In testing, Cisco Catalyst 9100 Access Points outperformed all other APs in our testing. Performance was second to none in the testing lineup. Reliability has been proven over the many years we have used this product. The new 9100s have also not presented any hardware …
Aruba Instant On AP Series Access Points are well suited for a small to mid-size setup (i.e., from 20 users to 500 devices that need to connect to WiFi). Aruba provides access points for both indoors and outdoors (e.g., commercial spaces and offices, and manufacturing units as well). Aruba Instant On AP Series Access Points can also support controller-based architecture, and I would recommend going for that when the AP devices are more than 30.
It's good for new builds. If you have a new building or new area by itself, it would be great for that. It's not so great, which we've run into this. If you try to mix it with older model or different model APs that are running a different protocol, WIFI protocol, they call it the salt and pepper deployment. You'll have clients and devices that are roaming between the two different model APs and it's really not good for connectivity, so I wouldn't really recommend it. If you're not going to replace all the APs in a specific area with the 9100, then I wouldn't recommend it for that.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Cisco was able to provide a product that met specific business requirements because they have offered a wide range of devices with various feature sets.
9100s have a 3rd radio that allows for a lot of additional security features
9100s have the same level of reliability and performance as the previous generation and continue to impress.
