Ruckus Delivers Best-to-Market Wi-Fi with the Introduction of the Fastest and Most Affordable Indoor Smart Wi-Fi Products

SUNNYVALE, Calif., May 14, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Ruckus Wireless™ (www.ruckuswireless.com) today announced the industry's highest capacity three-stream (ZoneFlex 7982) and most affordable dual-stream (ZoneFlex 7321) 802.11n Smart Wi-Fi access points for carriers and enterprises requiring increased wireless performance, capacity, unparalleled ease of use and greater business value — particularly within high-density environments. 

Available immediately, the Ruckus ZoneFlex 7982 and ZoneFlex 7321 enhance the high and low ends of the Wi-Fi market, making Ruckus the industry's leading supplier of enterprise and carrier-class Wi-Fi with the richest collection of indoor and outdoor solutions in performance, design, and price point.

The new ZoneFlex 7982 and 7321 Smart Wi-Fi access points were developed for enterprises and telecom operators face similar pressures from myriad of new users armed with wireless-only mobile devices, accessing a richer mix of multimedia traffic. Meanwhile, mobile wireless usage is continuing to shift indoors. Within enterprise environments, the majority of Wi-Fi use is inside buildings during working hours. And for operators, network analysis has shown that the majority of mobile data usage, close to 80 percent, is indoor and nomadic, rather than truly mobile.

Delivering consistent performance and maintaining stable connections within such high-capacity environments - and to smart mobile devices that constantly change their location and orientation - have become major concerns. The simple variation of a device's orientation can account for up to a 5x performance degradation among Wi-Fi products unable to adapt to such changes.

The Best Wi-Fi Money Can Buy

Designed to solve these growing problems, the ZoneFlex 7982 and ZoneFlex 7321 integrate a unique collection of technologies not found in any other Wi-Fi system. These unique capabilities increase signal gain, mitigate RF interference and allow each ZoneFlex AP to adapt to the changing nature of Wi-Fi signals from each connected mobile device.

The Ruckus ZoneFlex 7982 is the only three-stream 802.11n access point to combine dynamic polarization diversity with adaptive antenna arrays and transmit beamforming technologies to give customers up to a 4x improvement in Wi-Fi performance, signal gain and reception.

The ZoneFlex 7321, the industry's most affordable dual-stream 802.11n access point, is well suited for emerging markets and single AP deployments - not only where the demand for mobile Internet services is also rising but where tighter economic constraints on network investments dictate a balance toward lower cost over sheer performance.

"Like most school districts, we are getting bombarded by students and faculty bringing new mobile devices into our classrooms," said Joe McBreen, CIO of St. Vrain Valley School District in Longmont, Colorado.  "This is driving a complete shift in how we approach Wi-Fi. Up to now, providing ubiquitous coverage was the primary issue.  But now the problems are user density, reliability and overall system capacity."  St. Vrain Valley School District, a 47-school district with 27,000 students, recently replaced a network of Cisco APs with more than 1,000 ZoneFlex 802.11n APs.

"The demands for constant connectivity and much greater capacity led us to adopt the Ruckus ZoneFlex system across our entire district," McBreen continued. "The new Ruckus three-stream AP is simply the highest capacity AP we've ever seen — giving us even more power and reliability with fewer APs, and superior performance in all corners of our district. With this system in place we can support increasing demands on the network for years to come."

Raising the Bar at the High End

Designed for high-capacity environments, the ZoneFlex 7982 is the only dual-band, three-stream 802.11n access point equipped with a patented, dual-polarized adaptive antenna array. This allows the simultaneous operation of adaptive antenna selection and transmit beamforming, to deliver up to 9dB of signal-to-interference and noise (SINR) improvement and up to 15dB of interference mitigation. 

Ideal for high-traffic locations such as hotspots, airports, stadiums, schools, hotels and public venues, the ZoneFlex 7982, based on the latest generation Atheros three-stream high-performance chipset, is capable of supporting up to 500 concurrent clients, offering a 2x to 4x increase in performance and range, and a 4dB improvement in receive sensitivity over alternative access points.

