By Claus Hetting, WiFi NOW CEO & Chairman
The combination of Wi-Fi and optical networking has long been ‘a perfect marriage’ and now RUCKUS and Nokia are partnering to replace legacy Wi-Fi connected by CATx with state-of-the-art Wi-Fi 7 APs backed by optical LAN. The linkup between RUCKUS and Nokia is in many ways also the perfect marriage in the market sense with each organisation relying on the other’s complimentary market leadership and strengths.
It takes a lot of wires to deploy wireless networks – as they say – but now copper CATx wires are increasingly being replaced by optical fiber offering nearly endless connectivity capacity and speed. Case in point: The recently announcement collaboration between RUCKUS Networks and optical LAN leader and networking giant Nokia. The two are now leading the charge in bringing optical LAN-backed Wi-Fi to a long list enterprise networking market segments, RUCKUS says.
“We’re already experiencing a huge uptick in demand for the combination of Wi-Fi 7 with optical LAN network solutions, especially from ISPs and MSPs as well as MDUs and hospitality, even from healthcare facilities. A lot of it is driven by Wi-Fi 7 for new installations but even brownfield cases are common, which is not a market that we initially thought we could get to. The demand has been remarkable from the get-go and we’re right now deploying in hundreds of properties,” says Tim Dyer, VP Global Service Provider Sales at RUCKUS Networks.
RUCKUS Wi-Fi 7 APs deliver up to tens of Gbps of connectivity, which of course craves the high-capacity backhaul effectively afforded by fibre. Meanwhile optical LAN systems are (to say the least) future-proof with nearly endless capacity for current Wi-Fi 7 as well as future generations of Wi-Fi APs. But these may not even be the most compelling solution characteristics driving demand, Tim Dyer says.
“State-of-the art optical cables are super easy and fast to install, which means we can rewire a hotel room for optical LAN in 30 minutes. The cables themselves are nearly invisible when you run them for example along the ceiling. We’re replacing or eliminating a lot of distributed switches and IDFs, too. The end result is cost effective, highly reliable, and also consumes less power,” he says. RUCKUS expects that 30% of MDU owners will opt for passive optical solutions in the short term.
According to Nokia, optical LAN is not only a vast capacity improvement and a much better long-term investment. “Optical LAN offers up to 40% reduced power consumption compared to traditional LAN and our studies show that it drives down TCO by up to 50%. More than 600 enterprises including hotels, hospitals, university campuses, and airports around the globe are using Nokia’s Optical LAN solution,” says Ana Pesovic, Marketing Director at Nokia. She also says that the expected operational lifetime of optical fibre cables can be as much as 50 years.
In terms of market segment penetration the RUCKUS-Nokia linkup also seems close to ideal. Nokia currently enjoys global market share leadership in optical broadband while RUCKUS is widely considered the leader in enterprise-grade Wi-Fi for hospitality and MDUs. Nokia has shipped more than 150 million fibre lines worldwide and is a leader in next-generation fiber technologies for connectivity speeds of 10 Gbps and above, the company says. Add to this that the combined RUCKUS-Nokia enterprise networking solution is currently being sold and deployed via more than ten thousand RUCKUS and Nokia resellers.
Technically, RUCKUS APs require the ‘RUCKUS Fibre Backpack’ (media converter) accessory to connect fibre backhaul to the AP. Optical LAN networks – such as those of Nokia depicted here – lead to substantially simplified and more efficient network architectures compared to traditional cabled LAN and WAN, including a lot fewer network nodes (leading to more cost-efficient operations) and longer reach. RUCKUS expects to incorporate management of Nokia OLT network elements into RUCKUS network management platforms in the first half of 2025.
/Claus.
