I have a bad habit of buying networking gear when my work/life gets hectic. In a recent time of chaos I decided I should update a Ruckus H510 AP I have to a H550. I saw one on eBay, gave an offer and it was accepted! When the unit came, it still had the config of a news company. I had to factory reset it like mentioned in previous articles. The odd thing is it would not come up for me to access. I could see the “Configure.Me” Wifi network, but when I went to it nothing. I tried going to the web page and got nothing, I set the default IP and couldn’t contact it via wired. I then took out Wireshark and started looking for what happened when I joined its Wifi.

It was looking for assets from 10.154.231.125? (Later I would find others mention this https://community.ruckuswireless.com/t5/Apps-and-SPoT/Wrong-IP-on-mobile-device-using-unleashed-Configure-Me-xxxxxx/m-p/25722) I set my laptops IP to 10.154.231.124/24, and I was able to connect and flash the Unleashed firmware like normal. I was getting other IP information and failing to get a web page on the wired port. I hope this helps someone out there.

One other thing I didn’t realize… The H550 is taller than the H510… and I had a shelf right above the spot it was mounted. So I did the right thing, and mounted the new one upside down, so the taller part goes down and doesn’t hit the shelf.

While I was here getting more Wifi 6 goodness in my home (I have been running mostly Wifi 5 (802.11ac Wave 2) I thought I would look for deals. I saw someone selling a R550 for sale for parts. It said that when turned on it had a red light. I know that these access points can take a good 3-5 minutes to start, and while they do, they have a red light on… What are the chances that this access point just has a bad firmware image, or… nothing is wrong with it and this person just didn’t wait…

I offered $50 for the broken access point that usually goes for $250, and they accepted! Then I waited for the device to come, and later that week, I plugged it in, powered it up, and… it booted fine! I flashed it over to Unleashed and suddenly I had another great Wifi 6 access point.

I have mostly moved all my access points to Wifi 6 at this point which means I can go above firmware 200.15 (the last for the Wifi 5 systems), but I still haven’t since its still recommended to stay there by some places. And I am pondering setting up the old H510 as a small access point and ethernet port at my workbench.