Advice on home office standalone AP (R310 or R510 ?)

[stephane_fouche]

Hello all,

I am looking to deploy one AP for a home office (5 to 8 clients), with no controller or anything (cannot justify the cost and benefits of a controller for 1 AP).

I was thinking of going for the R310, but I see that it is end of sales in Mach 2021. Should I go the R510 route? Or something else?

Will appreciate any advice.

Thx

[dan_kern]

Personally, for home use, a few years ago I picked up a couple of ZoneFlex 7962's and used them as Standalone Access Points attached to my existing TP-Link Router.  They worked great for years. 

When remodeling my home, I wanted to update to something a little smaller and maybe even Mesh Capable.  On ebay, I over a few months time, I pickup up a 4 older R500's,  for around $50 each including freight, and installed the last supported version of Ruckus Unleashed Firmware on them and setup a really nice Mesh Network around my home for less than the cost of any retail grade single Mesh capable single Access Point. 

It has been working great for over a year now, and because they are commercial grade, I suspect they will continue to work for a very long time. The downside is that there are no more software upgrades coming and they are no longer officially "Supported", except for possible glaring security patches that may come out on occasion, but I'm ok with that as they do exactly what I need them to do at home for very little money. 

You can also use a Standalone Version of the Ruckus Firmware on them and simply add them to your existing router as a Stand Alone Access Points connected directly to your existing router  which works great as well.  Hope this helps! 

[ms264556]

I totally agree with Dan about buying old Ruckus stuff.

If you're a techy/tinkerer and must play around with the latest Unleashed releases, then an R320 or R510 are OK. Not bargains though, and you have to be careful to buy them from an official reseller or you get no support at all from Ruckus.

If you just want to get a fantastic wifi signal, then buy a 2nd hand R600 off eBay for under $50. They're ridiculously cheap for the performance you get. They're smaller than an R510, and not as ugly. And for a home office are probably better performing than an R510 too.

If you can't wait for a cheap R600 (or R500 at a pinch) to show up on eBay, then an R700 is OKish too - you won't get Unleashed, but once you've gone through the ugly setup webinterface then you can just plug it in and forget about it.

[stephane_fouche]

I have not thought of picking up an old R500 or R600. This is a great idea. Thank you !

[stephane_fouche]

Just to close the loop, here what happened:
- Bought a second hand R500
- It arrived without power supply , yay...
- I got a PoE injector
- the AP had the zone ctrl firmware
- Downloaded the "stand-alone" firmware + & set it up and it works like a charm.

The difference with my old AP is just ridiculous.

Anyways, all good now (yay). 
Just a question, what exactly are the differences between the "Stand-alone" and the "unleashed" firmware?
Does anyone know?

Cheers,