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Internet Explorer 11 Compatibility

unknown

Internet Explorer 11 Developer Preview was released on June 26th. Developer Previews are made available so developers and vendors alike can ensure compatibility with their products in advance of public release.

Why is it that Ruckus has not been able to provide compatibility with IE 11 for their Zonedirector products in over 4 months since the developer preview was made available?

No Zonedirector pages will display on IE 11. Not the admin page, not the DPSK/Activation page, nothing. Compatibility mode does not work. The only response on these forums is "not supported, we need to catch up". That is an unacceptable answer.

Users of your products are upgrading to Windows 8.1 and IE 11 right now, they have been for days, and they are finding themselves unable to use your product because you have not been able to provide compatibility with a 4 month head start.

This happened with Apple OSX 10.7 Mountain Lion and more recently with 10.8 Mavericks as well.

Ruckus, your track record here is not good.

Bonjour support was promised in January, and remains vaporware.

What can we, as Ruckus customers (at least for now) expect to be done to improve these issues going forward?

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keith_redfield

@Rob - I hear your frustration but this is kind of an industrywide problem, and one of mostly Microsoft's making.

You're assertion is that because we had access to the developer preview in June that we should have a software release that corrects the issue. That requires a release vehicle and 9.6 was already released by then - and feature frozen much earlier.

Our other choice is to introduce (potentially de-stabilizing) new features in the MR's - which is something we try to avoid at all costs.

Then finally we would have to trust that Microsoft wouldn't change something in their final release (which they've done in the past..)

So...the point is this isn't a simple matter of us being asleep at the wheel.

Can we do better? Absolutely. But it's a non-trivial issue. (do a google search of " internet explorer problem" select vendor of your choosing)

*[I don't know this for sure this applies here, but widespread reports are that IE11 breaks some sites/apps because it is actually standards compliant. The problem is, virtually every webpage/app has a section inside the Javascript which begins with (if IE...) and then has a bunch of workarounds to accomodate their earlier versions. Their now "fixed" browser seems to break due to the workarounds (ironic?). Even Google got hit... ]

unknown

Being told by support to contact my local SE because "there is nothing we can do" isn't a good answer. Neither is blaming Microsoft.

9.6 was released in May but we can't even get word as to whether or not 9.7 *might* provide fixes for longstanding issues with Windows 8 in general, let alone IE 11. You're know faced with a customer base that is going to get IE 11 pushed via MSUpdate to Windows 7 sooner than later...

Even *IF* 9.7 is supposed to address it, you can bet after the last two releases were posted and then immediately yanked (let's all recall the 9.6.0.0.264 debacle), that I won't be chomping at the bit to update.

So based on release cycle and the first MR we can expect Windows 8.1 and IE 11 to be supported when? June 2014?

keith_redfield

Well, that's kind of my point - there is no good answer. In order to provide a happy user experience, all this stuff has to "just work". Had they stayed consistent with IE9/10 behavior we wouldn't be here. But that's a lot like complaining about the weather and so we must react accordingly.

That means finding an appropriate release vehicle, diagnosing the issue, coding for it, adequate testing, etc.

9.7MR1 is not yet scheduled. And while you were very helpful when the 9.6.0 issue hit, I don't blame you for wanting to avoid a repeat 🙂 I will try to post back shortly with some results of testing Win8.1/IE11 with 9.7 and that should provide more clarity.

We're also looking at how we might re-architect the zero-IT system to be more resilient in the face of external changes, but that's a longer-term solution.

unknown

In defence of Ruckus...

not everyone is going to be jumping on 8.1 and IE11!

Remember there is still a huge base of XP/IE8 and W7/IE9 (10 is not good in domain with gp & proxies) out there. Schools (me) and business, will not be moving to latest and greatest (debatable) anytime soon.

This is just sticking to IE compatibility concerns as chrome, firefox even opera are alternatives that work. If you are in a responsible enough admin position to be using a ZD interface then I would assume you could choose a browser as well.

IE11 compatibilty with ZD interface would be very low on my priorities compared to other features I'd like to see improved or implemented.

my 2¢ (from a backward out of touch Brit).

unknown

@Max - I'm in Education and we have very few XP machines left. Thus far we have had few issue with IE 10 - once you understand how Microsoft has changed how Group Policy works for IE10 and Server 2012.

Windows 7 machines are not running IE 9, they are now on 10, and 11 was made available this week. IE 11 will ultimately be pushed via Windows Update to Windows 7, 8 and 8.1, so while I can prevent this via WSUS policy for domain managed machines, our (very large) BYOD contingent isn't under the same restrictions.

When a school board trustee walks in with their brand new Surface Pro 2 and demands access to the wireless, I can't simply say "Sorry, it's not supported".

Circling back to our BYOD group - we have a number of Windows 8 RT devices who cannot get any other form of browser, so they are pretty much hooped. There is also a very large contingent group of Windows 8 devices, in a group of technophiles who will (or may have already) upgrade as soon as they can.

And I can't even provide them an ETA on when it *might* work. That's what is unacceptable.

I agree with you there are other features I'd like to see implemented. We were promised Bonjour gateway support in January by Ruckus' own David Callisch.

keith_redfield

Bonjour Gateway is in 9.7, which is in LCS (Limited Customer Ship) now.

I do want to make a distinction between Windows 8/8.1 and Windows 8 RT. They are completely different operating systems, albeit with similar names.

unknown

David is in marketing.

unknown

What's your point? If a VP from a company promises something, I expect it to be delivered.

keith_redfield

It has been, and will be generally available when 9.7GA is released in the next few weeks.

unknown

I now have 90 plus RT devices that were given to students most of which were upgraded to Windows 8.1 and your saying they are unusable because your looking for a vehicle to release them on?

Why not release a special update/patch outside of the normal firmware updates to at-least get the captive portal working.

For a company of this size im disappointed that it takes this long for a patch or workaround to come out, you would think a company of this size would have the resources to at-least do that?

Has anyone from Ruckus contacted Microsoft to work through the issue?

keith_redfield

Let me try to sort out where we are, and I'll also give a little background why seemingly easy things like releasing a patch aren't so easy.

IE 11 - actually seems to work fine (see https://forums.ruckuswireless.com/ruc... ), so the reported issues seem to be OS related (see below)

Win 8.1/IE11 - That seems to be a problem due to Microsoft dropping RC4 ciphers in 8.1 coincident with us dropping an alternate cipher due to a reported attack vector. You can add RC4 back - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/li... as a workaround, and we should have this corrected in the upcoming 9.6.2 and 9.7.0 releases. Chrome/Firefox also work.

Win 8.1 RT - Nothing to report yet. The workaround is using a separate WLAN with classic PSK.

Patches...Releasing a patch (which 10's of thousands of networks could potentially load, and affecting millions of users) requires us to stop work on something else so that we can fully regression-test to ensure a happy experience. So we've got to balance the impact of that (for RT) over delaying something else (like Win 8.1 support). In other words, fixing things is comparatively quick - it's the testing that's a bear.

Clients are going to continue evolving rapidly, and so we are focusing on better long-term solutions allowing for more graceful failure modes on not-yet-supported platforms.

unknown

Thanks for the reply Keith, but do you know roughly when a patch will be out for the RT issue?

keith_redfield

No information yet.

princess_amazon

I have stopped using Internet explorer 11 after the news surfaced that Google has stopped support for IE11. Now I am using Internet Explorer 11 alternatives. Mozilla and Chrome is the best.