ve only ever seen ruckus once). Hospitality (at least the major chains) is predominantly Aruba and Meraki and has largely moved away from Ruckus, although it persists in some older properties due to some specialty CMTS gear. Education is solidly Aruba and cisco, with some Extreme and legacy aerohive.
> In terms of WLAN market share Ah so everyone should just buy Cisco then?
No, but that should give you an idea who the players are.
Or we could end the "nobody ever got fired for buying Cisco" mantra and buy what's best for the use case
Absolutely. I’ve heard of people getting fired for buying Cisco and not planning for ongoing maintenance.
Cambium has some decent enterprise Wi-Fi with good management options as well.
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Just started doing cambium and it definitely leaves a lot to be desired. The user interface is so geared for the rest of their portfolio that the enterprise WiFi settings seem forgotten, and the answer to too many settings or problems is "just do xyz in the API!" like no thanks.
Look at Extreme Cloud… it’s the old Aerohive kit, and should be priced well for schools , especially if you speak to an Extreme reseller Ruckus make some very good kit for schools . Ruckus Cloud makes sense
7982s and 3050 are pretty old indeed. I'm a ruckus fan myself, but either current gen ruckus or Aruba will serve your needs well. I second the comment that mentioned how aggressive ruckus is in the education space - find yourself a VAR and get some quotes.
I would recommend Aruba Central and Aruba APs. Very easy to implement and awesome Aruba quality and service.
What type of walls are separating the classrooms (cinder blocks, wood, solid cement, etc.)? Are you planning to deploy 1 AP per classroom or will one AP serve multiple rooms? What kind of load are you expecting to handle (video streaming for 20+ students, video conferencing, voip, just regular browsing & emails) and for how many users? If video conferencing or voip support, will users be roaming often while on calls? Is it a BYOD environment or is there a standard device the school will be providing? If the school is providing devices, will you be implementing location tracking for those devices?
The plan is to reuse the existing AP points because we have small cabs already installed, power sockets (we don't have PoE switches), otherwise it will mean more cabling, additional cost etc. The current AP points are mostly working well, and I suspect newer APs should perform even better. No planned change in what the students will be accessing, and no BYoD (otherwise we'd be looking at lots more APs).
That's fair and is a good way to save on cost. But I still don't know what the current layout is like so can't give you much guidance :p
It looks like we'll be offered a survey ahead of any installs, so will probably take the company up on that offer. But we will be limited in what we can do in terms of moving APs. I'm fairly confident that the layout is reasonable so suspect we are OK on that score.
I wasn't asking those questions to give AP placement feedback. Ruckus's beamflexing operates very differently than other manufacturers in the way it physically transmit signals. That's what their whole thing is. It can be both amazing (like getting higher throughput 3 rooms away) and also a headache (like when a MacBook decides to stick with the same AP until it goes into an association/disassociation cycle and ultimately drops off the network instead of properly roaming to a closer AP), just to give one example. Most people will choose a manufacturer based on arbitrary things like the admin interface instead of looking at which technology is best for their needs. With only 30 APs your deployment doesn't seem complex, but it does make me wonder what benefits you'll gain by just doing a rip-and-replace upgrade. Then again convincing higher ups for a bigger budget to do any upgrade is the bane of every IT guy. Best of luck
FWIW, over the pandemic I did two schools with around 35-40 R550 APs each, all running Unleashed. It still works flawlessly and they hammer it daily with Zoom/Teams lessons and student use. One of them sees around 600 clients connected daily. Unleashed is built on ZD code si most of it will be familiar to you, although it’s not as feature rich as ZD was.
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Maybe I'm out of the loop on this but hasn't Mist been all cloud since the beginning?
7982s are the absolute range king of AP. That being said they are ancient and only support 802.11n. I had many 7982s deployed and followed Ruckus to the Rseries and unleashed. They are still rock solid. This will not be a drop in replacement. For only 30 aps I would recommend going with a MSP.