Ruckus Unleashed - High performance networking

Geared towards small and medium businesses (SMBs), Ruckus Unleashed Access Points allow you to provide the same high-quality Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi, without the cost of purchasing a dedicated WLAN controller. In order to help owners grow their business, deliver an excellent customer experience and manage costs while supporting Wi-Fi and a variety of mobile devices with minimal IT overheads, Ruckus Unleashed access points have built-in controller capabilities such as; user access controls, guest networking functions, advanced Wi-Fi security and traffic management, allowing for the quick and simple deployment of a high performance and resilient network within minutes. Ruckus Unleashed networks are designed to handle up to 25 access points and 512 simultaneous client connections and rather than having a dedicated controller to manage your wireless network, as you'll find in most enterprise-grade AP networks, the first Ruckus access point connected to your wired Ethernet network instead, acts as a controller for any others you may connect. Any access point can be configured as either a passive member of the group, its primary master or as a standby master in case the primary master loses connectivity. As businesses grow to multiple sites or a larger scale deployment, Ruckus offers an easy migration path to controller based Wi-Fi, allowing uses to leverage their existing Unleashed investments to seamlessly upgrade to the ZoneDirector and SmartZone management platforms.

Unleashed positioning within the Ruckus portfolio.

Ruckus Unleashed is geared towards small and medium businesses who are looking for high network functionality that is low-cost and is easy to deploy. With Xclaim, customers will not be able to take advantage of a comprehensive UI, BeamFlex+, ChannelFly, or guest features to enhance the user experience. Additionally, the ZoneDirector platform requires a controller which increase deployment and maintenance costs.

The Hardware

Making use of Ruckus' elite range of existing, high quality 802.11ac access points, Ruckus Unleashed combines patented adaptive antenna technology and automatic interference mitigation through technologies such as BeamFlex, PD-MRC and ChannelFly, to deliver consistent and predictable performance at extended ranges (with up to an additional 6dB of BeamFlex gain on top of the physical antenna gain and up to 15dB of interference mitigation). These features and many more can be found throughout their catalogue of wireless access points, which to date include the following which are supported by the Unleashed platform:

  • ZoneFlex R600 - An Indoor 3x3:3 802.11ac dual band wireless access point, recommended for high density or primary controller purposes due to superior processing power).
  • ZoneFlex R500 - An Indoor 2x2:2 802.11ac dual band wireless access point, recommended to be used in conjunction with the R600 as the controller, to provide wireless coverage.
  • ZoneFlex R310 - Similar to that of the R500, The R310 is a more cost effective means of providing wireless coverage, is also a 2x2:2 802.11ac dual band access point.
  • ZoneFlex T300 - Ruckus IP67 rated. 2x2:2 802.11ac dual band outdoor wireless access point.
  • ZoneFlex T301 - A 2x2:2 802.11ac outdoor wireless access point, used to provide directional coverage to high density or large external deployments. As you can see from the above, the Unleashed platform does not restrict users to a single model of access point for the entire network, for example; you can use the R600 for your primary controller APs, the R500s for your internal wireless coverage and T300s for any external coverage which is required.

Summary

Never has there been such a simple yet diverse way of integrating a high performance, high resiliency wireless network for small scale deployments in such an affordable manor. With the well renowned performance of Ruckus' wireless access points now becoming more accessible to thousands of SMBs, there now seems to be no reason why upgrading your existing infrastructure or implementing a new 802.11ac wireless network should be out of reach.