Ruckus Wireless as an Unifi alternative?

[NablaSquaredG]

Clients are experiencing issues when they roam using eDPSK authentication. [ER-13825]
In the Unleashed web interface, wireless clients are not sorting by WLAN in the Clients component. [ER-13645]
SONOS surround sound speakers lose their connection using the PSK+WPA2 WLAN authentication [ER-13583]

 

[NablaSquaredG]

Wait wtf - has 200.16 been taken down?

 

[custom90gt]

Anyone have any thoughts on why my R850s give 1/2 the download speed that they do up? My tests are consistently ~350Mbps download and ~700Mbps upload. It was like that with a single R850 and now that I have a dedicated master and two R850s. I've tried a few things like changing the Channel Optimization settings and even manually specifying the channel for each AP. The dedicated master and one AP are connected with the 36w ac adapter and the other R850 is connected with the 60w POE adapter and set to 802.3bt5. I am wondering if I just need to factory restart and start from scratch because this was never an issue before.

 

[j_h_o]

I flashed an R750 to 200.16.7.0.325 (taken down) and set up Unleashed (clean) and couldn't get things to work, at all. I did regular install, and no clients could connect to the SSID (WPA2, plain, vanilla) that I created. I thought I got a bad AP until I realised 200.16 was taken down.

This AP worked well once I flashed 200.14 back on it. (I went further back, didn't have more time to waste...)

 

[ms264556]

Anyone have any thoughts on why my R850s give 1/2 the download speed that they do up? My tests are consistently ~350Mbps download and ~700Mbps upload. It was like that with a single R850 and now that I have a dedicated master and two R850s. I've tried a few things like changing the Channel Optimization settings and even manually specifying the channel for each AP. The dedicated master and one AP are connected with the 36w ac adapter and the other R850 is connected with the 60w POE adapter and set to 802.3bt5. I am wondering if I just need to factory restart and start from scratch because this was never an issue before.

I guess you could pick through the Ruckus forum thread about this issue & see if any of the suggestions work? I was able to repro the issue once on an R600 by setting my country to US and the channel optimization to Performance. But, unfortunately, I've never had the problem in real life.

 

[sth]

Changelog (co's I went looking for it...)

Resolved Issues in Build 200.15.6.212.14 (released 8th August)

• Clients are experiencing issues when they roam using eDPSK authentication. [ER-13825]
• In the Unleashed web interface, wireless clients are not sorting by WLAN in the Clients component. [ER-13645]
• SONOS surround sound speakers lose their connection using the PSK+WPA2 WLAN authentication. [ER-13583]

 

[j_h_o]

Anyone have any thoughts on why my R850s give 1/2 the download speed that they do up? My tests are consistently ~350Mbps download and ~700Mbps upload. It was like that with a single R850 and now that I have a dedicated master and two R850s. I've tried a few things like changing the Channel Optimization settings and even manually specifying the channel for each AP. The dedicated master and one AP are connected with the 36w ac adapter and the other R850 is connected with the 60w POE adapter and set to 802.3bt5. I am wondering if I just need to factory restart and start from scratch because this was never an issue before.

I saw this sometimes with an AX210 with old firmware blobs. What client(s) are you using and does this reproduce across all of them?

 

[custom90gt]

I guess you could pick through the Ruckus forum thread about this issue & see if any of the suggestions work? I was able to repro the issue once on an R600 by setting my country to US and the channel optimization to Performance. But, unfortunately, I've never had the problem in real life.

I was thinking it was the channel optimization issue as well. I had tried changing the optimization with no effects, but maybe I will have to factory restore the APs to see if that fixes. Thanks for the link.

I saw this sometimes with an AX210 with old firmware blobs. What client(s) are you using and does this reproduce across all of them?

Same issue on multiple laptops, my S24 Ultra, and my wife's S23 Ultra.

 

[Vesalius]

RUCKUS Unleashed 200.16.7.0.402 is out mostly about adding wifi 7 and the r770
New features

• Support for R770 AP, the first Wi-Fi 7 AP in Unleashed
• Support for 6 GHz radio
• Support for 320 MHz channelization
• WiFi 7 option in WLAN Advanced configuration
• R770 AP legacy features

release notes do not list any resolved issues specific to this version, so no clue if this addresses the 5ghz issues that some had with the short-lived 200.16.7.0.325 that was pulled.

 

[iceman_jkh]

Is there any way (including via notepad++) to convert a config from v200.15+ firmware to be compatible with v200.14?
Seems 200.14 is pretty stable and .15/.16 has lots of bugs.
I can no longer roll back to 200.14 (unless I reconfigure from scratch) because it won't accept my 200.15 config file (and I don't have a saved config from 200.14).

 

[ms264556]

Is there any way (including via notepad++) to convert a config from v200.15+ firmware to be compatible with v200.14?
Seems 200.14 is pretty stable and .15/.16 has lots of bugs.
I can no longer roll back to 200.14 (unless I reconfigure from scratch) because it won't accept my 200.15 config file (and I don't have a saved config from 200.14).

Usually there's an auto-backup so you can rollback to the previous installed release without losing your config.

Assuming you did multiple 200.15 upgrades, so that's not working for you...

You can use the online tool here to decrypt your 200.15 backup, ungzip, extract the manifest file, edit the version, add your modified manifest, gzip, then re-encrypt with the python/powershell scripts.

