Competitive Hotsheet

Ruckus ZoneFlex vs. HP/Colubris Networks

Background
Colubris, now part of HP ProCurve, has a strong feature set for hospitality, and are competitively priced. On the other hand, HP is
not known for wireless networking, and they dont have a true dual-band 11n solution.
Ruckus Colubris
ZD1000 ZD3000 ZF2942 ZF7343 ZF7962 MSM710 MSM422 MSM410 MSM320 MSM310

802.11 a/g $399 (ZF2942, 11g) $499 (MSM310, 11g) $699 (MSM320, dual 11a/g)
802.11n $499 (ZF7343) $599 (ZF7363) $999 (ZF7962) $649 (MSM410) $999 (MSM422, 11n + 11abg)
$1,200/$2,000/$4,000/ $7,000 (ZD1000: 6/12/25/50 APs) $1299/$4,999/$16,500 (MSM710:10 APs/MSM730:
Mbps
Controller
$6,000/$9,000/$15,000/$30,000 (ZD3000: 25/50/100/250 APs) 40 APs/MSM750: 200 APs) 25.0
TCP Downlink to 20 Cli
Typical 11g: $13,975 (ZD1025 + 25 ZF2942s)
11g: $24,959 (MSM 730 + 40 MSM in Various Locations
310)
Deployment 11n: $16,475 (ZD1025 + 25 ZF7343s)
11n: $44,959 (MSM 730 + 4020.0
MSM 422)
(100,000 sq. ft.) 11n: $28,975 (ZD1025 + 25 ZF7962s) FlexMaster
Ruck

Ruckus Virtues Ruckus Architecture ZoneDirector 15.0

Data
ZoneFlex AP Management
High performance & range Ethernet
(and cost-effective!)
Ease-of-use & deployment 10.0
(best UI out there, SmartMesh)
Proven triple-play ready FlexMaster
ZoneFlex AP

(over 1 million IPTV deployments) Data

5.0

Management

Colubris Architecture Ethernet

MSM MSM 0.0 Data
Management
Location
Ethernet A
10-40 ft.
Guest traffic

HP/Colubris Drawbacks
NMS
No RF expertise: no BeamFlex MSM

smart antenna
Dual radio 11n AP (MSM 422) is Ruckus ZF2942
really only single 11n, other radio Performance Results Colubris MAP-320
is 11abg
Ruckus AP achieved highest, Ruckus AP
Guest access, captive portal Mbps
25.0 most dependable performance achieved
SSIDs tunneled back to controller across all locations tested 5x higher
TCP Downlink to 20 Clients
creating bottleneck not 8 performance
in Various Locations
truly distributed forwarding 20.0
with interference
architecture Ruckus 7
6.58

6
15.0

Colubris
5

What to be aware of
10.0
4

Hospitality-focused presence & 3

5.0
feature set
Price competitive 2
0.0 1.31

Location A Location B Location C 1

10-40 ft. 40-70 ft. 70-100 ft.
0
Location of AP Performance measured
with IxChariot

Ruckus ZF2942
Colubris MAP-320
Competitive Hotsheet
Features
Ease of use and deployment
Auto-learn, auto-adapt,
auto-optimize adaptive
smart antenna array
2 FastEthernet ports and Power
over Ethernet
Flexible AP Mode and AP /
Controller Auto-discovery
Configuration wizard
Dynamic RF management
Wireless Mesh
Management and policies
Remote management
Traffic engineering engine
Wireless heat map
Captive portal
Guest accounts
Security
AAA integration
Wireless authentication
Wireless IDS
Performance and scalability
Extended range
Rotational throughput variance
Voice over Wi-Fi capacity
802.11n ready
Proven record delivering
multimedia over Wi-Fi
Video over Wi-Fi capacity
Proven record delivering
multimedia over Wi-Fi
This hotsheet was compiled using publicly available sources and results of Ruckus testing and is believed accurate as of April 20, 2010. While
every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy and completeness of the information provided, Ruckus Wireless, Inc. assumes no liability or
responsibilities for errors, omissions, improper or incorrect information contained in this hot sheet.
Ruckus ZoneFlex vs. HP/Colubris Networks
Benefits Ruckus HP/Colubris
BeamFlex rejects interference,
Minimizing the need for an expensive site survey
stabilizes performance & maximizes No. Cheap rubber,
pre-deployment and for IT staff, Mitigating real-
worst-case throughput by selecting in ducky antennas
time interference.
real-time from 4K antenna patterns
Enabling daisy chaining APs & redundancy. PoE
Yes Yes
obviates need for power supply.
Operating as thin- or fat- AP and
Yes Separate model
automatically discovery of Director.
Easy 5-minute initial configuration wizard for non
Yes No
IT staff deployment
Dynamic channel and power adjustment based
Yes Yes
on real-time data
Extend network coverage without running cables Yes 11g or 11n. Plug-n-play LocalMesh
FlexMaster (SOAP/HTTPS)
Remote control and configuration Yes
HTTP/S, Telnet/SSH, SNMP
Classification, prioritization, per class/SSID/client, SmartCast automatically classifies traffic Limited, difficult to
rate limiting and supports four queues per client configure
At-a-glance visualization of WLAN Yes AirWave
Yes Yes
Easy-to-generate guest passes Yes Yes
Integration with existing directories and Yes. RADIUS, AD,
Yes
authentication methods Local authentication, LDAP
Dynamic PSK, 802.1X, WEP, WPA-TKIP,
Yes No DynamicPSK
WPA2-AES, 802.11i
Rogue AP detection Yes AirTight OEM
Fewer APs 2x HP/Colubris Average range
5.2% (easy deployment & user
Consistent across rotations 29% (large variance)
satisfaction)
Number of VoIP calls per AP with 4.0+ MOS score 20 calls at ~70 ft., 4.3 MOS score 0 calls at ~70 ft.
Dual band 11n
AP (MSM 422) is
Scalable model, future-ready Yes
really only single
band 11n
100,000s households with
Concurrent voice, video and data No
SD and HD IPTV over Wi-Fi
Yes Limited
100,000s households with IPTV No
over Wi-Fi