RUCKUS Virtual SmartZone – High Scale (vSZ-H)
NFV-based WLAN Controller for Large Enterprises and Service Providers

Benefits:

Scalability

The vSZ-H is a virtualized WLAN Controller that runs in the cloud and can easily support networks with tens of thousands of APs and hundreds of thousands of users.

Flexibility

The vSZ-H can run in a public cloud where it can provide a managed WLAN service offering for an almost unlimited number of customers or a private cloud where it could be for the benefit of a single network deployment.

Managed WLAN Services and Multi-Tenancy

The multi-tenant capabilities of the vSZ-H enable many customers to share a single instance of the vSZ-H, or each managed services customer can have their own virtual instance of the vSZ-H.

High Availability

The vSZ-H supports Active/Active clustering across multiple data centers for very high availability.

Cost Effective

Customers only purchase licenses for the number of APs that need to be supported and additional licenses can be added for a pay-as-you-grow model.

Hotspot 2.0 Roaming Support

The vSZ-H is the first to support the Wi-Fi Alliance Hotspot 2.0 release 2 specification, which enables mobile devices to automatically discover and select APs for which a roaming arrangement exists.

Location Capabilities

The vSZ-H can enable location-based services. These services require the addition of RUCKUS Smart Positioning Technology (SPoT), which also runs in the cloud.

Big Data Analytics and Reporting

Large-scale Wi-Fi networks generate an enormous amount of data on network performance. The vSZ-H can upload network statistics to the SmartCell Insight (SCI) platform.

Features:

Monitoring

• Enables quick views of the health of the network, APs, connected devices, and alerts
• Provides detailed views of the AP status and client data

Remote Troubleshooting

• Speeds problem resolution across multiple sites with easy drill-down menus
• Enables IT to perform troubleshooting commands from the cloud

Simplified Deployment

• Accelerates large-scale deployments by configuring APs in groups.
• Simplifies configuration by applying consistent configurations and firmware to a group of APs
• Offers flexible one-click firmware upgrades for all APs or a group of APs, using a cloud-hosted firmware server

Reporting

• Creates scheduled or on-demand network and security reports
• Delivers PCI-compliance reports for compliance

One-Click Provisioning

• Downloads AP configurations from the cloud automatically
• Requires no local IT support; any person onsite can plug in and power up the APs

3+1 Clustering

• Built-in scalability and reliability supporting service fault tolerance.

Single- and Multi-Tenant

• The flexibility of deploying a single or multi-tenant solution to address enterprise and MSP requirements.

Smart Licensing

• Simply port licenses from other SmartZone platforms to adapt your WiFi network to your business needs.

Smart Positioning Technology (SPoT) Location Based Services

• Smart Positioning Technology (SPoT) Location Based Services The industry’s first cloud-based location technology enabling service providers and enterprises to deliver a wide range of LBS applications.

Smartway Bonjour Gateway Support

• Zero-configuration service that supports client access to services like Apple’s AirPlay, AirPrint, and other mDNS products like ChromeCast across VLANs and subnets.

Hotspot 2.0 Release 2

• WiFi offloading with network discovery and carrier authentication using 802.1X/EAP as a service.

Deployment:

Highly Scalable and Fully Featured WLAN Controller

The vSZ-H has the scale and the feature set for the most demanding service provider applications. It has been designed with Network Function Virtualization (NFV) in mind, a central tenant of which is the decoupling of the application from the underlying hardware. By splitting out the WLAN control plane from the data plane, and then virtualizing the WLAN Controller application, the stage is set for an extremely versatile network deployment that is consistent with emerging industry trends (See figure 1).

The vSZ-H WLAN Controller function provides feature-rich access point management, including control over their selforganizing smart networking behaviors such as RF management, load balancing, adaptive meshing, and backhaul optimization.

The following are some of the capabilities that are enabled by the vSZ-H WLAN Controller function.

Figure 1 shows how the vSZ-H would be deployed in an actual network. All control plane traffic flows between the RUCKUS access points and the vSZ-H in the cloud. All data plane traffic is routed directly from the RUCKUS access points to a WLAN gateway, without passing through the vSZ-H. This greatly simplifies network design as it allows the WLAN Controller function to be consolidated in a national data center, while the WLAN gateway function can reside in regional data center. This approach allows user data to be quickly routed via the most expeditious path to the Internet. RUCKUS supports L2oGRE (aka Soft GRE) for this data tunneling function. Soft GRE is supported by most WLAN gateways. The RADIUS Proxy function on the vSZ-H can greatly reduce the RADIUS traffic load on the WLAN gateways.

WLAN radio resource management
The vSZ-H supports a variety of radio resource management techniques of which the most important is ChannelFly™. This algorithm allows APs to automatically select the optimum 2.4 and 5 GHz channels so as to maximize performance and minimize interference. When properly deployed, ChannelFly can double the capacity of a WLAN network in a high-density environment.

The vSZ-H also manages dynamic mesh deployments that make use of the 5 GHz band to backhaul AP traffic to a point where wireline facilities are available. Mesh backhaul configurations can be dynamically reconfigured to reroute traffic over different paths as conditions change.

