PR releases

Ruckus Wireless Brings Multimedia Wireless LANs to Small and Medium Businesses at Half the Cost and None of the Hassle

First Secure, Plug-and-Play WLAN System with Network-Wide Automatic Beam-Steering, 802.11n High Performance Wireless Meshing and "IT-Lite" Operation
SUNNYVALE, CA, May 21, 2007 – Ruckus Wireless today introduced ZoneFlex™ – the industry's first affordable, secure and easy-to-use multimedia wireless LAN system specifically designed for small/medium businesses and hot zone operators (see related product release).

The new Ruckus ZoneFlex WLAN system fills a market gap between consumer-class, standalone Wi-Fi products offering inadequate features and expensive enterprise-class systems that are overly complex to deploy and manage. Neither of these choices addresses the needs of small and medium enterprises and hot zone operators.

"This multimedia wireless LAN system is an exciting new addition to our comprehensive wireless product offering, meeting the distinct market need for a user-friendly, yet robust solution for small and medium businesses," said Jerry Garland, senior vice president of Solutions Development and Product Management at TESSCO, one of the nation's leading providers of wireless product solutions and newest distributor of Ruckus Wireless systems. "We expect the introduction of ZoneFlex to help change the wireless landscape by facilitating the distribution of a cost-effective and convenient solution that previously proved cumbersome and costly to the supply chain."

For the first time, the Ruckus ZoneFlex WLAN solution gives value-added resellers unique differentiation in this untapped SMB market. Moreover, the simplicity of ZoneFlex gives channel partners the ability to install more robust WLANs in a shorter period of time while significantly reducing the cost of delivering high-quality services to their customers.

"We're addressing two hugely underserved markets," said Selina Lo, president and CEO of Ruckus Wireless. "Small businesses and hot zone operators want multimedia wireless LANs that run themselves. The combination of predictable performance, high levels of security and ubiquitous signal coverage at a low operational and capital cost has long eluded the SMB market, until now."

The Ruckus ZoneFlex system is purpose-built for small to medium businesses with up to a few hundred users. These businesses typically have limited IT staffing and budgets but still require a single and secure WLAN for voice and data, whole-site coverage and reliable performance.

Tiered Wi-Fi Services Enable Business-Class Hot Spots
The Ruckus ZoneFlex system is also ideal for hot zone operators looking to deliver business-class hot spot services in public venues such as hotels, convention centers, schools, public libraries, airports, and shopping malls. These environments tend to be spacious and often have cabling constraints. Moreover, hot zone operators are faced with new requirements that include ubiquitous coverage and support for streaming video and voice applications, a broader mix of client devices and increasingly higher user densities.

The Ruckus ZoneFlex system transforms traditionally complex, costly WLAN deployment and operation by leveraging two unique technology breakthroughs: Network BeamFlex™ and Minute Configuration™. These Wi-Fi innovations enable, for the first time, a plug-and-play WLAN that eliminates expensive Ethernet cabling to access points (APs) and time consuming WLAN optimization and administration such as configuring and maintaining every end user device with up-to-date encryption keys and wireless settings. With these technologies, the Ruckus ZoneFlex system uniquely solves five critical problems that have hampered the ubiquitous deployment of wireless LANs within the SMB and hot zone markets:

ease of deployment and management
simplified but robust security
whole-site Wi-Fi coverage
predictable performance for data and voice traffic
affordability
Whole-Site Coverage and Optimum Performance with Fewer Pluggable APs
Proven by its use in over one million home Wi-Fi APs, Ruckus-patented Wi-Fi beam steering technology, BeamFlex™, automatically directs Wi-Fi signals towards the user and away from interference, to deliver extended range, dead-spot free coverage and higher user throughput. BeamFlex features a software controlled antenna array that can reconfigure itself in real time for the optimum signal path to each individual user.

With ZoneFlex, Ruckus Wireless has extended BeamFlex for plug-and-play indoor wireless AP meshing. The same intelligent signal path selection algorithms are applied in a ZoneFlex AP mesh to select the best mesh path. By coordinating path information among the meshed APs in real time, Network BeamFlex enables each AP to avoid noisy, sub-optimum backhaul links. Meanwhile network coverage and performance is expanded without time consuming, manual RF and topology tuning.

With Network BeamFlex, WLAN installation and expansion is as simple as powering on additional ZoneFlex APs as more bandwidth or coverage is needed. Capacity constrained organizations can deploy the ZoneFlex 802.11n AP to instantly increase wireless backhaul bandwidth while maintaining compatibility with the installed 802.11b/g client devices.

Simplified Security and Easier Deployment Take Burden off IT Staff
With Ruckus Minute Configuration, WLAN deployment and operations are radically simplified. A Web-based wizard lets any computer-literate user configure an entire ZoneFlex WLAN in a matter of minutes through a few point-and-click screens.

Wireless security and authentication, a tedious but necessary part of operating any WLAN, is often disregarded or compromised due to administrative overload. Minute Configuration solves this dilemma with patent-pending Dynamic PSK, a process that enables each WLAN user to be automatically equipped with a unique encryption key that expires or is easily removed by the administrator. A new Wi-Fi client simply plugs into the Ethernet; upon authentication, the ZoneDirector automatically pushes the wireless settings including a dynamically generated, unique encryption key down to the client device.

"It's ironic that Wi-Fi – a technology popularized by its ease of use – has been made so difficult to implement within the small business context," said Craig Mathias, principal at the analyst firm, Farpoint Group. "These companies don't have the time or money to implement a full blown enterprise-class system but still need something robust enough to handle more than causal data access. Ruckus Wireless is uniquely solving this problem."

For more information: http://www.ruckuswireless.com/press/releases/20070521b.php