Newbie to the fold with a few questions!

[jason_sparrow]

Hi all,

Im looking at jumping from the Unifi ship as i find their products extremely frustrating, coverage poor and things are showing disabled when they aren't etc so...

I live in a standard two story house and at present, i have aUnifi AP pro on the landing upstairs, and one in the main living room downstairs. This provides reasonable coverage on the 5ghz band, but regardless of settings etc, most of our devices are roaming like mad, even when they havent moved for a hour or so, and when our iphones sleep, they disconnect and latch on to the mobile network which in turn uses my data allowance.

What Ruckus product would you recommend to replace my existing Ap Pros?

Do i need two of a higher spec?

My current set up is a Ubiquiti Edgerouter poe, am 802.11af 16 port switch (which provides the 48V to the AP's)

many thanks for any help

🙂

[john_d]

You should definitely find that Ruckus AP's provide better coverage area and reliability than Ubiquiti AP's. Everyone that moved to a Broadcom-based 802.11ac solution seemed to have gone downhill, and that includes Ubiquiti and even Aruba.

With that said, the laws of physics still apply to 5GHz penetration, especially for mobile devices that don't have the best antennas on their end. You might find yourself needing two, but you should find that combo working better.

If you primarily have mobile and other 1 or 2 stream devices, you might find that the R500 hits a good price to performance ratio. It's a 2 stream AC Wave 1 AP, so for iPhones/iPads it will perform just as good as the top end of the Ruckus lineup at a fraction of the cost.


At my home, I have 1 R700 and 1 R600, and that overkill combo covers my 1200 sq ft apartment with flawless 300-400mbit 802.11ac everywhere. I could probably get away with a single AP, but when I tried this setup there were a few areas with lots of walls that resulted in 5GHz dead spots for mobile clients.

So maybe starting with one R500 or R600 is a good way to go, and then upgrade as you see fit.

[jason_sparrow]

Hi John, and many thanks for your input.

My current AP's are not AC standard but N operating on the 2.4 & 5 bands.

Most of our devices are Apple iPhones, pads, Macbook Pro which are all AC compatible, however, my wife has a work laptop that isnt.

Im assuming the Ruckus AP's are backwards compatible also?

Also, will they work via my 48V poe switch? Its one of these...

http://www.linksys.com/us/p/P-LGS116P/

[john_d]

Of course, all Ruckus 802.11ac AP's are backwards compatible with B/G/N, so you will be fine. Of the devices you listed, only the Macbook Pro has a 3-stream wifi card, which means that the rest of them will perform the same whether you buy an R500 or R600/R700/R710. All these AP models mentioned are simultaneous dual band 2.4GHz and 5GHz.

And yes, all Ruckus AP's operate on standard PoE like what your switch provides. In fact, the R500/600/700 will do so with no compromised functionality whatsoever. The only exception is the newest AP, the Wave 2 R710, will be slightly compromised when it runs on standard POE rather than POE+. Specifically, you can't use 2xgigabit link aggregation and 2.4GHz transmit power is capped. Still, though, that is a very minor compromise, and I would still be more than happy to run that setup.

[jason_sparrow]

Thanks again.

Lastly (i think!) would i be better to get 2 x 500's to replace my existing or 1 x 600 upstairs for the whole house?

Just trying not to empty my wallet too much!