Ruckus Unleashed (R750) Questions

[CIR-Engineering]

I have a few questions as I just picked up two R705's. These are my first Ruckus/Brocade AP's so I am learning. Both are running Unleashed and I have them working with my ICX7450-32ZP switch.

I may need a third access point for actual WiFi access. However, in my reading, Rucks says that if one adds a third R750 that it will only act as a control for Unleashed and NOT provide any WiFi access. Is this correct? Is there a way to avoid this if true? I really don't want to have to run four of them just to get the coverage of three.

Any thoughts would be welcome. They are connected with wired backhaul via PoE on the 2.5GbE ports. Mesh is NOT enabled on my current config. It seems MESH is only really useful if there is no wired backhaul?

Separate question: is there any reason to connect both the 1GbE and 2.5GbE ports on the R750's? I do not need more bandwidth. 2.5GbE is plenty on each AP.

Is there a guide on Ruckus/Brocade access points kind of like fohdeesha's awesome switch thread? I'd like to learn CLI commands on these as the WEB GUI and APP aren't great. For example, one of the R750's didn't come with Unleashed so I had to crossflash it. I tried a couple ways to do this, but using the CLI and TFTP was painless to crossflash and the best method.

 

[NablaSquaredG]

Rucks says that if one adds a third R750 that it will only act as a control for Unleashed and NOT provide any WiFi access. Is this correct? Is there a way to avoid this if true? I really don't want to have to run four of them just to get the coverage of three.

Nah, I think this is a misunderstanding.

Only if you run the third one as Dedicated Master and select the disable WiFi service option it will not provide WiFi

 

[ms264556]

They are connected with wired backhaul via PoE on the 2.5GbE ports. Mesh is NOT enabled on my current config. It seems MESH is only really useful if there is no wired backhaul?

You're correct. Mesh is for wireless backhaul. Ruckus APs only use wireless backhaul when there's no wired connection available, so enabling it wouldn't make any difference in your case (apart from enabling an extra hidden backhaul SSID).

is there any reason to connect both the 1GbE and 2.5GbE ports on the R750's? I do not need more bandwidth. 2.5GbE is plenty on each AP.

You shouldn't connect them both - Ruckus APs with 2.5Gb ethernet don't support link aggregation. Typically you'd use the 2nd port to add wired client(s).

Is there a guide on Ruckus/Brocade access points kind of like fohdeesha's awesome switch thread? I'd like to learn CLI commands on these as the WEB GUI and APP aren't great. For example, one of the R750's didn't come with Unleashed so I had to crossflash it. I tried a couple ways to do this, but using the CLI and TFTP was painless to crossflash and the best method.

There are a bunch of guides around the place for getting Unleashed onto non-unleashed APs.
I personally have no problem with the official Ruckus guide, but there's e.g. this blog post, or a blackwire guide with pretty pictures.

Beyond this, there are 'how to optimise your setup' type guides (like the blog post I linked above, and the Blackwire guide), but honestly the out-of-the-box config from Unleashed is pretty good.

The guides contain some dubious stuff which causes most of the problems people post about on Reddit. If you do follow a guide then for sure feel free to back-out changes which cause you issues. Especially channelfly can have your clients regularly dropping off the network. If you want to keep background scanning turned on then give it a very, very long scan interval. I personally just hardcode the APs I give away to channel 149 or 42 unless the person is in an apartment block with neighbours blasting the same channels.

There's a CLI reference you can download from Ruckus. But the latest Unleashed versions do actually have most of the config options surfaced in the advanced sections of the UI, or tucked away in the Admin & Services section.

 

[ms264556]

Is there a guide on Ruckus/Brocade access points kind of like fohdeesha's awesome switch thread?

The semi-equivalent thread here for Ruckus APs is Ruckus Wireless as an Unifi alternative?. If you ask anything technical there then it's very likely you'll get an answer.

 

[CIR-Engineering]

Nah, I think this is a misunderstanding.

Only if you run the third one as Dedicated Master and select the disable WiFi service option it will not provide WiFi

Thanks for that. A friend of mine owns a large integration company in Chicago. I asked him today and he said no way. He said he has three R750's in his own house and they all do WiFi and have clients on them. Also has clients with up to fifteen R750's and all do Wifi.

I think the key there is "dedicated" master. Why would anyone do that? I do have one access point as my "master." That is the correct way to do it right?

 

[CIR-Engineering]

You're correct. Mesh is for wireless backhaul. Ruckus APs only use wireless backhaul when there's no wired connection available, so enabling it wouldn't make any difference in your case (apart from enabling an extra hidden backhaul SSID).


You shouldn't connect them both - Ruckus APs with 2.5Gb ethernet don't support link aggregation. Typically you'd use the 2nd port to add wired client(s).


There are a bunch of guides around the place for getting Unleashed onto non-unleashed APs.
I personally have no problem with the official Ruckus guide, but there's e.g. this blog post, or a blackwire guide with pretty pictures.

Beyond this, there are 'how to optimise your setup' type guides (like the blog post I linked above, and the Blackwire guide), but honestly the out-of-the-box config from Unleashed is pretty good.

The guides contain some dubious stuff which causes most of the problems people post about on Reddit. If you do follow a guide then for sure feel free to back-out changes which cause you issues. Especially channelfly can have your clients regularly dropping off the network. If you want to keep background scanning turned on then give it a very, very long scan interval. I personally just hardcode the APs I give away to channel 149 or 42 unless the person is in an apartment block with neighbours blasting the same channels.

There's a CLI reference you can download from Ruckus. But the latest Unleashed versions do actually have most of the config options surfaced in the advanced sections of the UI, or tucked away in the Admin & Services section.

Thank you for all the information. Makes sense that the second port is for adding wired clients.

I didn't have any problems cross flashing to Unleashed, it was just SUPER easy through the CLI and the techniques provided using the GUI seemed cumbersome, so I tried a few quickly and then just went straight to TFTP and the CLI. Then it was done in five minutes or less .

I probably shouldn't hardcode channels because I'm in the city and the amount of WiFi networks I can pick up is unfathomable. I run narrow and try not to overlap, or at least overlap as little as possible. The problem is consumer stuff is set to the maximum channel width and max power, so all the channels are saturated here. What I will do however is reduce the scan interval. That only makes sense. If it scans every hour (or maybe 30 minutes) that is probably more than sufficient. I could even see a situation where my network goes to war with a neighbors; both networks constantly changing channels to get around the other and landing back on top again. That said, the networks don't usually change very often, at least based on my sight surveys. When we move up the street in a couple months it may be better. Up there it's all free-standing homes, but right now I am next to free standing homes and three appartement buildings.

I am a tinkerer. I will keep your advice in mind though. Generally, I have found that running lower power works better in my current home. But right now I have four access points with the handoff set to change AP's even when the SN is still pretty good. I have this current system tunes so well it works like a champ. But the new house is much bigger so everything will change.

 

[ms264556]

I think the key there is "dedicated" master. Why would anyone do that? I do have one access point as my "master." That is the correct way to do it right?

You can have a primary & secondary preferred master - this is when you rig the election for Master so the nominated AP always wins.

You can specify that the Master has its WLANs turned off, if you want to make sure your Master dedicates all of its resources to the controller functionality. This is ignored if you only have one or two APs.

Then there's Dedicated Master, which is a completely different thing. Dedicated Master makes an R750 or R850 effectively run as a ZoneDirector controller. The radios are unavailable, but in return you get even greater capacity plus a bunch of ZoneDirector features which never made it to Unleashed: L3 network support, tunneling traffic back to the controller, etc.

 

[CIR-Engineering]