Ruckus Wireless as an Unifi alternative?

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Evan

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Jan 6, 2016
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Yes if you don’t mind cloud managed then also Meraki. Anya plenty of analytics with that as well.

Cisco new 9k series AP also need a license to be able to do updates going forward as well (don’t know if that’s a hard thing as in can’t down download the file and apply or not)
 

zer0sum

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Mar 8, 2013
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I knew that would be the case, but perhaps if people got them running at their work place, they would be able to take a few home for long term "testing" :D

You do need the Mist cloud license to configure/manage the devices, but they can function perfectly well without the connection being there.
Getting a free AP for doing the demo also gets you a cloud account of course :)
 
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Jannis Jacobsen

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Mar 19, 2016
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What would be a decent Ruckus ap to use at home, for 2.4/5ghz, b/g/n/ac?
have been looking at Unifi again, but would prefer something else.
Preferably priced low enough compared to Unifi AP AC Pro or something in that range.
(If at all possible)

Not especially familiar with Ruckus, so not sure about ranges, versions etc

-jannis
 
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fohdeesha

Kaini Industries
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Getting a free AP for doing the demo also gets you a cloud account of course :)
Looking at the finer print, the free AP deal comes with 90 days of cloud service, after that you have to pay to keep it from becoming a brick (or "unconfigurable" I think you said, which to me is the same thing). I typically like juniper's products and was thinking about emailing them about potentially using these for our LAN events (I run reBOOT LAN ) but that business model makes me want to die on the inside, especially for something like wifi hardware
 

psc

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Jun 30, 2019
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Agreed, management via a cloud service is fine only so long as I can disable/block it and the system still functions and can be managed locally.
+1. I'm not interested in anything that either (a) I can't be self-sufficient operating, and\or (b) requires external administrative access.

What would be a decent Ruckus ap to use at home, for 2.4/5ghz, b/g/n/ac?
have been looking at Unifi again, but would prefer something else.
Preferably priced low enough compared to Unifi AP AC Pro or something in that range.
(If at all possible)

Not especially familiar with Ruckus, so not sure about ranges, versions etc

-jannis
I think I'm running 7372 APs at home (it's so long since I've had to touch them...), the last of which I picked up on eBay for £20 + £5 for a Ruckus power brick. Nothing that cheap at the moment, but I'm sure there'll be more. Pick your age\price trade-off, really.
 

daleq

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Mar 11, 2015
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I moved the company into into Rukus kit right near the start..
We had significant issues related to mac osx WIFI & rukus, with both shouting they were following the spec & it wast the other companies fault...
<snip>
Also be aware... NO licenses =NO support or firmware...
They have CUTTING edge directional Antenna tech.... with can really cut thru most crap. (unless it's china)
Hmm, I disagree about the 'No license = no firmware' comment.

I bought some R710's on ebay three weeks ago, created a free account on the Ruckus support site, downloaded the latest Unleashed firmware (last updated 2019-04), flashed the firmware (easy GUI process), and now have 6x APs running at a single site. Since these are Wave2 APs, I could have up to 50 APs at the site without having to get a license (max 25 APs if you have *any* non-Wave2 APs). Also, I installed the 'Unleashed' app on my phone which provides a nice overview of system status (as well as getting notifications for events).

So, I've spent $0 on support/maintenance and I'm very happy with the functionality I have now.

What would be a decent Ruckus ap to use at home, for 2.4/5ghz, b/g/n/ac?
have been looking at Unifi again, but would prefer something else.
Preferably priced low enough compared to Unifi AP AC Pro or something in that range.
(If at all possible)
Not especially familiar with Ruckus, so not sure about ranges, versions etc-jannis
I paid $210 each for qty-10 R710 APs on ebay ($238 BIN). Same vendor has a newer listing with same APs. I don't know how this compares to Unifi AC Pro. I didn't think the upgrade to R720 was worthwhile since AFAIK, it's just 2.5 Gbit nics different (but I don't really know).

