What's all the Ruckus?

What's inside the Ruckus MM2211 Metro Broadband Wireless Gateway? Two PCBs, one for the main board, and another for the antennas. Here's how I disassembled mine and what I found inside.

**Broadview Technology Solutions, LLC and or myself take NO RESPONSIBILITY for the safety of you or your equipment. Do not try this with your own device. Perform these steps at your own risk.**

Here's the front view of the Ruckus ..


First, peel back the edges of the long sticker on the rear of the device. Remove them with a size 10 security star bit. That's the only tool you'll need to open this device.

Next, gently peel up the orange / white sticker on the front top center of the device and remove another screw.


Gently pry off the top portion of the cover to expose the antenna PCB. (Shown is both a front and rear view of the antenna board)


Then flip it over and pulled off the two front pads which cover the last two mounting screws.


Remove the screws and gently lift off the bottom part of the case to expose the radio PCB.

Now all the internals are loose to lay out and have a look at. Here are the two PCBs displayed. There's an 8 pin ribbon cable between the two boards, and an U.FL end of one cable that connects to the radio board. The onboard memory is an Etron Technology EM639165TS-6G 8MB chip. Under the silver plate, there's an Atheros AR2315A-001 IC which provides the access point functionality (32-bit MIPS R4000-class processor, Wireless MAC and baseband processing engine, 10/100 Ethernet MAC, High speed UART, 16-bit configurable local bus, Integrated analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters, SDRAM and serial FLASH memory interface, with a PCI 2.3 host interface). Next to the Atheros chip cover there's also a 5 pin header most likely for programming the onboard NVRAM. Between the RJ-45 port and the 10 pin header (8 pins seem to be used) there's a Delta Discreet LAN Filter LFE8563. Near the right edge there's an ST branded 25P64V6P 64Mbit low voltage flash memory chip featuring an SPI Bus compatible serial interface, 50MHz clock rate (max), and boasting 20 yr data retention.

The customers I've done work for that have one of these devices are generally unhappy with the speed, and reliability of them. The latency and ping time leave much to be desired. But hey- it is after all "wireless internet". There are a few other wireless providers (ahem-TMOBILE-ahem) that frustrate me to no end with the huge 4 digit ping times and intermittent data service.
I think the general population expects some of that.

Any comments are welcome, please share your experience - positive or negative with this device. Thanks!