RUCKUS WIRELESS PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL

Ruckus vs Ubiquiti!A p r i l 2 0 1 5

Product Comparison Ruckus – Focused on cost-friendly and easy to use solutions for SMB/SME and massive scale for large networks – includes on-site or remote controllers (hardware, virtual, or cloud; standalone or clustered), cloud location services (analytics included), scalable data analytics platform, hosted public access solution

Ubiquiti – Focused on home, small business, education, hospitality market segments; UniFi® product line includes Enterprise Wi-Fi with selection of indoor and outdoor APs; Switching and Routing, VoIP and Video Surveillance products; UniFi® wireless controller software offered at no extra cost; entry level Access Points offered with very low pricing

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Ruckus Solutions •  Full lineup of indoor/outdoor APs and bridges •  ZoneFlex or SCG/vSCG controllers •  SmartCell Insight analytics and reporting •  SPoT cloud LBS service •  FlexMaster NMS

Ubiquiti Solutions •  UniFi product line of single band and dual

band indoor/outdoor APs •  UniFi Controller wireless network management

software •  UniFi Switch and UniFi Security Gateway •  airMax and airFiber wireless broadband

product lines    

Ruckus Ubiquiti

•  Enterprise-class products •  Low initial cost •  Industry-best performance with fewer APs •  Low operational expenses •  Easy to use

•  Mix of consumer-focused and SMB products •  Economy pricing •  Sacrifices in performance •  More hands-on support required •  Easy to use

•  Consistent,  dependable  connec0vity  •  Supports  high  user  count    •  Excellent  in  tough  environments  •  Reliable  hardware  and  adap0ve  features  •  Always-­‐on  access  for  user  produc0vity  

•  Consumer-­‐grade  reliability  •  Built  for  fewer  clients  and  lighter  traffic  •  Mostly  offers  no  op0miza0on  for  busy  RF  •  Low-­‐cost  hardware    •  Inconsistent  feature  support  across  product  range  

•  Designed  for  SMB  and  SME  •  Advanced  features  included  •  Flexibility  to  meet  future  business  needs  

•  Designed  for  homes  and  small  business  •  Basic  feature  support  and  limited  appeal  for  higher  

end  Enterprise  market  •  Minimal  long-­‐term  flexibility  

Essential Differences

RUCKUS WIRELESS PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL

Ruckus vs Ubiquiti!A p r i l 2 0 1 5

To improve RF performance the UniFi AP Outdoor+ incorporates Multi-Lane™ RF technology as a part of AP design with High-Selectivity Receiver circuitry

•  Improves filtering on the AP operating channel on 2.4 GHz band

•  Enhances performance of AP reception in high density Wi-Fi environment

•  Provides no advantage on AP transmitting side •  Not offering additional benefits in selection of

direction for best reception •  Clients will still be challenged with reception in

the environment with a lot of RF on adjacent channels

•  Multi-Lane™ RF is not offered across all range of products at present

BeamFlex is a Ruckus-proprietary multi-element antenna array that adaptively selects the best antenna pattern(s) for each user and each individual packet

•  Improves signal quality and RF reliability •  Works at the same time as TxBF or spatial

multiplexing on the same chain •  Works equally well for all clients: 11a/b/g, 11n,

11ac, 1-, 2-, and 3-stream •  Directional power control reduces Wi-Fi

interference and overcomes RF noise •  MRC with polarization diversity (PD-MRC)

matches client antenna orientation

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS

Ubiquiti Multi-Lane RF Ruckus BeamFlex

RF PERFORMANCE Ruckus •  BeamFlex adaptive antenna enhances reliability and throughput for all clients (802.11a/b/g/n/ac, 1-4

streams) while reducing neighbor interference •  Smart channel optimization, airtime fairness, load and band balancing, multicast optimization – combined

features enable consistent, high-capacity performance Ubiquiti •  Entry level Access Points are consumer grade single band 802.11n devices offering 2x2 MIMO with Omni

antennas •  No signal steering enhancements •  Multi-Lane™ RF technology is offered in UniFi AP Outdoor+ Access Point to reduce adjacent channel

interference and improve reception by AP in busy RF environment •  Zero-Handoff Roaming feature can be enabled for a group of APs to facilitate seamless roaming of mobile

clients. It is not recommended for all deployment scenarios as AP’s shall be placed on the same channel increasing co-channel interference; Zero-Handoff is not supported in UniFi AP AC