BUT DON'T, unless you have a bazillion funky rules or dpsk entries you mustn't lose. There are configuration migrations which run after every upgrade, which will have modified your config file structure. I haven't looked at the 200.15 migration (they're compiled executables, so I need to trawl through the decompiled code in ghidra), but there are usually enough changes so I'd be wary about running with an incompatible config.

 

[ms264556]

Is there any way (including via notepad++) to convert a config from v200.15+ firmware to be compatible with v200.14?
Seems 200.14 is pretty stable and .15/.16 has lots of bugs.
I can no longer roll back to 200.14 (unless I reconfigure from scratch) because it won't accept my 200.15 config file (and I don't have a saved config from 200.14).

If you have any older backups then you can just sniff the backup version, downgrade to this version, then restore your backup, then upgrade to 200.14.

 

[iceman_jkh]

Usually there's an auto-backup so you can rollback to the previous installed release without losing your config.

Assuming you did multiple 200.15 upgrades, so that's not working for you...

You can use the online tool here to decrypt your 200.15 backup, ungzip, extract the manifest file, edit the version, add your modified manifest, gzip, then re-encrypt with the python/powershell scripts.

BUT DON'T, unless you have a bazillion funky rules or dpsk entries you mustn't lose. There are configuration migrations which run after every upgrade, which will have modified your config file structure. I haven't looked at the 200.15 migration (they're compiled executables, so I need to trawl through the decompiled code in ghidra), but there are usually enough changes so I'd be wary about running with an incompatible config.

Unfortunately, I'm well past those backups - but good suggestion!

Taking heed of your warning, I might simply use that tool to list the config/settings (in semi-plain english) of my current setup and then manually re-create them on a fresh 200.14.
Thanks again for your help!

 

[iceman_jkh]

If you have any older backups then you can just sniff the backup version, downgrade to this version, then restore your backup, then upgrade to 200.14.

Also a good idea! Thanks

 

[travellinground]

Hi, my company runs out of the US (I'm in NZ) and are offering to staff we can buy some used/excess gear and I'm eyeing up a new R760, but it would of course be a US version. My other option would be to go Grandstream 7665, but I don't really have a good comparison for how the Mediatek chip performs and was wondering if anyone here did? Thanks!

 

[ms264556]

Grandstream is a budget brand - I have a Grandstream switch which I bought because it was the same price as no-name AliExpress equivalents.

The GWN7665 is a mid-range 6e AP roughly equivalent to the Ruckus R560 (2x2 in all bands). The R760 is a high end 6e AP (4x4 in all bands).

The R760 retail is 20x the GWN7665, so I'd be jumping on one if the price wasn't insane.

The big issue with the R760 is that it doesn't run Unleashed firmware. And Ruckus don't like to sell Ruckus One subscriptions on used hardware. So you have to run Solo firmware (yuck) or SmartZone. If you have the spare VM capacity then SmartZone is pretty straightforward to setup. And for home use the AP will run just fine even if the SmartZone VM is mostly offline.

I'm in NZ & I'm happy to swap the R760 for a couple of Unleashed R650s if the R760 is really cheap & you just want to run something controllerless .

(It only takes a few minutes to switch US Ruckus APs to NZ region).

 

[travellinground]

This is my first real foray into homelabbing, but I'm keen to learn and not just pass the buck. But thanks for the offer!

Is it possible to run SmartZone VM free? Or alternatively, I think there were a few Zone Controllers, are they difficult to learn/run/worth the effort?

 

[ms264556]

This is my first real foray into homelabbing, but I'm keen to learn and not just pass the buck. But thanks for the offer!

Is it possible to run SmartZone VM free? Or alternatively, I think there were a few Zone Controllers, are they difficult to learn/run/worth the effort?

The nice thing about Unleashed is that you can run through the initial setup wizard, accepting the defaults, & then you have working WiFi.

SmartZone is pretty simple to setup, but you have to know some basics to run through the initial config, then create your first WLAN.

You'll need to allocate 13GB RAM to the vSZ VM and 100-150GB disk (depending on the vSZ version you decide to run). You can contact me privately about licensing. And I'm happy to walk you through the initial setup steps (& VM config if you're using proxmox).

But if I wasn't hacking Ruckus APs as a hobby, and acquired a cheap R760 then I'd sell it on TradeMe and use some of if the money to buy a much cheaper used R650 or R730 running Unleashed. This is why I made the offer to swap. Likely if you did chuck an R760 on TradeMe I'd be a serious bidder (since I don't already have any of those).

 

[unmesh]

...
You'll need to allocate 13GB RAM to the vSZ VM and 100-150GB disk (depending on the vSZ version you decide to run). You can contact me privately about licensing. And I'm happy to walk you through the initial setup steps (& VM config if you're using proxmox).
...

I have a ProxMox server where I can allocate 13GB RAM and 150GB disk but is the use case for vSZ in a homelab for when the APs don't run Unleashed?

 

[NablaSquaredG]

I have a ProxMox server where I can allocate 13GB RAM and 150GB disk but is the use case for vSZ in a homelab for when the APs don't run Unleashed?

Yes some APs are not compatible with Unleashed, like the R760 or the R730 (can be flashed to unleashed but it’s crude), but are compatible with vSZ