Press Releases

Ruckus Wireless Completes ShoreTel Certification to Deliver Crystal-Clear Voice over Wi-Fi in the Enterprise

Companies Leverage Advances in Dynamic Wi-Fi Signal Path Selection and Unified Communications to Deliver Industry's Most Robust Voice over Wi-Fi Solution

SUNNYVALE, CA, November 19, 2007 – Ruckus Wireless, a leading supplier of Smart Wireless LAN systems, announced today that they completed ShoreTel's Technology Partner Program (TPP) certification, which ensures interoperability with ShoreTel 7.5; ShoreTel's latest release of its Pure IP Unified Communications system. Ruckus Wireless has achieved the ShoreTel Certified designation through comprehensive testing completed in the ShoreTel certification lab, working together to deliver the industry's most robust implementation of IP telephony over new 802.11 "Smart Wi-Fi" technology, ushering in a new era of enterprise voice over Wi-Fi services.

Smart Wi-Fi is a revolutionary new technology for controlling the unlicensed radio frequencies that Wi-Fi uses to ensure the best possible Wi-Fi connection for any given traffic type. Sophisticated quality of service technology is combined with a smart antenna array to eliminate typical Wi-Fi transmission problems.

The interoperability and collaboration marries Ruckus Wireless Smart Wi-Fi technology found in its popular ZoneFlex Smart WLAN systems and MediaFlex routers with ShoreTel's IP telephony systems to give companies more predictable performance and extended range when running IP voice services over Ruckus Wireless Smart Wi-Fi infrastructure.

Using the combined solution from Ruckus Wireless and ShoreTel, enterprise customers can realize a number of unique benefits such as:

  • Doubling or tripling the Wi-Fi coverage area
  • Better voice quality in the presence of other forms of traffic and in the presence of RF interference
  • Support for high density environments and a larger number of voice clients per access point
  • Consistent high data throughput available for other applications
  • Ultra simple installation and maintenance
  • Power savings on VoFi-enabled dual-mode phones
  • Seamless operation of certified VoIP over Wi-Fi phones
    (initially using Hitachi IP5000 and UT Starcom F1000G phones)

"At Pacific Ridge School, one of the reasons we installed the Ruckus ZoneFlex Smart wireless LAN was to add unique value to our ShoreTel IP unified communications system," said Bill Maynard, chief technology officer for NetCom America, the solutions provider for the elementary school in Carlsbad, California. "We expect this to be a winning combination because both the Ruckus and the ShoreTel systems focus a great deal of attention on quality of service, extended range and superior performance."

Transmission hiccups over radio frequencies account for the vast majority of Wi-Fi problems ranging from poor coverage to erratic performance. These problems are acutely problematic for delay-sensitive traffic such as multicast IP video and voice over IP transmissions.

"The combination of VoIP and Wi-Fi is profoundly compelling to enterprises of all sizes," said Steve Timmerman, vice president of marketing for ShoreTel. "One of the key issues in the implementation of these technologies is reliability. Ruckus Wireless helps solve this problem, giving our partners and customers the opportunity to expand the benefits of mobility in the enterprise."

Leveraging technical advances in Smart Wi-Fi that control the path that signals and traffic take over radio frequencies, customers with the Ruckus ZoneFlex WLAN system can now use voice over Wi-Fi phones while maintaining superb voice quality over the RF channel, even in the presence of other data traffic.

Ruckus patented beam steering (BeamFlexTM) and quality of service (QoS) (SmartCastTM) technologies provide up to a four-fold increase in Wi-Fi coverage area and more consistent throughput everywhere within the wireless environment. These technologies work in concert to focus RF energy and Wi-Fi signals in a specific direction and automatically steer them around interference as it occurs. This allows the system to continuously push up the data rate and lower packet loss by always providing the best signal path for every transmission.

Independent competitive research performed by Jones-Petrick and Associates has conclusively revealed that the Ruckus ZoneFlex Smart WLAN system achieved the highest MOS* (mean opinion score) scores and R-Values* along with some of the lowest average jitter measurements. The independent testing pitted the Ruckus ZoneFlex system against the industry's top four enterprise wireless LAN systems. The testing was performed by JPA in an 18,000 square foot office facility in Fremont, California. For the VoIP over Wi-Fi testing, five different locations were used with 19 voice clients and one data client.