Press Releases
Ruckus Wireless Receives Top Scores in New Independent 802.11n Competitive Tests Conducted by CRN
ZoneFlex Smart Wireless LAN System Takes 1st Place for Its Strong Performance, Rich Feature Set and Ease of Use
SUNNVYALE, CA - March 26, 2008 – Ruckus Wireless today announced that its ZoneFlex Smart Wireless LAN system earned a first place ranking in new competitive 802.11n testing performed by Computer Reseller News (CRN), the industry’s foremost technology periodical for channel partners and value-added resellers. The results of the 802.11n testing were reported in CRN’s March 25, 2008 issue.
The CRN 802.11n testing was one of the first independent competitive evaluations of next-generation enterprise wireless LAN equipment that examined a full range of features, functions and performance. Testing invitations were extended to Aruba Networks, Bluesocket, Cisco Systems, Meru Networks and Trapeze Networks.
Participating 802.11n products were ranked in the areas of automation, management, ease of deployment, logging and reporting, price/performance and profit potential. CRN reviewers ran a battery of TCP uplink/downlink performance tests using Ixia’s IxChariot software to generate encrypted traffic (WPA2-PSK) streams to multiple 802.11n and 802.11g clients. The reviewers also tested the 802.11n wireless LAN systems at different orientations (45 and 90 degrees).
According to the CRN test report, the Ruckus ZoneFlex Smart WLAN system impressed reviewers with its “strong feature set and performance, earning it a first place finish.” Ruckus outscored others in areas including quality and reliability, automation features and price/performance. Reviewers also gave Ruckus high marks for ease of use and deployment, as they were able to initially configure the Ruckus ZoneFlex 802.11n system in less than five minutes.
“802.11n is one of the most exciting new advances in Wi-Fi since Wi-Fi was created,” said David Callisch, vice president of marketing for Ruckus Wireless.
“However, vendors of 802.11n products are making huge claims regarding performance benefits that users rarely, if ever, experience. This has caused massive confusion in the market and has been detrimental to the advance of this exciting new Wi-Fi technology. 802.11n is a much more sophisticated technology than previous 802.11 standards and therefore requires more than merely a pedestrian approach to system architecture to fully exploit its potential benefits. With unique and adaptive smart Wi-Fi technology, we are making 802.11n more useful in delivering the performance gains that everyone craves,” he concluded.
Test results with the Ruckus ZoneFlex Smart WLAN system using 40 MHz channelization within the 2.4 GHz spectrum (not published by CRN reviewers) showed both downlink and bi-directional TCP performance ranging from 125 to over 149Mbps. Within a single 20MHz channel the Ruckus ZoneFlex system realized TCP throughputs in excess of 65Mbps.
Delivering the Promise of 802.11n with Smart Wi-Fi
802.11n is an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) wireless standard that dramatically improves throughput and range as compared with older 802.11 standards. 802.11n exploits advances and new techniques such as spatial multiplexing, channel bonding, frame aggregation and block acknowledgement to deliver theoretical data rates gains at the physical layer up to 11 times that of the 54Mbps maximum defined by IEEE for 802.11a/g systems.
Smart Wi-Fi describes the ability to control the transmission and reception of 802.11 radio signals using adaptive intelligent antenna technology. This allows a Smart Wi-Fi Access Point to pro-actively compensate, on a packet by packet basis, for negative real-time changes in the RF environment such as interference and physical obstructions. Because of the ability to provide complete control over the form and direction of Wi-Fi signals, Smart Wi-Fi technology uses these techniques to ensure consistently higher throughput over both time and distance. By independently steering or routing each spatial stream over the optimal RF path, smart Wi-Fi exploits the utility of spatial multiplexing by maximizing the probability that spatial multiplexing communication is used.
Additionally, smart Wi-Fi optimizes the path to each client, mitigates interference, increases range and provides superior receive sensitivity. In this way, the technology helps realize and maximize the potential of MAC-layer enhancements and increases the likelihood that the access point and client will negotiate a more aggressive frame aggregation and block acknowledgement scheme.