TO make a long story longer......
It appears that the Ruckus AP's do not like Cisco Switches.... at least older ones. After many (many) hours or swapping this and changing that, testing different configurations, SSID's, channels, locations, LAN drops, POE injectors...... WHEW!
The AP location in question was attached to a Cisco CE500 Layer-2 switch (an older business class switch from around 2008). With the exception of one other AP in the building, all other AP's are connected to newer Cisco WS2960 Layer-3 switches. As soon as we place this offending AP onto a WS2960, it seemed to be happy, and yesterday it was reported to me that we had about 40 Chromebooks connected in the area with NO issues at all. What is weird is that the (1) AP on another CE500 in the same hallway is running fine.... PLUS I have (10) APs over at another building that (I must check first) are likely ALSO on CE500 switches and are running fine.
We will need to do some more digging to document exactly which AP is connected to which switch to make a final determination if it is in fact the CE500 series switches in general or just this one CE500 switch that was the offender.
In any event, it took us about 3 weeks to figure it all out. Now I can get back to my other help desk tickets which have been piling up.........
Have a great holiday season everyone.
Glenn Wehe
Montana