As it turns out, that same ICX core platform family that was originally developed by Foundry Networks two decades ago is still very much alive and well in Ruckus today. “Customers have been on the ICX platform for decades,” Giordano said.
“What we’ve been able to do successfully is cross-sell that portfolio into Ruckus’s historical customer base,” Giordano said. “Increasingly, customers are no longer adopting best-of-breed Wi Fi and best-of-breed campus networking from a switching perspective.”
The company has focused on specific vertical markets, including education, hospitality, manufacturing and high-end residential installations. Now it’s extending that approach into commercial professional AV.
Software-driven convergence for air-gapped networks
Network architects have traditionally maintained separate physical networks for AV systems. The approach stems from two concerns: Video traffic could impact business-critical applications, and AV professionals often lack the networking expertise to properly configure enterprise switches. This doubles infrastructure costs and creates management complexity.
“There was a reluctance to run AV over a traditional production network,” Giordano said. “You’d have your classroom network that you’re running digital learning on and operating your campus around, and then you’d have this air-gap AV network because you were concerned that the traffic for AV is so latency sensitive and jitter sensitive that I need to have this bespoke network for it.”
The Pro AV ICX switches eliminate both barriers through software that automatically recognizes AV protocols and applies quality-of-service policies. The system uses network segmentation to isolate AV traffic from other applications without manual VLAN configuration. It handles uncompressed 4K and 8K video over standard Ethernet using copper RJ45 interfaces while managing multicast traffic patterns through IGMP snooping.