RUCKUS WIRELESS PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL

Ruckus vs Ubiquiti!A p r i l 2 0 1 5

What: Ruckus R700, software version 9.7.1.0.3 vs Ubiquiti UniFi AC-AP, software version 3.1.6; 3x3 access points supporting MacBook Pro 11ac laptops

How: Test downlink and uplink TCP throughput at multiple distances using Chariot high throughput script Why: Most vendors demonstrate relatively similar performance with a single client, but… •  Maximum per client performance has a direct affect on WLAN service quality both for low client counts,

and increasingly, as more clients are added to the network •  Ruckus always encourages testing client devices at scale with the applications that will be used in the

real-world. With adding more clients, the performance advantages of Ruckus become increasingly more evident.

PERFORMANCEINDOOR 11AC, SINGLE-CLIENT

the tests

561 480

386 311 264 235

0 100 200 300 400 500 600

30 feet 60 feet 90 feet

Mbp

s

MacBook Pro 5G Uplink TCP Throughput

684 555 565

413 397 408

0  

200  

400  

600  

800  

30 feet 60 feet 90 feet

Mbp

s

MacBook Pro 5G Downlink TCP Throughput Ruckus R700 UniFi AC AP

RUCKUS WIRELESS PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL

Ruckus vs Ubiquiti!A p r i l 2 0 1 5

What: Ruckus R700 vs Ubiquiti UniFi AC-AP 11ac 3x3 access points supporting high density clients (11ac and 11n) How: Test downlink, uplink, and bi-directional TCP traffic using Chariot high throughput script Why: Many enterprises depend on APs to deliver reliable high performance Wi-Fi at scale: •  Efficient airtime utilization by Ruckus increases capacity and maximizes spectrum resources •  Ruckus supports more clients with higher service quality and reliability with fewer APs

PERFORMANCEINDOOR 11AC, MULTI-CLIENT

the tests

Test - 1 AP 2.4 and 5GHz - 90 Clients

30 iPad Minis (11n) 10 MacBooks (11n) 30 MacBooks (11ac) 20 iPad Minis (11n)

2.4 GHz 5 GHz

0 50

100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450

Downlink TCP Throughput Mbps Ruckus R700 Ubiquiti UniFi AC

0 50

100 150 200 250 300 350 400

Uplink TCP Throughput Mbps Ruckus R700 Ubiquiti UniFi AC

RUCKUS WIRELESS PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL

Ruckus vs Ubiquiti!A p r i l 2 0 1 5

Feature Ruckus Feature Ubiquiti Solution

Adaptive Antenna (BeamFlex)

Ruckus intelligently adapts transmissions using directional antenna patterns that maximize signal quality, minimize interference, and benefit reliability and capacity.

Standard TxBF features which provide little real-world gain. Multi-Lane™ RF technology is available in UniFi AP Outdoor+ but it only improves AP receiver selectivity. Additionally, UniFi AP Outdoor+ supports only 2.4GHz band what limits its options in high density deployments.

Active Channel Selection (ChannelFly)

Ruckus actively operates on and predicts channel capacity for each channel, collecting valid, real-use statistics and increasing capacity for the entire WLAN.

UniFi offers limited functionality for automatic AP channel selection. Although such option does exist, the result is often suboptimal. AP channel allocation is not dynamically maintained based on RF conditions.

Native User Onboarding (Zero-IT Activation)

Built-in to the Ruckus solution is an onboarding tool that auto-provisions client devices with a connection profile. Easy access with no admin intervention.

No Native User Onboarding features in the solution.

Per-User PSK (DPSK™) Dynamic PSK technology allows Ruckus customers to provision a unique PSK for each user/device. It’s secure, scalable, and easy to provision and manage.

No similar feature. Ubiquiti supports configuration with shared passphrase for WPA-Personal settings. WPA-Enterprise with Radius server authentication is also supported.

SmartMesh Networking

SmartMesh is enhanced by adaptive BeamFlex antennas, capacity-based path selection, adaptive wired failover, self-healing and -forming algorithms, and one-click setup.

UniFi supports only basic Wireless Uplink option for connection between Wired AP and Wireless AP on the same band.

