How can I convince a Home user to opt for R300 AP ? Will the throughput and range differ when compared to other AP under low Density .

[shrenik_jain_72]

How can I convince a Home user to opt for R300 AP ? Will the throughput and range differ when compared to other AP in a small home envirionment with low Density of Client loads

[john_d]

Generally speaking, home devices are great at the 1 AP to 1 (active) client and might even outperform enterprise-class devices for this use case. So especially when you are comparing a 2x2:2 N product to consumer 3x3:3 or even 4x4:3 equipment at the same price point, I would advise against promising better performance.

However, there's areas where Ruckus (and other enteprise class equipment) clearly beat consumer grade equipment, including:

• Long term reliability — consumer equipment often needs rebooting or mysteriously stops working or has performance that degrades over time. This could be very frustrating to debug. Furthermore, their firmware updates are of wildly varying quality from update to update, maybe solving one problem in exchange for a couple more.
• AP range especially in denser environments (like apartment complexes). Ruckus's beamforming and superior RX sensitivity gives it a noticeable range advantage compared to consumer equipment, especially when dealing with mobile devices and other devices with low transmit power and small receive antennas.
• 2.4GHz usability in dense environments: The consumer approach of just cranking up power on omnidirectional antennas is ill fit to deal with neighbors on 2.4GHz, and that kind of interaction is often beyond the testing of consumer equipment and as a result it rarely performs well in crowded environments.
• Concurrent multi client usage. Enterprise AP's generally have QoS and Airtime Fairness and other technologies that result in more stable wifi with multiple concurrent users (for example, one person streaming Netflix while another machine tries to back up to a network drive).

Overall though, if your customer is price conscious, I would not attempt to pitch an enterprise grade wifi solution at consumers. The minimum I would recommend would be something like a Zoneflex R500 or H500 which is at least AC capable. The extra wide 80MHz channels is a perfect fit for consumer environments and often leads to doubled throughput on devices like tablets and phones.

If instead your consumer is willing to pay a premium for something rock solid and low maintenance, regardless of whether or not it will win at a cheap consumer benchmark (e.g. 1 device 1 AP, 10 feet line of sight), then pitching a Ruckus product might be appropriate.


Note that there is a bit of a middle ground that might be great for consumers on the fence: Ruckus's new XClaim Wireless line of products. These are more geared towards consumers / SOHO audiences and their needs, such as easy controllerless configuration via iOS / Android apps as well as a cost structure that's not reliant on annual support contracts. Note that they do not have Beamflex adaptive antenna technology, though, which IMO is one of the best parts of having a Ruckus AP.