Ruckus Wifi

Ruckus H550 Odd Recovery, & Wifi Upgrades

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.

Ruckus H510 Factory Reset

I have a Ruckus Unleashed Wi-Fi setup at home. I have a main R710 (AC Wave 2, 4×4:4) in the center of the house, then a H550 where my desktop is for better wireless and added hardwired connections. One corner of the home was getting only moderate signal and already had ethernet run to it; looking online, another H550 (Wi-Fi 6, 2×2:2) on eBay would run about $150. That was a bit more than I felt like spending to fill in this pocket with lower signal. In looking around the H510 (AC Wave 2, 2×2:2) has gone end of sale, but not end of support; those are currently going for $40.

Ruckus R710
Ruckus H550

The Ruckus H510 and H550 are very similar, with the exception that the H550 is Wi-Fi 6. They are great little access points. Their range is not as good as the bigger units, and their sensitivity isn’t that high. They were designed for things like hotel rooms. But for filling in a space with Wi-fi and giving you 4 ethernet ports, each capable of having its over vlan or 802.1x.

Having already setup a H550 I figured this install with an existing cable and POE switch at the other end would be easy. The issue I ran into was I didn’t have the password and the unit refused to factory reset. The documentation said “Hold the Soft Reset Button for 8 seconds” that didn’t work. Elsewhere said “Hold both soft and hard reset buttons for 10 seconds” that didn’t work. Others said, “Hold soft reset for 30 seconds”, which also didn’t work.

In the end, in frustration, the thing that worked was hitting soft reset, which has the red status light come on, then for about 5 seconds I would keep tapping on and off the soft and hard resets. This worked like a charm. Suddenly the password was reset, and I could get in.

Generally, Ruckus Unleashed has been working well for me. There seems to be a bug where when a device restarts, SNMP does not come on even if set. I need to go into the admin panel, turn it off, then back on for SNMP to start responding. But for a home network, not a big deal. Over the holidays I had a bunch of family members over, we had 39 devices on the network at once, with over 1gb/hour being used, and everything worked well. If anyone has Ubiquiti and is tired of their controller and lack of power features, I recommend giving Ruckus Unleashed on used gear a try.