vSCG / R300 request for a B/G WLAN

Question

Hey there, we've got a request from a customer who is deploying some small tablets for a small use case.  Supposedly from the tablet vendor they require wireless connectivity via a B/G WLAN.  Sifting through our vSCG that manages the 6 R300 APs at the customer site, i can't find a clear option for broadcasting the new WLAN in B/G without the N support.  Is this configuration possible given the newer generation of the equipment we are using or is B/G just too old?  Seems silly that someone today would sell a product that doesn't support N.   They do provide a bunk B/G AP but you hate to use non-standard garbage in your clean network.

Thanks!

michael_brado · Answer

Older scanners required WEP or TKIP, but all wifi devices since 2005 should support WPA2/AES.
You can configure your Tablet WLAN to use a combination of WPA-Mixed/Auto(TKIP+AES) to run B/G mode.

john_d · Answer

By default, Ruckus's wlan's should be 802.11 b/g backwards compatible, unless you used the CLI to specify the "ofdm-only" configuration on the wlan (which is often recommended for higher capacity, but restricts the network to G or newer).

You might have to be cautious about using WPA2 (e.g. without TKIP), or enabling 802.11 r or k in the wlan settings. Other than that, they should support 802.11b/g devices just fine.

I've got an R700 and R600 and a thermostat and fitness scale that only support 802.11b, and they can connect to my network just fine, even with WPA2-AES.

Bottom line is, you can expect those tablets to "just work", but be prepared for a possible need to downgrade security settings, or turn off some other advanced networking settings like 802.11r/k fast transition.