Unleashed at home, cannot get it to work

[david_henderson]

I just purchased an unleashed R600 for my home and cannot seem to get it to work. My current AP is an older Apple Airport Extreme that had this physical hookup

Cable Modem<---->Airport Extreme<---->Netgear switch

The Airport Extreme acted as the DHCP server on my home network. I currently have the Ruckus plugged into my Netgear switch and the cable modem plugged into my Netgear switch. When I work my way through the Ruckus wizard I choose static IP for the R600 since I want it to now be my DHCP server for the network. Once configured and I join my newly created network, I get an IP address on my MacBook Pro from the Ruckus but no internet connectivity.

I have been working on this for several hours with a few resets on the R600 in between with no luck. Any idea what the problem is?

I have even tried the R600 inline with a connection similar to my Airport Extreme. I used both ethernet ports on my R600 like this:
Cable Modem<---->R600<---->Netgear switch

What is interesting is if I leave my Airport Extreme connected an active and just hang the R600 off my Netgear switch, all works fine. In other words, if I use the R600 for connectivity and the Airport Extreme for DHCP I can get internet access. I want to use the R600 for DHCP though

[john_d]

You can indeed flash it as a standalone AP just by uploading standalone firmware. Standalone supports NAT though apart from basic NAT it's not very flexible. Which is why I like a dedicated router. For home networks I think a Tomato / DD-WRT setup is almost certainly a better bet since it gives you a lot more network visibility, and gives you more control over port forwarding, dynamic DNS, traffic shaping, and so on.

The "issue" with supporting NAT on Unleashed is that it's fundamentally incompatible with the Unleashed goal of self-organizing automatic failover, and so on. Having one AP wired as a gateway into the cable modem makes the network inherently asymmetrical.

[david_henderson]

Thanks for everyone's quick responses. As much as I like the Ruckus unleashed I will be sending it back and purchasing a consumer grade wifi router. I might go the route of Tomato firmware to get some added functionality. 

[john_d]

I've been there done that, and found that consumer 802.11ac equipment is all very flaky with multiple simultaneous clients. Ruckus is still the best way to go for rock solid wifi. But Ruckus sticks with what they're good at instead of trying to deliver the kitchen sink... The combination of a consumer router (with wireless part turned off) and Ruckus wifi is still by far my preference if you have the budget for it. I deployed this combo in two homes to replace various hacky DD-WRT wifi setups and couldn't be happier.

[david_henderson]

Still trying to weigh my options here. I could use the older Airport Extreme for DHCP and NAT and use the Ruckus R600 for wifi. This has the advantage of killer wifi but at that point I still have two boxes to deal with. Also purchasing a high end ASUS or Linksys will still cost me half of what the Ruckus costs and give me one box. In the end, I do not need additional speed at home (Airport Extreme 802.11n), I need better coverage. My house is not big but the Airport Extreme gives very poor or non-existent wifi signal in the bedroom and porch.

I am an IT professional and after researching multiple different wireless solutions for the school district I work for, just two weeks ago we decided to install 400 Ruckus R710 APs, virtual Smartzone controllers, Cloudpath, etc. The Ruckus gear was impressive during our testing so I decided to purchase one for my home

[michael_brado]

If you don't intend to add other Unleashed APs to your network, then you can re-flash your AP with our Standalone 100.x image, to turn your AP into a WiFi router with NAT and local DHCP...

You'll get best in class performance from your R710s under SZ management for your Enterprise use.