Still no updates about an Unleashed image release for the R730 AP ? ..

[matt_winchell]

Can anyone shed some light on this? I was under the impression that the latest Unleashed image would've included support for R730 - unfortunately, that's not the case.

[michael_brado]

PM says there will not be Unleashed on R730.

[matt_winchell]

That's HIGHLY disappointing. The R730 works like crap in stand alone mode. Highly, highly disappointing, Ruckus.

[hyosang_choi]

Reallly? Why it doesnt?

Wow.

Many customer will hope to release unleashed ap of r730

[michael_brado]

Hello,

   Product Marketing have offered insight/an answer. Both R730 and R750 are high-end APs. 
The predominant number of Unleashed customers buy entry to mid-range APs. They chose
to decide on one next-gen high-end AP, the R750 over the R730 for a couple reasons.

  The R730 is an 8x8 with more expensive hardware, where the R750 is 4x4.  Given that Unleashed
customers are typically more price sensitive, they decided only to support Unleashed on R750 APs
which also saves engineering resources.

   If you see different performance between Solo R730 and ZD/SZ managed, please open a ticket,
so we can see what might be happening?  WireShark trace of similar configured WLAN encryption
and authentication, should provide some details. Thanks.

[john_d]

Thanks for the explanation Michael, it's good to understand that it was a choice based off which product Unleashed customers were most likely to be interested in, not a sign that the R730's fate is sealed.

In terms of differences between Solo and ZD/SZ R730, the biggest dealbreaker I personally saw with Solo was the lack of DFS channel support. I think DFS channels in the context of a 802.11ac+ AP is a big deal, since in the US there's no contiguous 160MHz channels and only 1 80p80 channel without DFS (and ironically home / small business deployments are likely where one can use these wide channels effectively). Plus the special channel 144 in the US tends to be the cleanest 802.11ac channel since only .ac-capable clients have support for it.

Other than that I like Unleashed because other than SZ, Unleashed has the next best resiliency against single point of failure. And while Mesh isn't supported on R730 yet, one day I do hope to use Mesh with R730.

To play devil's advocate, I've used wireless solutions from many different vendors. One of the most unique things about Ruckus's AP's is that the same hardware works with a variety of controller schemes. Nobody else offers that. Between the 4 Ruckus installations I manage, I've bought dozens of APs and almost all of them have ended up running a different kind of firmware due to my needs changing in unforeseen ways. It still is a big selling point for Ruckus that you don't have to set any network architecture decisions in stone when buying AP's.