topic vSCG / R300 request for a B/G WLAN in Access Points - Indoor and Outdoor

vSCG / R300 request for a B/G WLAN

bobby_wittenber — Tue, 04 Aug 2015 17:34:29 GMT

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!

Re: vSCG / R300 request for a B/G WLAN

john_d — Tue, 04 Aug 2015 17:43:08 GMT

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.

Re: vSCG / R300 request for a B/G WLAN

michael_brado — Tue, 04 Aug 2015 17:57:23 GMT

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.