You'll probably want to power via PoE. I purchased individual injectors because APs are in two different houses and I wanted flexibility/redundancy in case a PoE went out. I bought these from Provantage
Tripp Lite Gigabit Midspan PoE+ Injector Active IEEE 802.3at/802.3af 1-Port $29.38
FYI - There are some forum posts about the APs not recognizing the 802.11at PoE and the APs derate the 2.4GHz a bit and turn of 2nd NIC and USB port. There is a cli work-around, but for my install, it doesn't seem necessary so I didn't bother.

My install is in two houses between an apartment building and greek row on a college campus. I think it would be fair to say the environment is congested/polluted (everyone is "yelling" as loud as they can). The 44 college students are very happy with how well things work and have not reported any issues in the two weeks it's been up. Cumulatively, about 120GB of data is pumped through the APs per day. There seems to be a bit of 'stickiness' with the Master AP (maybe because I brought that one up first?) but it is also in a central location, so it just may make sense.

There is a lot of good information in the Ruckus 'High Density Wi-Fi Best Practices Deployment Guide.pdf'. Consider downloading and reading that.

I'm very happy (nay, thrilled) with how well Ruckus has worked for me.
 
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daleq

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I now have some evidence that my site is indeed congested/polluted.

I downloaded the system logs via Admin | Diagnostics | Logs, and then did a crazy one-liner to get a count of each type of interference entry in the logs.

