Ruckus access points (APs) take center stage @ MWC 2019

The Ruckus Room recently met up with Dennis Huang, Enterprise WLAN and IoT Director, Ruckus Networks, at MWC 2019. We spoke with Huang in the Ruckus booth where he was showcasing the company’s extensive lineup of indoor, outdoor and mobile access points (APs).

“We have outdoor and indoor APs, but as a vendor, we're very good at innovating that next new form factor of access points. So, we’re showcasing our mobile access points, as well as our embeddable APs,” Huang told The Ruckus Room.

“The mobile AP is a different form factor. Although it is [deployed as] an indoor AP, the backhaul is [enabled] via LTE. A dual redundant failover SIM card goes into this mobile access point and enables connectivity – without wires on the back-end.”

As Huang noted, Ruckus’ mobile AP is well suited for transportation and emergency use cases.

“You can put our mobile access point – in this particular case our M510 – inside buses, emergency response vehicles and trains,” he stated.

Huang also highlighted the Ruckus E510 embedded AP, which is targeted at high-density deployments such as stadiums.

“We specifically designed the Ruckus E510 for stadiums. These Wi-Fi deployments are problematic due to space constraints,” he elaborated. “So, we built a miniaturized outdoor embeddable AP which is tucked underneath and between a seat, placed on the concrete [slab] that sits right behind [seating].”

A combination of physical space limitations and environmental factors, said Huang, made it challenging for engineers to put the antennas directly inside the APs.

“This is why we decoupled our antenna systems, which includes our patented Ruckus BeamFlex technology. We separated that from the actual base of the APs themselves,” he explained. “This is how we’re able to tuck the APs behind a chair and keep the antenna subsystems separate.”

Huang also spoke with The Ruckus Room about the new Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) standard, which is slated to be ratified during 2019.

“Testing compliance will happen towards the end of 2019. Our Wi-Fi 6 APs are ready to go. We have our first R730 AP which we announced last year – and started shipping towards the second half of last year,” he told The Ruckus Room. “This is an access point that we're calling a converged AP because it supports Wi-Fi 6, along with Bluetooth^® Low Energy and Zigbee.”

This capability, said Huang, means the R730 supports Wi-Fi endpoints as well as a range of IoT devices, whether they are based on Zigbee or Bluetooth^® Low Energy, or if they are smart door locks or smart LED lights.

In addition to discussing Ruckus’ wireless access points, Huang spoke with us about the company’s wired portfolio. More specifically, Huang highlighted the ICX 7650 which delivers multi-gigabit Ethernet access (2.5/5/10GbE), high PoE output (802.3bt), as well as 10 Gigabit ethernet aggregation and 40/100GbE uplink options.  

“Remember, a Wi-Fi network is only as good as the wired network behind it. This is why both our switches and access points are well supported and managed by our SmartZone network controller. SmartZone allows even [smaller] IT departments to more easily manage their wired and wireless networks using a single network element,” he concluded.