Home | Forums | Article Search | Subscribe & Shop | Contact Us | Log Out Ruckus Wireless MediaFlex 7811 Email This Print This View My Personal Library Heavy Gear September 2009 • Vol.9 Issue 9 Page(s) 28 in print issue Add To My Personal Library Ruckus Wireless MediaFlex 7811 MediaFlex 7811 Ruckus Wireless $199 www.ruckuswireless.com CPU Rating: 4.5 Specs: Band: 5GHz; Port: 1 10/100 Ethernet; Antenna array: 6 high-gain elements, 63 omni patters; IGMP snooping: up to 32 multicast groups and up to 48 receiving stations; Security: WPA and WPA2 (AES); Channelization: 40MHz channel bonding supported This is the best wireless gear you’ve never heard of. Despite the hype 802.11n has received, we all know that dead spots and throughput issues remain common. Sometimes Draft N will sustain a high-def video stream, sometimes it won’t. This is particularly vexing for those of us who want, for instance, to use our wireless-equipped Xbox 360s as media extenders for streaming movies from a home server. So what do you do? Service carriers are increasingly turning to little-known Ruckus Wireless, which is the only vendor offering beamforming in its 802.11g/n gear today. Beamforming uses sensors and antenna arrays to isolate the Wi-Fi signal of most interest, focus transmission, and/or reception signal strength along that path, and ignore everything else. It’s a bit like using a bright flashlight in a dark room rather than turning on a dimmer omnidirectional bulb. Ruckus uses beamforming at the access point and (if you have one) client adapter ends, yielding up to a 9dB gain while rejecting up to -17dB of interference, the Achilles’ heel of Wi-Fi. At opposite ends of my 2,600 square-foot house, surrounded by seven to 12 competing neighbor networks, it takes 16:04 (minutes:seconds) to download a 2GB file on my open Cisco WAP4400N 802.11n access point. In fact, I had to turn off my Logitech wireless speakers to initiate the transfer. The Ruckus 7811 enabled the same transfer to the same notebook (using an Intel 5350 NIC) across the same path in 6:01 with the extra overhead of WPA-AES encryption. I was able to watch a 19.2Mbps, 720p MPEG-2 video on my notebook while simultaneously streaming 1080p WMV video to my Xbox 360, which had the Ruckus 7111 adapter ($139) attached. Both streams looked like flawless HDTV; I was stunned. Ruckus assures a “worst-case” sustained throughput of 50Mbps to any corner of a 4,000 square-foot building. Why not a perfect five CPUs? You can only buy Ruckus hardware through a few outlets, such as Expressnets (www.expressnets.com), and Ruckus has yet to devise a consumer-friendly setup app. The 7811 itself, though, is downright phenomenal. by William Van Winkle  User Reviews Be the first to write a review of this product Want more information about a topic you found of interest while reading this article? Type a word or phrase that identifies the topic and click "Search" to find relevant articles from within our editorial database. Enter A Subject (key words or a phrase): ALL Words (‘digital’ AND ‘photography’) ANY Words (‘digital’ OR ‘photography’) Exact Match ('digital photography'- all words MUST appear together) Home      Copyright & Legal Information      Privacy Policy      Site Map      Contact Us Copyright © 2010 Sandhills Publishing Company U.S.A. All rights reserved.