Video Suggestion: Aruba (non instant on) and Ruckus Unleashed vs Unifi

I asked this is one of Tom’s live streams if it was possible but I also wanted to post it here. I am planning whenever I upgrade my home and business APs to WiFi 6 to dump my Unifi APs and move to another vendor. With the decisions UI is doing I kinda want to jump ship to see if the grass is greener on the other side.

That being said I’d appreciate it if it was possible to make an Aruba and Ruckus Unleashed vs Unifi video.
(I am talking about the non “instant on” APs from Aruba since the instant on ones are cloud managed only).

From my understanding, Ruckus Unleashed is controller less since the primary AP is used as the “controller” and there aren’t licencing fees unless you want support. I have heard firmware updates are also free for now since they don’t enforce them for needing a license. Aruba I am not sure since I haven’t reached out to their sales for licensing information but it would be a nice learning video.

Ruckus Unleashed work without a licence and can be locally managed but have some limitation such as only having up to 25 units per site along with these other limitations:
https://docs.ruckuswireless.com/unleashed/200.1.9.12/c-UnleashedLimitationsAndDeviations.html
Also of note is this is only for AP’s and not switches which are managed separately.

Aruba I am less than clear on their licencing fees for their non-instant on devices
https://www.arubanetworks.com/techdocs/ArubaOS_80_Web_Help/Content/LicenseGuide/License_Usage.htm#new_licenses_4235106931_1059876

I did not have time yesterday to finish the video yesterday discussing UniFi alternatives but I might have time to get that done today because it’s a convoluted topic. Even with all the recent changes UniFi really does still stand alone as one of the only vendors offering a AP/Switch/Router (even though we don’t use their routers) solution that will expand beyond a small home user network without a forced cloud account and or licence fees.

1 Like