Glossary

What it means:

APs and Clients continuously exchange management frames to maintain a connection. Airtime Decongestion is a Ruckus technology that limits management frame exchanges between APs and clients in ultra-high dense environments.

Why you should care:

In an ultra-high dense Wi-Fi environment, excessive management traffic saturates the available Wi-Fi spectrum. This results in poor connectivity and low per-client throughput, ultimately leading to a poor client experience.

Airtime Decongestion technology enables APs to selectively respond to clients, dramatically increasing overall network efficiency for higher airtime utilization and thus a better user experience.

What it means:

Asset Tracking is a way to keep track of a device’s location using Wi-Fi, radio frequency ID (RFID) tags, or a combination of both.

Why you should care:

Many organizations—especially schools, hospitals, and others with large campuses—have lots of expensive equipment that moves around all the time. Whether it’s tablets or laptops used by students and teachers, audiovisual equipment, lab or clinical equipment, organizations want to be able to know where their assets are located. Modern wireless technologies offer two ways to do this. For devices connected to the Wi-Fi network, you can use Wi-Fi location and positioning tools to see their location.

For assets with an RFID tag attached, you can use similar tools that use Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons to track them. If you’re using a Ruckus Smart Positioning Technology (SPoT), you can do both. Just open up the Locator feature in the SPoT Analytics Dashboard, enter in the device’s unique MAC address, and you can:

• Instantly pinpoint any device’s real-time location
• View historical heat maps of where devices have been and how long they spent there
• Configure alerts for when devices enter or leave a location to reduce theft and loss
• Support location-based advertising, navigation, and other services
• Better identify users’ locations during an emergency

What it means:

Footfall analytics is a way to use the wireless network in a public venue (especially a retail store) to gain deep insight into how customers behave in a physical space.

Why you should care:

While online is a big part of modern retail business, physical stores still play a huge role in the shopping experience. 

Now, retailers around the world are using location analytics to bring the same kind of personalized, highly targeted shopping intelligence you see online to their brick-and-mortar stores.

Location analytics solutions like Ruckus Smart Positioning Technology (SPoT) can show retailers exactly how customers are using a space. They can see in-store traffic patterns, identify the best locations for products down to the shelf level, optimize store layouts to increase sales and time spent in the venue, and much more.

What it means:

Dynamic Pre-Shared Key (DPSK) is a Ruckus-patented technology that delivers secure network access by providing each device and user with a unique login credential. Users access the wireless network using their own personal key, which is provided as part of the network onboarding process. In contrast, with conventional pre-shared keys (PSKs), multiple, or even all, users share the same key.

Why you should care:

Traditional pre-shared keys create a security hole in network defenses because multiple users access the network with the same key. 

Conventional PSKs do not give IT teams visibility and control over devices on the network or the ability to map access policies to specific users and devices.

Users readily share conventional PSKs with others, and IT cannot revoke them for one user without revoking access for all. DPSKs address the security flaws of conventional PSKs to make users, devices, data and the network more secure.

DPSKs are an alternative to digital certificates that provide similar security benefits. They are appropriate in cases where user experience considerations make it impractical to install a digital certificate on the device. This applies in cases where the user will only need network access for a limited time—for example, in the case of guest users.

What it means:

Multi-gigabit technology and specifically the IEEE 802.3bz standard, formally introduced as 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T in 2016. IEEE 802.3bz is a standard for Ethernet over twisted pair copper wire at speeds of 2.5 Gbps and 5 Gbps.

Why you should care:

Gigabit connections have served us well for many years, delivering fast low-latency data to laptops, smartphones and other devices. However, the latest generation of APs can overwhelm a 1 GbE connection so that the wired network becomes a performance bottleneck.

Multi-gigabit technology, which operate above 1 Gbps supports new data rates of 2.5 and 5 Gbps, while still leveraging commonly deployed Cat 5e (for 2.5 Gbps) or Cat 6 (for 5 Gbps) cabling. Thus, enterprises can maximize the performance of their Wi-Fi networks in the most cost-effective, least-disruptive manner. The Ruckus ICX Z-series switches and the Ruckus R720 access point support multi-gigabit technology / 802.3bz to help organizations maximize their Wi-Fi network performance.