Code:
find . -type f | while read fn; do  grep -i interference $fn; done | cut -d" "  -f3 --complement | sed 's/ to channel .*/ to channel /' | sed 's/@.................//' | sort | uniq -c | less -i
Here are the results for one day.
First column is the number of occurrences of each entry (I truncated end of line to get more consolidated view of channel changes).
FYI - I have ChannelFly on for 5GHz but Background Scanning for 2.4 GHz (suggested in documentation)
Code:
      3 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():AP[UCU-M1] detects interference on radio [11g/n] and switches from channel [11] to channel
      4 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():AP[UCU-M1] detects interference on radio [11g/n] and switches from channel [1] to channel
      1 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():AP[UCU-M1] detects interference on radio [11g/n] and switches from channel [3] to channel
      7 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():AP[UCU-M3] detects interference on radio [11g/n] and switches from channel [11] to channel
      4 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():AP[UCU-M3] detects interference on radio [11g/n] and switches from channel [1] to channel
      1 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():AP[UCU-M3] detects interference on radio [11g/n] and switches from channel [3] to channel
      1 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():AP[UCU-M3] detects interference on radio [11g/n] and switches from channel [4] to channel
      7 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():AP[UCU-M3] detects interference on radio [11g/n] and switches from channel [6] to channel
      3 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():The Channelfly AP[UCU-M1] detects interference on radio [11a/n/ac] and switches from channel [153] to channel
      1 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():The Channelfly AP[UCU-M1] detects interference on radio [11a/n/ac] and switches from channel [157] to channel
      2 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():The Channelfly AP[UCU-M1] detects interference on radio [11a/n/ac] and switches from channel [36] to channel
      1 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():The Channelfly AP[UCU-M1] detects interference on radio [11a/n/ac] and switches from channel [48] to channel
      1 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():The Channelfly AP[UCU-M2] detects interference on radio [11a/n/ac] and switches from channel [161] to channel
      1 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():The Channelfly AP[UCU-M2] detects interference on radio [11a/n/ac] and switches from channel [36] to channel
      5 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():The Channelfly AP[UCU-M2] detects interference on radio [11a/n/ac] and switches from channel [40] to channel
      4 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():The Channelfly AP[UCU-M2] detects interference on radio [11a/n/ac] and switches from channel [44] to channel
      7 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():The Channelfly AP[UCU-M3] detects interference on radio [11a/n/ac] and switches from channel [149] to channel
      6 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():The Channelfly AP[UCU-M3] detects interference on radio [11a/n/ac] and switches from channel [161] to channel
      2 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():The Channelfly AP[UCU-M3] detects interference on radio [11a/n/ac] and switches from channel [44] to channel
      3 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():The Channelfly AP[UCU-M3] detects interference on radio [11a/n/ac] and switches from channel [48] to channel
      1 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():The Channelfly AP[UCU-W1] detects interference on radio [11a/n/ac] and switches from channel [149] to channel
      2 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():The Channelfly AP[UCU-W1] detects interference on radio [11a/n/ac] and switches from channel [153] to channel
      1 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():The Channelfly AP[UCU-W1] detects interference on radio [11a/n/ac] and switches from channel [157] to channel
      1 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():The Channelfly AP[UCU-W1] detects interference on radio [11a/n/ac] and switches from channel [161] to channel
      1 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():The Channelfly AP[UCU-W1] detects interference on radio [11a/n/ac] and switches from channel [36] to channel
      2 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():The Channelfly AP[UCU-W1] detects interference on radio [11a/n/ac] and switches from channel [40] to channel
      3 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():The Channelfly AP[UCU-W1] detects interference on radio [11a/n/ac] and switches from channel [44] to channel
      2 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():The Channelfly AP[UCU-W1] detects interference on radio [11a/n/ac] and switches from channel [48] to channel
      2 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():The Channelfly AP[UCU-W2] detects interference on radio [11a/n/ac] and switches from channel [149] to channel
      1 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():The Channelfly AP[UCU-W2] detects interference on radio [11a/n/ac] and switches from channel [153] to channel
      2 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():The Channelfly AP[UCU-W2] detects interference on radio [11a/n/ac] and switches from channel [157] to channel
      1 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():The Channelfly AP[UCU-W2] detects interference on radio [11a/n/ac] and switches from channel [161] to channel
      7 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():The Channelfly AP[UCU-W2] detects interference on radio [11a/n/ac] and switches from channel [40] to channel
      2 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():The Channelfly AP[UCU-W2] detects interference on radio [11a/n/ac] and switches from channel [44] to channel
      1 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():The Channelfly AP[UCU-W2] detects interference on radio [11a/n/ac] and switches from channel [48] to channel
      2 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():The Channelfly AP[UCU-W3] detects interference on radio [11a/n/ac] and switches from channel [153] to channel
      2 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():The Channelfly AP[UCU-W3] detects interference on radio [11a/n/ac] and switches from channel [157] to channel
      2 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():The Channelfly AP[UCU-W3] detects interference on radio [11a/n/ac] and switches from channel [161] to channel
      9 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():The Channelfly AP[UCU-W3] detects interference on radio [11a/n/ac] and switches from channel [40] to channel
      1 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():The Channelfly AP[UCU-W3] detects interference on radio [11a/n/ac] and switches from channel [44] to channel
      4 Nov 21 UCU-M1 syslog: eventd_to_syslog():The Channelfly AP[UCU-W3] detects interference on radio [11a/n/ac] and switches from channel [48] to channel
This makes me a bit nervous and tempts me to "turn some knobs", but since it seems to be working well, I'm going to leave it alone.
 

Konger

Member
Nov 24, 2019
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Daleq,

I’m glad you got ruckus APs over unifi. Unifi firmware has it ups and downs. The thing with ubitquity with most of their products is the fact that you end up beta testing their firmware even though it’s labeled stable. So don’t upgrade the the firmware to the latest til you’ve done the research and let others see if it is stable or not. Their edgeos 2.o.x is a mess and unstable. Unifi firmware for their ap,at 4.o.66,way unstable. Their edgerouter series are decent, but since 2.0.x. I would keep clients at 1.10.10..

Anyway, I’ve been deploying ruckus APs, since 2014 and started clients out with Ruckus 7372, worked great at small school environments with high density situations. I remember back then, I was deciding between Unifi AC ap (the square one, revision 1) and Ruckus 7372 which was about the same cost maybe $50 more than the Unifi Ac square one on amazon). The school only needed 3 7372 and ran them in standalone mode. Thank god, I did not have them get the Unifi since the square one unit was pretty bad and could not deal with high density situations.

Anyway, now I have other clients using r510, r610, and r710 In unleashed.

For myself I picked up back in 2015 2x r710 for $700 each ran them in standalone mode til they released unleashed that supported r710 with vlan support with different SSIDs.

