VPN HOWTO

[timothy_twelves]

Hi,

Recently purchased R510 and upgraded to 200.10.  Awesome.

How do I purchase a 3rd party VPN service and connect to it?  Is there any easy guide? Is it possible?  My R510 connects to my ONT and sets up a PPPoE fibre connection.  I want it to then connect to a 3rd party VPN service.

Thank you,

-Timothy

[DarrelRhodes]

Hi Timothy,

You cannot use the Ruckus R510 to act as a VPN client for your entire network to work behind, that type of function is normally performed by dedicated WAN routers.

You can use a software VPN on your devices (Windows, Mac, iOS, QNAP, etc) from a 3rd party provider such as Private Internet Access.

However if you want a VPN for your entire network you will need to purchase a 3rd party WAN router with VPN client functionality as well as the VPN service itself.

Hope that helps,
Darrel.

[eizens_putnins]

Darell is absolutely correct -- you can't use Ruckus AP as VPN gateway for any third-part service. What you can do, is to tunnel SSID traffic to ZD or vSZ-D device through Internet, using encrypted tunnel (so you can use Ruckus VPN feature). This is easy configurable -- with 1 click actually in AP configuration, works very stable and is supportable in corporate environment.

For any third-party VPNs you need separate device, which you can configure as needed. AP doesn't allow that much configuration as you need to use some third-party VPNs. This is mainly because of 2 reasons -- such functionality isn't required/used in eneterprise networks, and it makes support of solution very complicated.

So there is no such feature and probably will never be. In the past there were e devices from some manufacturers, which combined  in 1 device remote branch router (with VPN support) and AP, and some of them could connect to the third-party VPN concentrators, but they haven't got much success on the market.

Such feature is a common place in SOHO enthusiast devices (WRT and similar), which basically use linux distributions and can support almost any Linux supported functions, but there is no much practical use for that.

[timothy_twelves]

Okay.  Thank you.

This is a feature that I would specifically purchase and pay for as a consumer.  As an enterprise customer I need this.

WRT and others have this functionality for consumer but this is not necessarily simple enough for deployment at scale though I will investigate.

On the statement:

tunnel SSID traffic to ZD or vSZ-D device through Internet, using encrypted tunnel (so you can use Ruckus VPN feature)

Does that mean, in the enterprise context, that I could deploy a ZD/vSZ-D device deployed on the corporate edge and then have that traffic enter the enterprise over the tunnel?  Is there a preferred device that could be purchased for a corporate/enterprise edge?

In the consumer context there is no easy solution that could be purchased.  How do I submit a feature request?

but there is no much practical use for that.

I would pay for this now.

[DarrelRhodes]

Hi Timothy,

All Ruckus APs support GRE Tunnelling to a Ruckus SmartZone Dataplane (SZ-D). A Dataplane is either built-in to a SmartZone Appliance (SZ-144) or a separately managed appliance or VM, in the case of the virtual SmartZone (vSZ).

https://www.commscope.com/product-type/enterprise-networking/control-management/data-plane/data-plan...

Providing the Dataplane is reachable via the internet or network (e.g. MPLS) then an SSID (WLAN) can be configured for all or specified (split-traffic) to be tunnelled to the dataplane.  More information here: https://purdi.com/ruckus-wireless/ruckus-data-plane-making-remote-working-easy/

If you require this type of service as a consumer, I would recommend you speak to your local Ruckus partner and investigate whether they offer MSP services with their own centrally-hosted SZ and SZ-D (dataplane) for you to tunnel traffic to.

https://extapps.commscope.com/howtobuy/RuckusChannelPartner

Regards,
Darrel.