Ruckus Networks, now part of CommScope (NASDAQ:COMM), announced an expanded hospitality connectivity portfolio to include the ICX 7150-24F fiber switch, ICX 7150-C08 compact switch and Fiber Backpack, which supports the company's H510 access point (AP). The new products add fiber support to existing offerings for hospitality and multiple dwelling unit (MDU) customers and are intended to pair with CommScope's structured cabling products for an end-to-end solution.
Ruckus is also adding new Internet of Things (IoT) partners to its ecosystem to better address hospitality business priorities, including improving operational efficiency, enhancing guest services, and increasing guest and staff safety.
The new Fiber Backpack is designed for direct integration of Ruckus H510 in-room APs onto the fiber backbone for a secure installation leveraging fiber-to-the-room architecture. The new product can utilize a range of interoperable fiber transceivers with support for single- or multi-mode, enabled by the portfolio of Ruckus ICX fiber switches, of which the Ruckus ICX 7150-24F is the latest addition.
Ruckus is also partnering with IoT ecosystem vendors such as ASSA ABLOY Global Solutions, AVSystem, Kontakt.io, Qubercomm, Telkonet and TraknProtect to enable hoteliers to support the IoT use cases on a unified network infrastructure including connected entry, safety buttons, asset, room tray and vendor tracking, energy management, online thermostats and location-based advertising. The vendor solutions are integrated into the Ruckus IoT Suite, enabling a common IoT dashboard and rules-engine functionality to allow sensor alerts to trigger actions by other devices.
"In the global hospitality industry, interoperability between multiple applications and vendors is key to helping hotels plan for the future, where higher guest and operations bandwidth consumption present real challenges for existing hotel networks," said Larry Birnbaum, vice president of Global Hospitality and MDU, Ruckus Networks. "In addition, our customers and partners see the great value our fiber solutions offer, and it enables us to deliver a faster, richer hotel network while providing flexibility to support the many functions required by hotel operations."
The Ruckus Fiber Backpack is a purpose-built, field-installable, fiber-to-Ethernet media converter accessory designed to provide a pluggable fiber interface for Ruckus H510 wall-mounted APs. It also provides power over Ethernet (PoE) for the associated H510 AP and supports both passive optical networking (PON) and active Ethernet SFP modules. It's designed to be paired with Ruckus fiber switches such as the ICX 7150-24F.
The Ruckus ICX 7150-24F is an entry-level, 24xSFP enterprise switch with four 10 GigE SFP+ ports for uplinks and stacking. The fiber switch can be stacked up to 12 units with other members of the ICX 7150 family. The ICX 7150-C08P is an eight-port 10/100/1000 Mbps switch with GigE uplink ports and full PoE/PoE+ support. The switch is fanless. Both switches can be managed by the Ruckus SmartZone Network Controller.
The new products are expected to be available in early Q3 2019 through Ruckus channel partners.