What is the Wi-Fi password?

This is one of the most common questions heard in small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) today. With the shift in technology and consumer expectations of connectivity, SMBs do more than just provide products and services to their customers—they provide Wi-Fi. But providing Wi-Fi can be a challenge to SMBs who have financial constraints and limited expertise in wireless networking. The options for SMBs are:

• A low-cost, consumer-grade Wi-Fi router. This comes with a drawback. The SMB who goes this route will likely deal with connectivity issues, poor performance and the inability support high-density environments.

• A feature-rich, expensive WLAN infrastructure. In this scenario, the business will need to have the IT knowledge or staff to deploy and maintain the complex infrastructure, something SMBs typically do not have.

• A fully functioning, high performance controller-less Wi-Fi network. With this option, SMBs will benefit from a network that is easy to set up and manage while supporting the connectivity needs of the SMB customers while on-site.

In a traditional Wi-Fi network, the controller provides consolidated management for the entire Wi-Fi network in one place. These devices can be physical or virtual, and communicate with all APs in the network at the same time. But, the set up of a Wi-Fi network with a controller can take time, costs money and often needs IT expertise. This is where Ruckus Unleashed comes into play. With Unleashed, the functionality of the Ruckus ZoneDirector platform is embedded directly into the Unleashed APs. Any Unleashed AP can act as the master, or controller. Unleashed is designed for a single site deployment of up to 25 APs or 512 concurrent consumer device connections. (For larger deployments or to support branch offices, ZoneDirector or SmartZone platforms are better options.) Unleashed features advanced RF performance, redundancy and resiliency all in a cost-effective package. To learn more about Ruckus Unleashed, check out the solution brief, brochure or learn how to buy.   Author: Diana Shtil, Product Marketing Manager