Wi-Fi where Wi-Fi goes badly. And a warning about the cameras.

RUCKUS puts the behaviour of the radio in bad conditions first, and it does it in a way of its own: the antennas of its access points do not radiate the same in every direction all the time, but change shape to point at each device that is talking, dodging reflections and interference. They also choose the channel according to what really works in that place and not according to what looks free.

That is not noticeable in an office with twenty laptops: there any decent brand will do. It is noticeable in a hall with two thousand people, in an industrial unit with metal racking up to the ceiling, in a hotel with thick walls, in an underground car park with pillars. What it sacrifices is the price, which is not the entry-range price, and a switching range that exists and is not the reason this house gets chosen.

It is recognised where density rules: sports venues, trade fairs, hotels, care homes, hospitals, schools, large warehouses. And in outdoor installations where coverage has to reach people who are moving.

The first is without a controller: one of the access points acts as the boss and the rest are configured from it. For an installation of a few points it is the sensible option, with no server and no fee. The second is with your own controller, in the house, physical or as a virtual machine: it is the one used in large installations and the one that lets you really fine-tune, with profiles, with zones and with reports. The third is management from the manufacturer's cloud, which is convenient for many sites.

The difference matters because it determines who can maintain it and how much it costs each year. Moving from the first mode to the second when the installation grows is a change of project, not an adjustment, so the question of how many points there will be in three years' time is asked at the start.

In the people, not in the cameras. A large venue has guards moving about with a tablet, maintenance staff looking up a plan, wireless credential readers, patrol terminals, and a control post that needs to keep working while its user walks. All of that is Wi-Fi, and in a venue full of people it is difficult Wi-Fi.

In the outdoor coverage of a venue: car parks, loading bays, perimeters, waiting areas. There is a range for outdoor use and it is where the way its antennas radiate shows most, because outdoors there are reflections and obstacles that change with the hour and the weather.

A wireless network is a shared medium where only one talks at a time. When something does not arrive properly, it is repeated, and repeating uses up everybody's time. A camera is not a laptop: it sends without stopping, in the same direction, all day, at night too. Four cameras hanging off the same access point can live together; twenty saturate it and on top of that ruin the Wi-Fi for the people, which is what it was put in for.

And a camera's throughput is not fixed: it goes up when the scene moves, which is precisely when it matters. A camera that uses little looking at an empty corridor can use three times as much looking at a car park with trees at night, and that is exactly the night when nobody wants gaps in the recording. A wireless link that was already tight does not make it that day.

So the house rule is: cable whenever there is a way to run cable, and Wi-Fi only when there really is not —a temporary camera, a point where no trench can be dug, a site—. And when it is done, it is done properly: a radio dedicated to that and not shared with the people, throughput measured over days, and recording in the camera itself as well so that an interruption is not a gap. What we do not do is put cameras on Wi-Fi to save cable and not say so.

Nor would we put it as the backbone of the wired network of a large video installation. It has switches and they do the job at the access layer; the centre of a network with hundreds of cameras running through it is not the ground on which this brand is chosen.

It depends on the mode. Without a controller there is no licence: the access points are bought and they work. With your own controller there are licences by number of access points managed, bought once and extended when points are added. With cloud management there is a subscription per device and per period, as in any service.

When support for your own controller expires, the access points carry on giving Wi-Fi and the controller carries on governing them. What is lost is the right to new firmware and to support. In cloud management, the subscription is the service, so it is worth asking in each specific case what carries on working if you stop paying, and leaving it written in the quotation.

What always has to be budgeted for is the expansion. In Wi-Fi the installation grows because a new area appears or because somebody complains about a corner, and each access point added may need its licence on top of the device. It is explained on day one so that next year's expansion is not a surprise.

What nobody should touch without judgement is the radio planning: powers, channels, which speeds are allowed and which are not. It is the part where a well-meant change —raising the power of one point because somebody was complaining— makes the whole venue worse, because in radio more power is not more coverage: it is more interference. That rule is explained and left in writing.

And the tone that runs through all ten: if your IT department already has its Wi-Fi brand and it works, we are not coming to change it. The useful conversation is another one: telling them how much power we are going to ask of their switches, how much capacity we are going to take up, which networks we need separated and —if somebody proposes cameras over Wi-Fi— why it is better not to. That is explained with numbers and before signing.