In competitive three-stream testing by Ruckus, the ZoneFlex 7982 performed up to four times faster than other three-stream products at all distances. The tests were conducted in a university environment, measuring aggregate TCP throughput in real-world, non-line of sight conditions across the 2.4 and 5GHz bands simultaneously to a three-stream Apple MacBook Pro located at 30, 60 and 120 feet.

To ensure enhanced mobile device performance, the ZoneFlex 7982 is the only three-stream 802.11n AP that dynamically sends and receives Wi-Fi signals at different angles (polarizations).  When used with maximal ratio combining (MRC), a method where more receivers are used to gather signals from each channel and add them together to get the best result, the use of polarization diversity can yield an addition 4dB of effective receive sensitivity.

By combining MRC with polarization diversity, the ZoneFlex 7982 is able to capture the full signal of mobile devices even as they vary their orientation. This gives carriers and enterprises the unique benefit of stable connectivity at higher speeds delivered to mobile and moving devices at greater distances – particularly important for tablets and smartphones that tend to remain in constant motion.

Raising the Bar at the Low End

Within an ultra lightweight (7oz./198gm.) and compact footprint (5"Lx 5"Wx1"H/ 13cm L x 13cm D x 2.8cm H) the ZoneFlex 7321 supports up to 256 concurrent users and brings a new level of price/performance to the value end of the Wi-Fi market. The industry's most feature-rich and affordable entry-level 802.11n AP, the ZoneFlex 7321 is dual-band selectable, making it ideal for smaller, single AP deployments such as hotspots, SMBs and remote offices as well as in emerging economies requiring more affordable, robust solutions.

Unique in its class, the 7321 supports transmit beamforming and capacity-driven channel selection to deliver high performance and extended range with up to 4dB improvement in signal gain.

ChannelFly™, supported on all Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi access points, is a capacity-driven channel selection technology that learns the channel capacity environment in real time to ensure the best channel selection and interference mitigation in areas with Wi-Fi congestion. With ChannelFly, maximum throughput is delivered to clients at all times through innovative network-wide channel plans that maximize spectrum re-use, and two-stream client performance is greatly improved.

Both ZoneFlex 7982 and 7321 support standard 802.3af power over Ethernet (PoE) and can be deployed as either standalone wireless routers or as part of a centrally managed Smart WLAN.

In addition, both products support a variety of advanced features including bandsteering, airtime fairness, and predictive, capacity-drive channel selection (ChannelFly). When used with ZoneDirector, the ZoneFlex 7982 and 7321 offer a wide range of value-added applications such as SmartMesh networking, client load-balancing, time-based broadcasting, dynamic per-user rate limiting, guest networking, hotspot authentication, wireless intrusion prevention and dynamic pre-shared keys.

Pricing and Availability

Available immediately, the ZoneFlex 7982 and ZoneFlex 7321 come with a limited lifetime warranty and are list priced starting at USD $1099 and USD $349, respectively.

About Ruckus Wireless, Inc.

Headquartered in Silicon Valley, Ruckus Wireless is a supplier of advanced wireless systems for the explosive mobile Internetworking market. The company markets and manufactures a wide range of indoor and outdoor "Smart Wi-Fi" products for mobile operators, broadband service providers, and corporate enterprises around the world. Ranked as the top telecom company by Inc. Magazine and named a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer, Ruckus invented and has patented state-of-the-art wireless technology, such as adaptive antenna arrays that focus and direct Wi-Fi transmissions over the best signal path, automatically avoiding sources of Wi-Fi interference. These unique capabilities extend signal range, increase client data rates and ensure consistent and reliable distribution of delay-sensitive multimedia content and services over standard 802.11 Wi-Fi. With over 55 patents, 12,000 customers, and 4,000 solution partners worldwide, Ruckus employs over 450 staff in 22 countries. To date, the company has shipped over 3 million Smart Wi-Fi systems around the world to over 12,000 enterprise and carrier customers. For more information, visit Ruckus Wireless at http://www.ruckuswireless.com.

Media Contacts
David Callisch
Ruckus Wireless
[email protected]
+1-408-504-5487

SOURCE Ruckus Wireless