Ruckus system is really awesome and works just as I hoped + some minor suggestions for Ruckus

[peter_w_9h7tcet]

I have lived in the same three-story house for 12 years which doubles as my home office and my wife's permanent office.  It's a building totally over-engineered from concrete. Inside the concrete we have re-bars and so every room is almost like a Faraday cage.  I had been placing my legacy APs by windows with huge antennae to reach outdoor IP cams.

My wifi has been terrible for these whole 12 years.  I had a Cisco small business wireless router (which actually was one of my few reliable network components) and all manner of supposedly top of the range home use wired access points - Amped, Linksys, and Asus.  I ended up with one wireless router plus 6 access points and still constant dropped connections and black spots, plus a total inability to roam between zones.

On the general forums it didn't take long to be recommended Ruckus APs and a zone director. and I have been asking a whole bunch of novice questions here on the Ruckus Forum as I have selected and implemented my new set up.  Having got so much help, I thought it only fair to report back.

I ended up buying two ICX 7150 C12 PoE switches, a ZD1200, and five R720s.

Now it's all up and running, my WiFi is unbelievably good.  strong signal everywhere, no more drop out during important operations such as internet chess!  The R720s also have just as good range as my legacy APs with the huge antennae.  Absolutely delighted with the results, except for one rogue IP cam that keeps sticking to the wrong AP (and I'm guessing the fix is probably to buy a new IP cam).

Although the R720s might seem overspecified, they were fairly well priced on eBay/Amazon at around $400 each, and not a lot more expensive than say R700s.  I thought installing the R720s would be phase 1 and there would be some black spots to deal with, but the range is really awesome from these things and I'm all done with 5 APs (versus 7 wireless sources previously).

It's a great product.  Really.  The only gripe I have is that I was denied free support as I was told I had breached my warranty by buying off eBay.  Had I known upfront, I would have used Amazon as the R720s were on sale and only $10 more there (although who knows the supplier there may not have been an authorized reseller).  I was asked for a whole bunch of information, including all serial numbers before Ruckus told me about the eBay issue.  As a consumer, it doesn't feel quite fair to be told by a supplier such as Ruckus that you haven't got a warranty as you didn't buy the product from one of their authorized suppliers, as I'm guessing few of us home users would go to the trouble of checking who is and who is not authorized before we buy.   

The other suggestions I have made here are that the web interface on the ZD1200 includes a facility to label your clients which would be handy if like me you have a whole bunch of IP cams around the place.  Also, if we could disable clients by AP from the ZD this would help deal with the problem of a client clinging to the wrong AP (I only have this problem with one cam).  The other suggestion would be that users can set up ICX switches without needing to use CLI -  these days you should be able to do this from a web interface.

Overall a great product and I'll probably be a loyal customer for life.  It's actually well worthwhile installing commercial-grade network equipment for home/office use as it just works so much better.

 

[Nikita]

Hi Peter! Just a comment on Web access to ICX switch. It is available and you can find a video on how to enable it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YC8ZUoalvKk

To the best of my knowledge Web interface does not provide all the capabilities that CLI does, however may be good enough for your purposes.

[simon_pollard]

The web interface will be updated in a future software release, currently scheduled for late 2020.

[peter_w_9h7tcet]

Thanks Nikita - Quick setup guide has you using CLI for setting of username/password and also fixed IP address. Sounds like Ruckus is onto this and will be updating their firmware.

[hayward_kong]

Peter, I’m glad you found that ruckus APs worked well for you. Yeah, I normally point all my clients to a local authorized ruckus dealer so they can get the limited lifetime warranty. I might started my journey with Ruckus with clients in 2014 and then I was so impressed that I got myself 2x r710 for $700 each . r710 just came out in summer of 2015.  I just ran them in stand-alone mode and in early 2016 unleashed was announced and eventually I went over to unleashed. These days I refer friends and family to get used r510/r610/r710 on eBay since they are pretty reliable.