What do you think of this AP vs the EWS377AP 4x4 AP[...]Like to go untangled router on my PC to an AX AP in the middle of house ceiling mounted.
Overall, one could summarize the difference like this: Ruckus is designed and marketed as an enterprise-class solution which can accommodate small-business or residential as well (similar to Cisco Aironet or HPE Aruba). EnGenius offers more of a small-business type solution which could certainly be used at home and potentially for entry-level enterprise needs (very similar to the likes of Ubiquiti UniFi or Zyxel Nebula).
With Ruckus, the value only really starts to show up when RF/physical interference gets more challenging and/or client load starts to increase; that's when the radio tech and algorithms start to flex their muscles, and PD-MRC, BeamFlex, etc. actually do work. If you have dozens and dozens of devices (a burgeoning collection of IoT stuff, for example) and/or airspace looks like an earthquake seismograph (from neighboring wifi), Ruckus
should, at least at some point, start to outperform EnGenius, or most other more commodity APs. If you go sniffing around at places like reddit/r/networking, you'll see
stuff like this , and while UniFi is a bit different overall, the AP internals are quite similar to EnGenius:
Unifi hardware-- off the shelf wifi chipset and SoC, take the reference design, strip it of any components possible to drive down build costs. Linux firmware phones home to the "controller" which is really a management server that collects log data and pushes configuration. The ruckus connects back to the controller with a GRE tunnel, and the controller handles control and data flow in realtime for all AP's on the network to extensively coordinate and manage the user experience. Packets don't just vaporize in transit when a client roams from AP to AP, and you get consistent low latency hand off.
Pop open two similarly specced units side by side. Inside the ruckus you find a 6 axis CNC machined antenna of proprietary design. Shielding. Capacitors and resistors to isolate circuits. Little touches to add a dB of sensitivity and selectivity here and there. In the unifi you find that the antenna is a cheap piece of sheetmetal origami. In place of isolation recommended in the SoC reference design, you find bare circuit traces that were "engineered out" via trial and error rather than analysis. "Good enough" sensitivity and selectivity rules the day.
The experience is night and day when it comes to applications intolerant of packet loss and intermittent connectivity. Aka anything enterprise oriented. VoIP. Legacy applications. High user density.
Then there is software and support. While both offer very similar management/control options on the surface level (embedded, discrete appliance, VM or hosted cloud), the capability and feature depth do have real differences. Ruckus's code has been iterated on for quite some time, and QA'd/QC'd by the need of having to stand up to the likes of incumbent solutions like Cisco Aironet and HPE Aruba. EnGenius's software quality, while good, is in my opinion, nowhere close to that level of solidness, scalability or feature-depth. Support-wise, I've used both, and again, it's just two different animals. EnGenius offers one year, sometimes multiple years (depending on the product) of generic tech support for "free", and that's it. No escalation tiers, special sales engineering or project management if you're a bigger fish. Ruckus offers all of the latter, but again, you will pay for it (by design).
So we're largely looking at two completely different animals here, especially when it comes to the ecosystem and support side of things. But does any or all of that actually matter
for your home based setup? Ironically enough, after all that typing, probably not. You'll likely get more ROI from the EnGenius purchase. That said, the differences are there. Whether that substantiates the $300 mouse-trap vs. the $1100 one is your call.
Does it require a controller or can it be managed standalone via HTTP or CLI?
Per Ruckus's current
product guide, the AP can be managed standalone via the Unleashed firmware's embedded web-based controller (which is also master-slave scalable up to 25 pre AC Wave 2 APs, or 50 AC Wave 2 APs), and includes CLI management capability if you desired. They also have traditional ZoneFlex appliance-based controllers or virtual Smart Zone controller options as well.
