What can surprise cloudy WiFi? *

* - from English exclaim - exclaim, especially in surprise.

We once wrote about Xclaim, a subsidiary of Ruckus Wireless, which produces high-performance, low-cost access points for small offices. Well, we now have some more important news on this product, which deserve a separate review post.

This year, Ruckus Wireless itself has its own “budget” solution for small offices - Unleashed . It turns out that the market niche Xclaim has become even smaller? Being already locked in a very narrow market “loophole”, Xclaim was positioned as simplified access points (hereinafter - TD) for small networks that do not require significant knowledge in the planning and administration of wireless networks for launch and support. We decided to figure out when it is better to use and why. Moreover, a new version of the cloud controller for Xclaim has recently been released.
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Since the last article about Xclaim, much has changed, and now the points are running a full-fledged cloud service or in standalone mode. The cloud is, of course, foreign, with the appropriate facilities, such as the lack of local backup and accessibility from any devices (iOS, Android, and so on). Access to the cloud controller is completely free, you just need to get a free account on xclaimwireless.com:

I would like to remind you that along with that, Xclaim, unlike production equipment of the same Ubiquiti company, with the introduction of the long-awaited centralized management function, continues to support local administration using the Harmony application or via the local web interface and operating in “standalone” mode, when the AP - to itself the commander and the chief. To manage a network from one point, if the network is never planned to be expanded or simply not needed in the foreseeable future, it is not necessary to use a cloud controller.

In general, during the year equipment has learned a lot of new things. Under the spoiler we will try to bring all the possibilities of this system at the moment into a single table and note how new tricks turned out to train a not very old dog:

Let's continue launching the network under the control of the controller and enter with its existing data on its web interface:


And now we will indicate what we see when entering the controller. The web interface is divided into several categories:

And, of course, each of these categories leads to a sub-menu of configuration tabs for individual parameters and settings:




Of all the variety of different options and possible “abuse” of TDs, now it is most interesting for us to show how to connect the TDs to the controller and apply the settings of the newly created wireless network to it. So, go to the Access Points section, which opens by default on the Register Access Point tab. Fill in the information. As you can see, the TD is associated with the controller's account by serial number, that is, without access to the Internet, the TDs cannot work with the controller (which, in principle, is logical, because the controller’s management interface cannot be raised in the local network either):



Pay attention to the Tags field - you can add tags there to help determine whether points belong to different groups, for example, “Moscow, office, 2nd floor” and further apply some settings, grouping points by these tags (we will tell about this later) .
For the convenience of registering points in the system, it is possible to load CSV with the list of necessary parameters of the AP (in the options you need to select the Add Multiple Aps tab):



Now we see the point connected to the controller:



Time to create a wireless network. Go to the Networks section and select the type of network to be created. We can make a guest network (pay attention to the Hotspot function - when it is activated, you will need to specify the address of your guest portal page. Since Xclaim does not and will not have a local subscriber base, there will also be no built-in guest portal on it):



We can create a so-called business network (in fact, the difference between them in the encryption modes and AAA available for enabling):



After clicking on Save, the created WLANs appear in the general table:



Now you need to bind the wireless networks to the access point (s) and then the control of groups of points comes into play. Let us return to the list of TDs to which another one has been added, indicated by the “warehouse” tag:



Now when I click on an assigned tag, I will only see the points with this tag:



Mark this point with a tick (or a group of selected points at once) and select the Attach WLAN action from the Action menu:





Now, the selected SSID will be transmitted from this point.

If the address of the cloud controller is available from the point, then the settings are applied almost instantly - the controller informs the AP about changing the configuration file, which the point immediately downloads and applies. It is important to remember that, for example, when the radio parameters change, the point restarts the radio modules - thus losing all the connected clients. In this case, the point also constantly with a periodicity of 1 minute informs the controller about a change in its state and sends statistics on the use of the resources of the point.

By and large, with the exception of a pretty page for monitoring client statistics and the function of generating reports in pdf format for clients, events with TDs, or both of these sets, the controller's functionality is limited to the features listed in this article. Yes, there are not many hundreds of customizable parameters with which you can “play” for months, but the equipment itself is sold under the slogan “Wi-Fi for non-IT guys”. Simple, convenient, understandable - hence, it has reached its goal. And since inside the TD sits the iron from quite a serious Ruckus points, then the task of “distributing the Internet in the office” solution is a great success. Is it necessary to wait from him something else?