Seamless low-latency WLAN handoffs
The vSZ-H supports seamless handoff for subscribers as they move from one Wi-Fi AP to another in the coverage area. It is not necessary for the user to re-authenticate as they move about. Their credentials are passed from access point to access point. Handoffs are performed rapidly, and there is no impact on the application. The vSZ-H also supports Wi-Fi RAN load balancing.

Hotspot 2.0 based roaming
Hotspot 2.0 enables seamless network discovery and selection along with seamless authentication using 802.1x/EAP. It represents the future of Wi-Fi roaming and has picked up a tremendous amount of support from throughout the wireless industry. The vSZ-H supports Hotspot 2.0 by enabling RUCKUS APs to exchange information with Wi-Fi devices pre-association. The information that is exchanged includes details on roaming consortiums that are supportted by that AP as well as information on backhaul capacity and loading. The Wi-Fi device then selects the best available AP and begins the authentication process. Hotspot 2.0 is automatic and requires no user intervention.

Operations and Administration (OAM)

Element management system
With the built-in EMS, the vSZ-H supports rapid deployment and eliminates the need for separate and expensive management systems. The built-in EMS provides user-friendly full-fledged FCAPS support and can be easily integrated with existing OSS/ BSS systems via a variety of interfaces ranging from traditional SNMP or CLI based interfaces to web programming friendly secure API based methods (RESTful JSON). See Figure 2.

Figure 2: The built-in EMS in the vSZ-H provides user-friendly fullfledged FCAPS support and can be easily integrated with existing OSS/BSS systems.

Statistics, KPIs and reports
The vSZ-H’s built-in EMS provides rich near real-time statistics on subscribers (including client fingerprinting), APs, SSIDs, mesh backhaul, and the vSZ-H cluster itself. Reports ranging from hours to years can be generated for a variety of key performance indicators (KPIs) and exported out in multiple formats. For operators seeking richer information reporting, RUCKUS also provides the SmartCell Insight (SCI) appliance for long-term storage, sophisticated data mining and analysis, and richer more complex reporting.

Access point configuration and management
Access point configuration is a key function of the vSZ-H and especially important when rolling out networks with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of access points. In a RUCKUS network deployment, access points will automatically connect to a pre-determined vSZ-H instance when they are installed in the field. They will identify themselves via MAC address and serial number, and then their configuration will be automatically downloaded along with their zone number. The configuration information for each AP is downloaded to the vSZ-H from an external provisioning system via a CSV file or an API (see figure 3).

Figure 3: Automatic Access Point Configuration is the process by which APs installed in the field can have their configuration automatically downloaded to them via the vSZ-H.

Managed Services
The vSZ-H’s fully functional GUI provides concurrent role-based access control (RBAC) for viewing the Wi-Fi system resources and performance. With the support of partitioning for access in a secure manner, the vSZ-H allows service providers to give their managed services customers the ability to administer and monitor only the SSIDs over which they have control.

Specifications:

Supported Configurations
Managed APs	Up to 10,000 per vSZ-H Up to 30,000 in a 3 +1 cluster
Concurrent Mobiles (UEs)/Stations	Up to 100,000 users per vSZ-H instance Up to 300,000 users per vSZ-H cluster
WLANs	6,144 per vSZ-H
Controller Expansion	Up to 4 controllers in a 3+1 active mode, supporting non-disruptive capacity expansion. Future releases will validate larger clusters.
Controller Redundancy	Distributed data preserving with 3+1 redundancy
Key Functionality
Data Offload	Local offload of traffic from the AP directly to the internet or tunneled to a WLAN gateway
Authentication Protocols	Open, 802.1x/EAP, PSK, WISPr, WPA, WPA2-AES, WPA-TKIP, WEP Fast EAP-SIM re-authentication EAP-SIM, EAP-AKA, EAP-AKA’ over WLAN for 802.1x Wi-Fi Locations with the SCG AAA-Proxy functionality enabled
AAA Service	RADIUS (AAA) PROXY
Hotspot 2.0	Support for Hotspot 2.0 release 2
WISPr Support	WISPr 1.0 authentication
Element Management	Secure multi-operator login (RBAC) Large scale (bulk) AP management tools Configuration audit trails Alarm and event notification (SNMP V2 / V3) Extensive statistics and reporting Integrated on-board remote accessible EMS RESTful APIs (JSON) CLI

Compare:

	RUCKUS Unleashed	ZoneDirector 1200	ZoneDirector 3000	ZoneDirector 5000	SmartZone 100	vSmartZone E	vSmartZone H
	Controllerless	ZoneDirector Platform			SmartZone Platform
Access points per Appliance	1-25	5–75	25–500	100–1,000	1–1,024	1–1,024	1–10,000
Access points with Clusters	HA*	HA*	HA*	HA*	1–3,000	1–3,000	1–30,000
Platform	Controllerless	Appliance	Appliance	Appliance	Appliance	Virtual Machine	Virtual Machine
Site	Single	Single	Single	Single	Multi-Site	Multi-Site	Multi Site / Tenant

* High availability (HA) with redundant controller support

Documentation:

Download the RUCKUS Virtual SmartZone - High Scale Datasheet (PDF).