Ruckus vs Aruba

[reicherb]

We are looking to deploy a campus wide WLAN in a k-12 school district. My initial impression is that an Aruba system with the PEF firewall is a far more feature rich solution than Ruckus but all of the neighboring school districts are going with Ruckus. I have a very short amount of time (this week) to make a decision and don't have a lot of wireless experience or knowledge. For those of you that are in the know, what do you prefer and why?

Today we only care about providing coverage but within 24 months every student could have a wireless device being used in the classroom. We also will have iPads for all staff members in a few months and plan for each of the classrooms to have an Apple TV.

We'd like the ability to control access by what AD group a user is in as well as what type of device they connect with. I know Aruba can do this. I don't think Ruckus can but am not sure. I beleive this really is the differentiator moving forward. As we have more and more devices in the hands of staff and students, some being district own, some being personal devices, it seems like having granular control (without managing each device) is going to be huge.

Aruba can limit bandwidth by device. Ruckus is by group. That seems like a big factor but maybe not..

I'm sure I'm just touching the surface of the differences and what is important. Please educate me!

Thanks.

 

[reicherb]

I should have also mentioned that I beleive the Aruba tunneling all of the traffic through the controller is actually a benefit. I'm not a switch guru (can't be a master of anything in a 2000 student k-12 district) and could easily add SSIDs/VLANs on the controller without having to touch the rest of the network. That seems to be to make it a more flexible solution.

 

[ScottMac]

Have you talked to the other districts to see why they went with Ruckus?

I have worked a little with some Ruckus stuff (just local AP stuff), and found it to be decent stuff, FWIW. It might be good to have similar equipment as the other districts, especially if they deploy ahead of you so you can get a hint of the ease/pain involved. It also may give you someone to talk to about any operational problems you encounter.
Sometimes the manufacturer/vendor knows the technology real well, but can't apply it to the given application ... having someone available that understands both can be a big asset when the fecus flys into the fan blade (IMO).

 

[reicherb]

There is a huge value to doing the same thing other districts are doing. To be honest, that is one of the reasons I'm considering Ruckus. My fear is that they are installing it only because it's the cheapest and not looking at features and how it will fit their needs in the future.

I have 1 year of experience supporting an Aruba solution in another district (I just changed districts) and was very happy with it but because of the way it was implemented, there wasn't much investigation into other options at the time.

 

[Pheran]

I've worked professionally with both Aruba and Cisco wireless gear and both are decent. I have to admit I've never even heard of Ruckus. If they have a controller-less solution as you imply in your second post, I wouldn't recommend it. We have one other wireless vendor that doesn't have centralized controllers and it's a pain. But, as you mention, you have to weigh that against departing from what everyone else is doing, and the ability to draw against their experience.

 

[imagoon]

Having worked with aruba, we did it because we could use one [well pair for redundancy] huge controller to control locations across the entire country. The AP groups can be configured to send data straight to the internal network with out going through the central controller. This allowed us to manage a entire location via the controller but drop the data in to the local network for performance reasons. IE it would be a waste to tunnel to the controllers at 5Mbps when the APs can do wireless N etc. We did this with about 300 locations.

It also allowed us to do "Remote AP." The AP attaches to any Internet connections and tunnels to the controllers via IPSEC and can then export the internal LAN on the wireless or the "inside" Ethernet. Basically any device attached to it look like they are on a company internal IP range.

 

[reicherb]

Ruckus is a controller based solution but the controller is only used for AP configuration.

The remote AP solution that Aruba offers is really cool for remote offices but doesn't really apply in our school environment.

 

[imagoon]

Ruckus is a controller based solution but the controller is only used for AP configuration.

The remote AP solution that Aruba offers is really cool for remote offices but doesn't really apply in our school environment.

Ruckus does "virtual controller." My main memory when I was comparing the products was that Ruckus was slightly cheaper but didn't have the central management abilities the Aruba had.

 

[DainBrammage]

Ill tell you why they went with Ruckus because its cheap and IMO its junk . Ruckus has tried to go IPO at lease three time only to pull back every time because its financials suck. Protect your investment and go either Aruba or Cisco. Yes Cisco, will cost more but its worth every penny

 

[skyking]

I have a small 6 AP Ruckus system at a Skilled Nursing Facility. I only have a year of experience with it but so far, so good.

 

[reicherb]

I was allowed to go with Aruba. Ruckus was a bit cheaper but the Aruba solution is far more feature rich.

 

[ScoobMaster]

I think you made a good choice. I also work in a K-12 school district. We have all Cisco equipment, but some other districts in our immediate area use Aruba (I have personally used their equipment supporting regional technology conferences). It is a solid solution and very dependable.

I honestly had never heard of Ruckus until I read this thread.

 

[TheWireguys]

Sorry I am late to the party but if your looking for awesome WIFI performance I would strongly recommend Ruckus. They are the only WIFI manufactures that started with the APs. Their beam forming feature is fantastic at delivering greater range and throughput then any other system on the market. Their APs truly are as good as they say they are.

Have a look at this third party review comparing Ruckus,Cisco, Aruba and others....

https://thewireguys.box.com/s/gjo1yhctdy47spk0kck3