A:Absolutely!  And this is already underway.  With the explosion of wireless-enabled devices hitting the market, there is a pent up demand for better and faster wireless connectivity.  Enterprise environments are becoming much more dynamic and mobile in nature given the popularity of mobile Internet applications. This is driving interest in new technologies such as 802.11n. Three primary roadblocks inhibit the mass adoption of 802.11n: price, performance and standardisation. With 802.11n now ratified as an IEE standard, Ruckus Wireless has eliminated both the price and performance barriers with the recent introduction of a new line of enterprise access points that, for the first time, bring the price of 802.11n to under US $500 with performance that beats higher-end products.  In the last quarter, worldwide revenue shipments of 802.11n products surpassed 802.11g products and continue to rise quickly.

A:Because dual-band 802.11n provides support in both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, IT managers are better able to support a wider range of applications from wireless meshing to high capacity environments. The 5GHz radios can be used to establish wireless mesh connections to build a wireless backbone. This eliminates having to cable every access point to an Ethernet connection—making deployment much simpler.  IT managers need only find a power source, plug the AP in and walk away.  At the same time, the 2.4GHz radio can be used to service client traffic. When combining the attributes of dual-band 802.11n with advanced quality of service techniques, smart antenna arrays and tagging, IT managers can now begin to support latency-sensitive applications much better such as streaming IP-based video, voice and other multimedia applications.

A:802.11 will never fully replace a wired network. While it might eliminate pulling Ethernet cable to every cube or office, wired connections will still be required. However 802.11n, when combined with enhancements such as dynamic beamforming that dramatically increases the reliability of the medium, will become the primary access method for the enterprise over time. Because of Wi-Fi’s instability, it has always been viewed as a backup or secondary means of connectivity. But with more mobile devices that don’t have Ethernet jack and more robust implementations of Wi-Fi, such as from Ruckus Wireless that increases both the range and reliability of Wi-Fi connections, 802.11n will undoubtedly become the primary means of connecting to a network with Ethernet cabling now becoming the backup.

A:Within the enterprise, delivering streaming video and other broadcast applications are often best served through multicast transmissions. It’s projected that over the next two years, video will become the dominant application over enterprise networks. Multicast-to-unicast conversion is essential for delivering streaming video content over Wi-Fi. The 802.11 protocol inherently treats multicast traffic as best effort traffic only, giving it no priority or preference. By automatically converting this traffic to unicast, IT manager can now be confident that streaming video over Wi-Fi will actually work properly without a lot of configuration, optimisation and tuning of the network.

A:We achieve this by combining world-class engineering and state-of-the-art manufacturing that yields very low cost, high-value products that cannot be matched in price and performance. Because of our heritage in manufacturing large volume products for telecommunications providers, we are able to leverage economies of scale as well as extend carrier-class technology into enterprise class products at a much lower cost of manufacturing.

A:Smart Wi-Fi works by leveraging advancements in Wi-Fi technology such as miniaturised intelligent antenna arrays and RF signal control software to increase the range and reliability of wireless communications. Smart Wi-Fi works by focusing and directing Wi-Fi transmissions over the best performing signal path for each client and constantly “steering” or “switching” these transmissions when interference or obstacles that impede performance as experienced. By focusing Wi-Fi “beams” and steering them around interference, enterprises realise much better performance at longer distances. It also dramatically reduces packet loss and brings in the ability to confidently support latency-sensitive applications over Wi-Fi such as IP-based voice and streaming video. Consequently, enterprises can deploy fewer access points that yield more stable and consistent performance for a given area. This reduces both capital and operational expenses.  Additionally, the Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi technology supports advanced meshing techniques that effectively eliminate the need to run an Ethernet cable to every Wi-Fi access point. This further reduces operational cost and complexity and cuts deployment time up to half.

A:Ruckus has a philosophy of sharing useful tools and applications that help customers optimise their wireless networks.  Zap is the first proof of point of this philosophy – and there will be more.Zap helps the larger wireless ecosystem by providing a useful, free tool for anyone interested in characterising the behaviour of their wireless infrastructure.   It was developed specifically for wireless networks.  While IxChariot and NetPerf are good tools for determining average (50%) throughput, they are expensive and don't do the best job in sampling to the 99.5 percentile.Zap works by sending controlled bursts of packets and measuring both packet loss and inter-arrival times. The primary results reported are number of packets lost, total packets received and detailed throughput statistics. Because Zap provides a measure of both throughput and consistency over time and distance, it has particular importance to streaming video, voice and other latency-sensitive applications.Beyond Zap, we don’t have any publicly announced open-source initiatives that we can discuss.

A:With ZoneFlex 7300 series, Ruckus Wireless has made enterprise class Wi-Fi more affordable for its customers in India and globally.The first sub-$500 enterprise-class 802.11n access point, the ZoneFlex 7300 series includes both single-band (7343) and dual band (7363) products, priced at US $499 and $599 respectively. With maximum 802.11n capacity of 300Mbps (single band) or 600Mbps (dual band), the ZoneFlex 7300 has been measured to deliver unparalleled throughput of 210Mbps at short ranges (10 to 20 feet) and over 120 Mbps at longer ranges (60 to 100 feet) within a typical, walled office environment – making it the industry’s lowest cost, highest performing line of 802.11n access points. Unlike any other 802.11n access points, Ruckus ZoneFlex access points integrate BeamFlex, a patented software-controlled multi-antenna array that forms and directs Wi-Fi signals over the best performing signal paths in real time, on a per packet basis.  As RF environments change, Ruckus ZoneFlex APs are able to automatically select better signal paths to increase performance and minimise packet loss, thereby ensuring good, consistent user experience.  In contrast, access points with omni-directional antennas have difficulty coping with obstacles and interference and must resort to dropping their data rate.  This degrades performance for all users sharing an access point.

A:Compared to other wireless vendors, Ruckus offers unique advantages that remain unmatched in the marketplace.   Our wireless LAN system is typically half the cost of comparable systems from Aruba, Cisco, Proximate and others – delivering two to three times the range, twice the performance at half of the cost.   We are the only wireless supplier that integrates a patented smart antenna array and supports dynamic beam forming to enable unprecedented performance at longer distances. Consequently, this unique value proposition has allowed us to win some of the largest hotels, schools and hospitals in India such as Lovely Professional University, Thapar University, NIIT University, Sardar Vallab Bhai Patel National Police Academy, Bharat Diamond Bourse Grand Hyatt Mumbai, Leonia Resorts, Apollo Hospitals , Desert Medicine Research Centre, Seven Hills Health City and Tikona Digital Networks who has now deployed more than 25,000 access points across 15 cities throughout India.

A:Meraki has focused their attention on the SMB market with low-cost access point and a cloud-based management model.  Their technology doesn’t address some of the fundamental issues of range, reliability and performance that are essential to larger enterprise customers. In contrast, Ruckus has focused on the middle portion of the enterprise market where range, reliability and consistent performance are essential.  Unlike Meraki, the Ruckus system explicitly controls the quality and Wi-Fi transmissions and our controller-based system, from a cost perspective – rivals Meraki’s cloud-based model.  This gives enterprises much more control over their own infrastructure which is strategic to their business.