Aruba Instant On AP Series Access Points vs. Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers

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.

Incentivized

I guess a good scenario where it's well suited is when a user reports a WIFI issue at a particular time of day, we're able to actually go into that time window and extract all of the logs from our access points and from our controller to see exactly what is happening to their user when they, for example, attempt to connect network, but they're not able to begin decline. That's a particular use case where it's very good. A use case where it's not useful, that's actually hard to say. I guess it's not particularly good at correlating large groups of data, so that's something that we have other products to use. For example, if a large group of users report issues during a particular timeframe or a particular location, it doesn't correlate all of the user data. You can only draw down to individual users.

Incentivized

• Controllerless solution
• Users connect to different APs seamlessly (soft handoff) when moving from one region to another
• Stable--we have never faced any downtime with any APs
• Different SSID to segregate internal and guest networks

Incentivized

• I actually really like, I know this is weird, A lot of people hate it but not hate it, but network engineers don't they like CLI stuff, but I like more of the user interface for it. It's definitely way better than the past one that I had. The 5520 and it is got a lot of neat features. Show me what networks are being utilized, how much bandwidth's going through them, users and things like that. What computers connect to, what access point, things like that. That's pretty cool. That gives me enough detail. It helps me troubleshoot things very easily on a daily basis.

Incentivized

• Aruba Instant On AP Series Access Points miss having OTP generation--this is must, for guest users at least
• Pricing is high

Incentivized

• If possible, please add a column for WAP Name and WAP Model within the 2.4/5/6 GHz radio sections, as we have different models of WAPs in the fleet, and it would be easier to identify WAPs within a building.
• We conduct digital exams for our students. If there is a way to identify clients and block traffic for applications like ChatGPT, it would be greatly appreciated. Currently, there is no filter for ChatGPT or generative AI.

Incentivized

The flexibility of the Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers as a load balanced, multi campus deployment, has been key to our deployment. Working with the Cisco SDA Design and TAC teams to deploy a product that will always be available in the event of power and network outages has further improved the resiliency our business needs to succeed.

Incentivized

I feel that it works well for the most part. However, like I've said, a lot of the even Gold Star version software that we have moved to with us being an enterprise network, we have ran into several issues we've had to engage tack with and work with vendors and other support to kind of get through that. And a lot of times it was known issues even though it was on the Gold Star version.

Incentivized

Great contact to Wireless Innovate Program Team and TAC to solve our problems.

Incentivized

Incentivized

the cisco catalyst 9800 wireless lan controller series is much more structured than the aruba solution and it can easier manage a larger number of devices. it's quite easy to add a new location, a new access point or to change and manage policies across the wireless network of the enterprise

Incentivized

• Our users' productivity has increased, as they can now connect wirelessly
• We are now centrally controlling users' traffic from firewall and blocking or limiting use of unwanted web apps
• Has helped us in improving monitoring of user traffic

Incentivized

• Like I said previously, I am able to manage 1300+ APs and over 8000 users with room to grow. The deployment is easily expandable to by just adding a third controller, although it's my understanding that I would then lose HA.
• It doesn't always play nice with DNAC, so if you intend to use DNAC's wireless assurance and inventory management, you may need TAC support. For this reason alone, I would definitely include SmartNet in your purchase.
• These controllers allowed us to scale our environment up by about 500 more APs. We were able to improve the users' experience with better roaming and RF profiles that are supported.

Incentivized