Most of my clients got their ruckus APs through a authorized dealer.... and well since they have been reliable. Recently, I decided to get used Ruckus Aps through eBay. Got 3x r710 for $185 each, 2x r610 for $150 each. And have seen auctions of r510,as low as $109.

Anyway, for those that use unleashed there is a weird bug on 200.7.10.x firmware where it affects iOS devices and possibly other devices where your downloads are extreme slow like 80mbps and uploads 600-800mbps. Going back to firmware 200.6.10.x seems to help.
 
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j_h_o

Active Member
Apr 21, 2015
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I have a pile of dumb questions:
  1. To run Unleashed, all my APs need to be Unleashed models, right? Not just the master controller? So all APs must be 9U1-Rxxx...? And there's a difference in the hardware, not just the firmware right? I can't reflash a 901- to a 9U1-?
  2. As I'm in the US, I want the US model, not WW right? What happens if I get a WW AP?
  3. If I'm not running Unleashed in a smaller deployment (at my house) the ZD1200 seems like the reasonable controller to get -- is that correct? How often are these controllers introduced/deprecated? The virtual controller seems to be priced out of my budget, and I don't want this running in the cloud... Is there another licensing scheme I'm not aware of?
  4. Does Ruckus have a 2.5G or 5G POE injector? Does anyone? :) I currently have an ICX 7450-24p with a 4x10GBase-T module, with 1 port connected to my UAP-XG which has a 1Gbps POE and a 10Gbps data port. Since all the Ruckus APs seem to combine POE and the data port, it seems I need to get a new switch (!!), or just keep things at 2x1Gbps, correct?
    I see Microsemi has a 2.5G or 10G injector -- so my current "plan" could be to use the 4x10SFP+ ports in my switch, pop in a FS.com 10GBase-T adapter that is also 2.5G or 5G capable, then slap on this 1 port POE injector. This nasty hack seems like a bad idea.
    Or I have an ugly POE splitter on my ceiling as well, and push PoE out, then split out to 12V2A on the ceiling via something like this?
  5. What is the behaviour of the non-POE 1Gbps port? Is it bridged? I see it is LACP capable for uplink. For example, can I wireless mesh an AP and then use the 2nd non-POE port to connect a non-WLAN-enabled device and get it on the network? Or can I use the 2nd port to connect a wired device if I'm wiring constrained?
 
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daleq

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Mar 11, 2015
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Hi j_h_o,

1. I believe the answer is yes, all APs in an Unleashed network must have Unleashed firmware.
You can flash any APs that support Unleashed to the Unleashed firmware, even if they are 901- models (99% certain on this)

2. Don't know about WW models

3. I don't have any experience except with Unleashed, but for a small deployment, I don't know why you'd choose anything but Unleashed or Standalone.

4. Hmm... Worrying about "only" 1 Gbps NIC seems like "borrowing trouble". :) I suppose in theory it's possible for the radios to saturate a 1Gbps NIC, but I wouldn't worry about it.

5. I believe you could execute your example (but I don't have experience). Remember my comment about the APs not recognizing the 802.11at PoE and the APs derate the 2.4GHz a bit and turn of 2nd NIC and USB port. There is a CLI work-around though. I'm not sure if this issue was specific to the R710 or all models of APs.
 

Konger

Member
Nov 24, 2019
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Hi j_h_o,

On regards:

1) You can buy a Non-unleashed AP Model and flash it to Unleashed. And re-flash it to Standalone firmware if you want to. If running unleashed APs need to be on the same unleashed firmware.

2) As far as I know US versions of Ruckus are locked in country code... the WW version can be set to any country code including US as far as I understand, but I would double check on the ruckus support forums. I just remember reading something on the support forums.

3) Unleashed is targeted for the SMB market, you get free software upgrades til 12 months after EOL. If you get a ZD1200, then you have to pay for software upgrades through support contracts. Don't know too much about ZD1200 since i don't have any large scale clients.

4) Don't know

5) Don't know

Anyway, Just curious about you UAP-XG, how is your experience so far?
 

