Ruckus Networks Debuts Latest Stackable Switch

Ruckus Networks, an Arris company, on Wednesday made available the ICX 7850 stackable switch, designed for 100GbE edge-to-core enterprise networks.

The ICX 7850 delivers high-density aggregation for 10GbE, 25GbE, 40GbE, 50GbE and 100GbE, and allows customers to use existing investments in fiber cabling, making it suitable for large, secure markets such as education, government and business.

Ruckus’ Siva Valliappan

“The ever-increasing need for Wi-Fi connectivity is taxing network cores, but the solution to keeping up with the proliferation of devices. Advances in wireless technologies do not need to be complex and expensive,” said Siva Valliappan, vice president of wired products at Ruckus. “The ICX 7850 switch simplifies multigigabit network upgrades and reduces the total cost for enterprises through its ability to scale quickly and linearly to future network demands.”

Researchers at IDC say the enterprise WLAN market grew almost 10 percent year over year in the third quarter of 2018.

“The market is being driven by continued high demand for wireless-access technologies and increased interest in advanced software platforms for controlling WLAN environments. Wireless access-technology continues to be relied on for critical applications around the globe and the coming 802.11ax standard will help drive growth in this market in 2019 and beyond,” said Brandon Butler, senior research analyst, network infrastructure at IDC.

The ICX 7850 can scale up to 12 switches per stack, and offers pay-as-you-go design, enabling enterprise networks to keep pace with advances in wireless technologies, such as 802.11ax, IoT, and LTE, and to accommodate multigigabit network growth.

The new switch features hitless stack failover, multichassis trunking and in-service software. The vendor also made available its SmartZone network controller for configuration, monitoring and troubleshooting for the complete Ruckus ICX switch portfolio and wireless-access-point network.

Ruckus has been on a rollercoaster ride of annual acquisitions. The vendor, founded in 2004, was acquired by Brocade in 2016 (after Brocade was acquired by Broadcom) and by Arris in 2017. In November 2018, Commscope announced its plans to buy Arris – and Ruckus – for about $7.4 billion.

The combined company is expected to drive profitable growth in new markets, shape the future of wired and wireless communications, and benefit from key industry trends, including network convergence, fiber, 5G, IoT, and rapidly changing network and technology architectures, according to CommScope.