Ruckus Wireless

The significant spike in wireless traffic of late has been close to impossible to deal with. With unstable connections and erratic performance, users today require a smarter Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) system for better coverage, capacity, and reliability. They insist on having all the bells and whistles of high-end WLAN in a system that’s more economical and easier to deploy and manage. Such a system was hard to detect until early 2004, when an ‘Elastigirl’ entered the scene. With a bag of management tools, extraordinary willpower, and an aggressive personality like Pixar’s Elastigirl, the belligerent entrepreneur, Selina Lo transformed a Sunnyvale, CA based start up—Ruckus Wireless [NYSE:RKUS]—into a global supplier of carrier-class Wi-Fi solutions. The firm now deploys next-generation Wi-Fi access points that maximize efficiency and connectivity throughout surrounding mixed-use development. Grappling with the air waves, Ruckus breaks the conventional barriers that have prevented the reliable transmission of wireless voice, video, and data over standard 802.11 technology.

“Our WLAN combines smart meshing, dynamic user security, adaptive Radio Frequency (RF) signal routing, and centralized management, all within a secure, scalable, and simple-to-use platform. It adds up to high performance everywhere, everytime, enabling customers to take full advantage of our solutions,” explains Selina.

A Pervasive Performance in Wireless

Today, the reliability hindrance of Wi-Fi is aggravated with increasingly sophisticated devices and greater demand for video and high-bandwidth applications. Wireless carriers also face the additional challenge of exponential growth of mobile devices as they are already stretched to handle volumes of traffic consistently.

"We are a supplier of carrier class Wi-Fi equipment to enterprises and service providers worldwide with over 25,000 end customers and 75 service provider customers, deploying Wi-Fi in their infrastructure"

Being a pioneer in the wireless infrastructure market, Ruckus allows carriers and enterprises to stay ahead of the exploding demand for high-bandwidth applications and services. While most companies try a mundane approach, Ruckus tackles it differently by using intelligence to steer clear of any interference and slip past the obstacles. The Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi technology redefines what’s possible in wireless network performance with flexibility, reliability, and affordability. Smart Wi-Fi has the unique ability to extract unmatched capacity. It leverages high-gain adaptive antenna technology and sophisticated best-path selection algorithms to direct Wi-Fi signals over the highest performance path to every client. Through Smart Wi- Fi, Ruckus delivers longer range and more reliable connections to client devices instantly. Smart Wi-Fi constantly directs signals around obstacles, mitigates interferences, and focuses RF energy only when it is required to ensure unprecedented coverage and consistent performance at longer ranges.

Most importantly, Ruckus’s advantage is its ability to deliver pervasive performance in wireless since its inception. The company then continued to lead the industry in performance innovation. Never relying on off-the-shelf, reference design radio technology, the firm has a team of the brightest minds to deliver creative solutions needed to realize their pervasive performance vision. This unprecedented level of wireless performance consists of several components that include adaptive signal control, interference mitigation, capacity-driven channel assignment, dynamic polarization diversity, maximized signal strength, and network capacity optimization.

The firm’s flagship product line, ZoneFlex Smart WLAN systems gives enterprisers and carriers a complete range of indoor and outdoorWi-Fi solutions for every application. This starts from streamlining IP-based video over Wi-Fi to 3G offloading, wireless broadband, and access to high-speed 802.11n wireless LANs. ZoneFlex is a centralized Smart WLAN system that combines Smart Wi-Fi and Smart Mesh Networking Technology with a single, powerful, wallet-friendly solution. This system is fully pluggable, meshable, and easy to install, with automatic client administration and advanced security.

Leading the Charge to Deliver Connectivity

Ruckus delivers novel solutions to the most critical issues of inconsistency. The company’s hardware, software, and services help enterprises and carriers increase the range and reliability of their Wi-Fi networks, reduce the cost of deployment, and ensure consistent performance even in the most challenging environments. “We are a supplier of carrier class Wi-Fi equipment to enterprises and service providers worldwide with over 25,000 end customers and 75 service provider customers, deploying Wi-Fi in their infrastructure,” says Selina.

Our WLAN combines smart meshing, dynamic user security, adaptive Radio Frequency (RF) signal routing, and centralized management, all within a secure, scalable, and simple-to-use platform

Over the years, the firm has worked with various higher-education institutions to help students and faculty to attain effective Wi-Fi services. In one case, it was noted that University of Georgia’s (UGA) Continuing Education IT staff wanted to provide ubiquitous, free Wi-Fi to hotel guests and visitors for years. However, rewiring and adding more wires wasn’t an option and it was not viable for the client to find a Wi-Fi system that could cost effectively replace the hotel’s wired cable network, while delivering stable and long range connections. “We wanted to go all Wi-Fi for the longest time in the hotel but hadn’t found a solution that was reliable and secure enough to become a primary means of network access for the hotel,” recollects Corey Doster, Associate Director for IT at Georgia Center. When Georgia Center was introduced to Ruckus Wireless and the Ruckus Zone FlexSmart WLAN System, Doster quickly added up the savings.

The customer noted that the Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi solution was less than half the cost of what the Center paid for the hotel cable data network four years ago.

The client now has a reliable Wi-Fi system that helps them provide their guests with strong and fast connections everywhere.

Addressing Interferences and Obstruction

The Georgia Center success story also brings into limelight the contrasting scenario of the challenges faced by basic Wi-Fi products, across the globe, due to its inadequacies for addressing today’s wireless challenges. By offering better levels of performance and integration capabilities, Ruckus proffers BeamFlex—an advanced Wi-Fi smart antenna implementation. Combining a compact internal antenna array with expert control software, BeamFlex continuously ranks the antenna configurations for each receiving device and reconfigures itself in real-time to choose the best performing antenna configurations. BeamFlex adapts Wi-Fi signals to interference conditions to deliver predictable performance at greater ranges. It also reduces dead spots, increasing the range and performance of the Wi-Fi network up to 300 percent.

"Ruckus’s advantage is its ability to deliver pervasive performance in wireless since its inception"

Apart from BeamFlex, the company is adept at identifying new opportunities and creating products to capitalize on specific markets. Selina’s leadership and inventive foresight has helped Ruckus build a unique collection of security capabilities that automate client side security, making it easy to use. RuckusSmartSec is one such example. Ensuring smart security—a vital component in wireless LANs— Ruckus SmartSec provides a patent-pending mechanism that generates, configures, and installs encryption keys on client devices in a process that is completely transparent to the user. The process comprises of an intelligent indoor mesh that reduces cumbersome RF planning and expensive cable backhauls. Enterprise WLAN deployment hence becomes dramatically faster, simpler, and cost effective—as access points are simply plugged into any conventional power source.

Driven by a Multi-Prolonged Business Strategy

By spearheading the company’s creative, multi-prolonged business and marketing strategies, Selina’s willpower to excel has resulted in deals with major networking equipment manufacturers and telecommunication providers—driving the firm’s current success in the market. Her transparency about all aspects of performance has been wholesome for Ruckus’s growth. “I no longer compete with the people inside; my mission is to focus all that energy against my competitors,” Selina asserts.

With more companies now envisioning Wi-Fi as a revenue opportunity, Ruckus is working on building new software to fuel its business in the upcoming months. During the recent Wi-Fi Global Congress event, in San Jose, CA, the firm announced to deploy a hotspot 2.0 network for a Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA). This new technology enables automatic and secure Wi-Fi roaming onto participating Wi-Fi hotspots for subscribers from over 30 operators around the world. In addition, the company is also focused on international growth, offering all of the Latin American businesses indoor access to the internet. “This is an explosive market. We are just at the knee of the curve,” Selina concludes.