Introduction
In this forth part of the series, I am comparing UniFi and Ruckus unleashed from ease of use stand point of view. As a home user, this can be a deal maker or breaker to some.
Ease of Setup
Both systems can be setup as a standalone access point or as a part of local controller based system. I prefer using controllers, especially with multiple access point setup.
Controller install/setup
When you use a controller, the main part of setup for both system becomes initial install or setup of the controller.
For UniFi, I have been using UDM Pro. So 3 and half years ago, I went through step by step configuration. For Ruckus Unleashed, the first access point (AP) I setup on the network becomes a master controller in addition to normal access point function. Any additional access points after this will copy that configuration. So in an event if master controller AP becomes unavailable for whatever the reason, another AP can immediately take over and system continues to function.
Ruckus sells their APs with unleashed firmware preinstalled or standalone/other mode of operation standard version. This is distinguished by the model numbers. For the standalone version, the number starts with 901 while Unleashed version starts with 9U1.
At the time of my purchase, standalone version was cheaper so I purchased standalone version instead of unleashed models. This required me to take one extra step of flushing unleashed firmware on them. This was fairly straight forward to do. Once that’s done, I just followed step by step instruction to setup first SSID on Ruckus AP. These were all done through computer browser by accessing IP address of the AP.
Both system have mobile app options so I think you can set these APs through the app if that’s your preferred route. Although you cannot flushing new firmware throughout the app.
Adding APs
Once the controller is running, adding new APs to each system are much simpler.
For UniFi, once the new AP is plugged in, either mobile app or browser controller recognizes new UniFi device been added to the network. All I have to do at this point is hit “adopt” and in a few minutes, ready to go. This is plug and play.
For Ruckus, this is what supposed to happen as well. Except, you must have the matching firmware version to master controller.
While I believe Ruckus supposed to automatically upgrade new Access points to matching version firmware as long as new APs have unleashed firmware on them, this did not happen on my case. I waited 30 minutes or so on the status where AP said it was updating firmware.
I am fairly certain the system was somehow stuck at this stage. So I manually downloaded the corresponding version firmware from official website. Then through the controller admin menu on browser, I selected local firmware install.
Within 5 minutes, all was up and running.
I don’t know if the Ruckus server was down, or my firewall prevented the firmware download, but this step was not as smooth as remaining part of the Ruckus experience to me.
Optimization
WiFi performance can be affected by various factors. With multiple AP setup, you own APs can be a cause of interference. Even if you do not have multiple AP setup, your neighbors WiFi may introduce the interference. In WiFi basic, you want choose proper channel, channel width, and adjust transmission power to minimize these interference.
You could get lucky and default setting of these numbers may provide sufficient performance. If this is the case, my motto is “keep it simple, do no harm”. Near optimal is the better than. the absolute optimal for couple different reasons. One is in attempt to obtain the absolute optimum, you may be at a risk of screwing something else. Second, the amount of effort you put in may not be worth the amount of gain. Lastly, WiFi environment is a dynamic entity, so what’s optimal at one instant may not be optimal another instant.
I have already looked at various RRM features Ruckus Unleashed offer while UniFi essentially lacks any real one.
So if WiFi performance is suboptimal with UniFi, you may need to investigate this own, and make proper adjustment to fix it. The difficulty of this varies from number of APs you have, neighboring WiFi or other interferences, and of course amount of knowledge you have about WiFi. It’s easy to screw up WiFi setting than optimizing.
With Ruckus, the set of basic radio resource management system should be sufficient enough to optimize most home user’s WiFi setting to near optimal. I have confirmed myself that Ruckus did pick up separate non-overlapping channels on all APs.
In fact, you will have noticeable performance difference on WiFi throughput values with Ruckus when comparing initial powered on moment and after couple hours to even a day. There is certainly something the system is doing to optimize.
Community
Whether for troubleshooting, wondering to try out new interesting technology, you may need to seek a help. One common way now a day is to consult community members.
UniFi has much larger, consumer basis who are network enthusiast/hobbyist. So if this is the route you prefer, Unifi’s official forum, reddit or other online network forum for sure will have someone who can help you in fairly timely fashion. While Ruckus has much smaller user basis and many are pro so may not be checking these forums much to help you.
I believe neither will have significant official help for home users. I haven’t found UniFi’s tech support helpful in the past. Ruckus I heard won’t even help you if you are home user.
Documentation
Alternative to the community help is well written official documentation. UniFi seems to be putting a little bit more emphasis on this recently (ref). However, their content detail is still lacking. On the other hand, Ruckus have detailed explanation (ref).
Good example here is comparable features between two system, band balancing (shown above). You can see how much more detail Ruckus provides in comparison to UniFi. Honestly, I didn’t even know what really UniFi did with the above checkmark. I had assumed all devices just choose 5 GHz whenever possible over 2.4 GHz.
The same or more for all the other topics hold true. In fact, Ruckus even have essentially physics lecture YouTube video series about WiFi. They have podcast talking about some marketing but also many general WiFi related topics. You get a sense and confidence, the company have people who likes and truly understand these technologies.
I am not saying UniFi team does not have such people, but even if they do, this is not apparent to public. I have come across several UniFi settings/keywords in the past that I had no clue what they do. The other users had asked similar question, but Ubiquiti never provided the official answer. One such example is WiFi AI.
It sounded great, but never worked. Now the whole option is gone and simply became optimize channel button. The biggest issue with this is that basically nobody knows exactly what was happening under the hood on such feature, so no community member could provide any evidence based advice; other than, subjective, so called expert opinions. But then you had to of course find who is true expert.
In comparison, above is just one feature for channel optimization. Ruckus goes into detail on their document explaining what each modes of channel optimization setting means. They also have similarly explaining what it means to adjust transmission power, what is background scanning and their more advanced feature channel fly technology and so on.
Summary
In summary, Ruckus Unleashed and UniFi are both fairly easy to setup systems. Though for some reason I have encountered an issue getting automatic matching firmware update on Ruckus, adding new access points should otherwise be plug and play for both systems.
Where two differs is if you want to have hands free optimization beyond just regular setup, Ruckus offers this but UniFi does not.
When it comes to troubleshooting or researching about new technology/feature, your primary source of information will be different. For UniFi, you will rely on community as there are wider community and relative lack of official, technical detailed documentation. For Ruckus, you will rely on official, detailed documentation, but do not expect community member to just point you to the right section. They seem to have much smaller community.
Overall, both are fairly easy to setup system. After overcoming a slight fear or perhaps just difference from regular single unit plug and play type consumer network router/access point, you should have no trouble setting up either and get them going.