Alcatel-Lucent OmniAccess Wireless Access Points vs. Cisco Catalyst 9100 Access Points

One of best use cases for using OmniAccess Wire Access Point is where we have dense no. of users as client associated capacity is very good. Also one of the use case is when administrator wants different PSK for each user for authentication. OmniAccess WAP supports in better way.

Cisco Catalyst 9100 Access Points are well suited for dense Client solutions. We have used these in areas where we have a large number of guests that need top-notch connectivity without ever losing connection. The one area where we do have difficulty is in outdoor deployment, where large areas need to be covered, but we do not have physical connectivity in order to get the access points connected. This is not an access point issue but more of a physical connectivity limitation.

Incentivized

• Flexibility in terms of deployment, management
• Better security feature
• Application awareness ,WIPS
• DPSK
• Better client associated count

• So this product actually helps in healthcare facilities where we have a wireless, we call this WOW monitors. It's Wireless On Wheels. So we use those monitors to the patient's room to room. So in that case, rather than connecting it to wire, so it really helps us to connect through the WIFI and access the patients whenever we be needed.

Incentivized

• No of Interfaces
• must have a variety in terms of MIMO
• better throughput

• They could definitely download their code faster. When we first get them out of the box and join them on the network, it takes probably 20, 30 minutes per access point to download the new code from the wireless controller and then reboot itself and then come back online.
• When you're configuring it on the controller, if you want to switch access point groups, we have them broken out per site. Every time you add it to one of those groups, it also has to reboot. That's like downtime for us. That could be improved, I think.

Incentivized

The Cisco Catalyst 9120 Access Points have been a solid deployment for me. Using their interface is a mix of new and old. They run IOS, so if you know the CLI, you can easily navigate around them. You can join them to an older controller if it supports a certain version, you can join it to a new 9800 controller--very straight forward--and you can run the embedded wireless controller on them directly. I've found this to be very useful at smaller sites. The Cisco Catalyst 9120 Access Points are not limited to feature sets like the older generations' mobility express platform.

Incentivized

Using Cisco Catalyst 9100 Access Points you can expect good performance, if not excellent. Coupled with other tools and managment systems you can easily gain good insight and ease of management. Flexible deployment variations help you adopt the equipment to work for most any required scenario you could think of. It's a well designed and evolved product.

Incentivized

Cisco has been very good at correcting early issues with their code. Their TAC support has been fantastic when I would open a case with issues I was facing. Even though the hardware was new, they were very familiar with the interfaces and issues I was having. In the past I've been concerned about adopting a new product right away because of support issues. That was not the case here. Once I had the deployment up and running, they have had a good run of reliability.

Incentivized

Have used Cisco Meraki access point earlier having management on cloud and is on license (subscription basis). But Alcatel OmniAccess Points have management on cloud, on premise as well which means to say flexibility in terms of management. We had one requirement where we number of user is large which is going to connect on access point but Cisco Meraki only supports 200 users per radio whereas OmniAccess point have better client associated capacity with 524 per radio.

We are migrating from Aironet platform to Cisco Catalyst 9100 Access Points. That's more flexible, and we do it to sync switching, SDWAN, and wifi under one family.

Incentivized

These access points offer flexibility in deployment scenarios, supporting both standalone and controller-based architectures. Organisations can choose the model that best suits their current needs and scale as their requirements grow. Cisco Aironet Access Points are compatible with Cisco's Wireless LAN controllers, allowing for centralized management and monitoring of a large number of access points across the network. With the recent changes, it will even support cloud base controllers.

Incentivized

• Better Roaming
• Ease of Management
• Better performance

• problem with delivery time for the product - 12 months
• we extended our WiFi network - is easy with Cisco AP
• Connection new area\sites with AP is easy, we have got same location with only WiFi access - no wired cables
• increase secutity

Incentivized