Polarization Diversity with MRC

Smart antenna design by Ruckus incorporates by horizontal and vertical adaptive polarization to match client device orientation and improve predictability.

No option to match client polarization and device orientation dynamically with AP antennas.

Massive Scale

With controller clustering and integrated management for up to 30k APs, Ruckus can support very large and redundant networks with only a few controllers and one touch-point for management.

Ubiquiti offers UniFi Controller as a software based option only. Management of multiple sites is supported. Claiming high scalability with a cloud based controller however there no robust solution for controller redundancy and for clustering. The feature set is too limited to appeal to large Enterprise customers.

Consistent Performance By prioritizing RF design and AP performance as requirements for Ruckus products, all of our deployment models have consistently remarkable performance.

Significantly lower data throughput with UniFi 802.11ac Aps was measured during testing. Multi-Lane™ RF technology may provide some benefit for AP receiver in busy RF environment but it is not available across all product range and is not implemented in 802.11ac Access Points at the time.

Rogue Detection

Ruckus detects rogue APs during background scans. Automatic identification of three malicious type rogues: SSID-spoofing, Same network, MAC spoofing. Additionally, AP can be marked as malicious rogue by network administrator. ZoneDirector can send alerts for all identified rogues or for malicious only. Option to activate protection against malicious rogue APs by broadcasting de-authentication frames with rogue’s BSSID.

Only very basic functionality, UniFi Controller is capable to generate a list of detected APs which are not managed by it. Information available: •  Last seen •  Name/BSSID •  Channel •  Security used •  Name of the manufacturer •  Location of the nearest managed AP

Managed Services Enablement

With highly scalable carrier-class platforms like vSCG clusters, SmartCell Insight, SPoT, and a full breadth of AP models, Ruckus enables a managed service Wi-Fi model that makes sense to partners and end-customers.

UniFi Controller can be used as a platform for multi site AP deployments offering basic network management features, visualization and statistics. There is no robust architecture for load balancing between controllers and for redundancy. This is a feature gap for scalable managed services solution. UniFi does not include LBS.

Load and Band Balancing

ZoneDirector spreads the client load between adjacent APs by establishing desired client limits. Client limit gets dynamically updated and uses information from AP channel scans. Band balancing is also supported, target percentage of clients for 2.4GHz radio can be set.

WLAN Group configuration includes Load Balancing setting that defines number of clients per radio. This feature is not available in all AP’s i.e. UniFi AP-AC does not support it in UniFi release v 3.2.. Band balancing is not supported.

FEATURES

RUCKUS WIRELESS PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL

Ruckus vs Ubiquiti!A p r i l 2 0 1 5

•  Publicly traded on NYSE (RKUS) •  Formed: June 2004 •  Customers 36,000+ •  Solution Partners: 11,000+

•  Worldwide market share leader in service provider Wi-Fi segment for both unit shipments and revenue (Dell’Oro)

•  Recognized as leader in IDC MarketScape enterprise WLAN 2013-2014 vendor analysis

Ruckus Highlights

Copyright © 2014, Ruckus Wireless, Inc. All rights reserved. Ruckus Wireless and Ruckus Wireless design are registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Ruckus Wireless, the Ruckus Wireless logo, BeamFlex, ZoneFlex, MediaFlex, FlexMaster, ZoneDirector, SpeedFlex, SmartCast, SmartCell, ChannelFly and Dynamic PSK are trademarks of Ruckus Wireless, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks mentioned in this document or website are the property of their respective owners.

Ruckus Wireless, Inc. 350 West Java Drive Sunnyvale, CA 94089 USA (650) 265-4200 Ph \ (408) 738-2065 Fx www.ruckuswireless.com

City of San Jose

“Our previous Wi-Fi network was based on older technology and was simply no longer a viable infrastructure for delivering the robust, high-performance service users have come to expect within Silicon Valley. Fast and reliable wireless connectivity is no longer negotiable – it has become table stakes when trying to attract world-class events and businesses that want to come to San José. Recent technology advances in wireless signal controls and smart Wi-Fi meshing made by Ruckus enable us to deliver just that.”

Vijay Sammeta, Chief Information Officer

Satisfied Customers

RUCKUS IN THE REAL WORLD