What it means:

You’re not crazy if you think that wireless networks should be… wireless. But in traditional WLANs, you still have to run cables to each AP. In mesh networks, individual APs connect with each other wirelessly.

Why you should care:

Who wouldn’t want to eliminate the need for expensive Ethernet cabling across their facilities? But making mesh networks work in enterprises is easier said than done. Traditionally, it’s required a lot of complex configuration, and it’s been hard to assure consistent, reliable connectivity.

With Ruckus SmartMesh Networking technology, we’ve made mesh networks enterprise-grade. Instead of navigating complex configurations for each AP, just check a box. The mesh forms automatically. And with our BeamFlex technology, APs can dynamically change antenna patterns on a packet-by-packet basis to adapt to conditions and ensure a solid connection. Enterprises get self-forming, self-healing mesh networks at half the time and cost of traditional wireless deployments.

What it means:

Network onboarding is the process by which a BYOD, guest or IT-owned device gains access to the network for the first time. Secure network onboarding means doing this in a way that enhances security for users, devices, data, and the network.

Why you should care:

IBYOD and guest users often incur frustration with default methods for network onboarding. 

Default methods such as MAC authentications and conventional PSKs are not intuitive for users, leading to numerous help desk tickets.

Default methods of onboarding and authentication are also not secure. An effective system for secure network onboarding improves end-user experience for BYOD users and guests. It relieves IT of the burden of excessive help desk tickets related to network access, and improves IT security as part of a layered protection strategy. Ruckus offers Cloudpath Enrollment System software/SaaS for this purpose.

What it means:

Transient Client Management is a capability that delays associations of Ruckus AP’s with transient clients (devices that are in the AP’s coverage area for a short time) using statistical methods.

Why you should care:

In a dense Wi-Fi network, transient clients can degrade the user experience for already connected clients.

This problem is typical in train stations, bus terminals and various public hot spot venues where thousands of devices moving through an area send management frames to an AP they don’t intend to connect with. This overwhelms the network with unnecessary traffic and thus slows down the Wi-Fi.

With Transient Client Management, Ruckus APs maximize the attention towards already connected non-transient clients and utilize the airtime more efficiently.

What it means:

The ChannelFly dynamic channel management technology in Ruckus APs improves wireless performance by dynamically switching a client to a better channel when the one it’s using starts to degrade.

Why you should care:

Most modern WLAN products can change a client’s channel when the one it’s using gets clogged with interference or too many devices. But there’s no point in switching channels unless you know the new one will actually provide more capacity.

And most channel management strategies don’t do a great job of predicting. ChannelFly technology assesses all available channels to measure the real-world capacity improvement each one can provide before it directs the AP to switch channels.

ChannelFly technology was originally developed for use in carrier Wi-Fi environments, where channels are highly congested. Even in these dense public settings, it delivers multi-fold improvements in AP and network capacity—within seconds, automatically.

What it means:

Smart, compact adaptive antenna systems containing multiple elements that electrically manipulate antenna properties so as to create optimal antenna patterns for each device with which they communicate.

Why you should care:

raditional wireless antennas are either “omnidirectional” (radiating signals in all directions) or “directional” (radiating signals in one direction). Ruckus BeamFlex Adaptive Antenna Technology takes a more adaptable approach. BeamFlex technology enables the antenna system within a Ruckus AP to continually sense and optimize for its environment.

This antenna system mitigates radio interference, noise and network performance issues, and improves application flows. The results:

• Increased performance and range
• Crystal clear video and voice communications
• Maximized power efficiency

BeamFlex+ is an enhancement to Ruckus BeamFlex adaptive antenna technology by providing adaptive support to mobile devices. BeamFlex+ enables antennas to adapt to client device orientation in addition to client device location.