Konger

Member
Nov 24, 2019
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Hi j_h_o,

I noticed on an older post of yours on regards of R730 and R750. Note that R730 will never get unleashed firmware. The R750 has a planned release of unleashed firmware soon, but not sure how soon. Unleashed firmware 200.8.x will support the R750 when ever that gets released.
 

Rand__

Well-Known Member
Mar 6, 2014
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2) As far as I know US versions of Ruckus are locked in country code... the WW version can be set to any country code including US as far as I understand, but I would double check on the ruckus support forums. I just remember reading something on the support forums.
Damn, so either all US or all non-US

How do I set Country Code for ZoneDirector and the ZoneFlex APs? | Knowledge Base | Ruckus Wireless Support

Code:
ZoneFlex APs are shipped in two formats depending on the country being shipped to:

    With a fixed US country code setting to the US (fixed country code cannot be change by customers – even through factory default)
    With country code that is selectable to the country outside of the US
 

j_h_o

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Apr 21, 2015
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6) UAP-XG: it has eth0 and eth1 which are 5GHz radios, and eth2 which is a 2.4GHz radio. The behaviour is fairly poor; they just crammed another radio in the same AP, but there isn't really any intelligent handling of clients between the radios.
I get around 70-80MB/s sustained TCP transfer performance (SMB3.0) from an AX200 radio in a laptop, per 5G radio. So I can do around 140-160MB/s sustained across the two 5GHz radios. eth0 does U-NII-1 (36-48), and eth1 does U-NII-2/3 (149-165 or whatever).
Having the PoE on the 1Gbps port, and having just a plain 10Gbps data port is really nice. It eliminates a dependency on the switch-side for having a 10Gbps + PoE capable port.
I'm currently able to saturate the 1Gbps port on my UAP-XG, so I'm looking to play with a Ruckus AP that would have similar throughput.
Then I can stop having my wife's laptop and mine on different SSIDs to push us onto separate radios :)

3) Really? So a ZD1200 can't be flashed to latest firmware, without a support contract? The firmware is available for download... they'll actually disable functionality remotely once it phones home? That doesn't seem consistent...
 

j_h_o

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Apr 21, 2015
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Good to know!

So if I buy a ZD1200 used on ebay, what do I need to order? 801-1205-1000 to get 1yr coverage? Will that work on a used unit with me as a second owner?
 

Konger

Member
Nov 24, 2019
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Good to know!

So if I buy a ZD1200 used on ebay, what do I need to order? 801-1205-1000 to get 1yr coverage? Will that work on a used unit with me as a second owner?
Should be fine, but I would confirm with one of the Ruckus Forum Employees before purchasing.
 

blinkenlights

Active Member
May 24, 2019
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Does Ruckus have a 2.5G or 5G POE injector? Does anyone? :) I currently have an ICX 7450-24p with a 4x10GBase-T module, with 1 port connected to my UAP-XG which has a 1Gbps POE and a 10Gbps data port. Since all the Ruckus APs seem to combine POE and the data port, it seems I need to get a new switch (!!), or just keep things at 2x1Gbps, correct?

I see Microsemi has a 2.5G or 10G injector -- so my current "plan" could be to use the 4x10SFP+ ports in my switch, pop in a FS.com 10GBase-T adapter that is also 2.5G or 5G capable, then slap on this 1 port POE injector. This nasty hack seems like a bad idea.
I do not believe the 10GBase-T modules support 2.5G/5G link speeds, even with the appropriate transceiver. I have two 7400-4x10GC and one 7400-4x10GF modules installed in my ICX7450-48 - none of them negotiated 2.5G with my Ruckus R720.

I stumbled across a thread on the Ruckus support forum with more details: ICX 7250 and family: Support "Broadcom 2.5G" on SFP+ ports | Ruckus Wireless Customer Community
 

j_h_o

Active Member
Apr 21, 2015
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Good point. I forgot that the SFP+ port itself has to agree to sync at the lower speed. I have one of these modules that I was going to test with. I like how the Ruckus answer is just to buy a new switch :(

It's silly that the Ruckus PoE injector listed for this AP isn't multi-gig capable.
 
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