The Cisco 3504 Wireless (WLAN) Controller provides centralized control, management, and troubleshooting for small to medium-sized enterprises and branch offices.
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Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
Score 8.9 out of 10
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The Cisco Catalyst 9800-80 is a modular wireless controller with optional 100 Gigabit Ethernet (G) modular uplinks boasting seamless software updates for large enterprises and campuses, and security with ETA and SD-Access.
Chose Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers is more modern, looks better, supports newer access points. Using different tags - site tags, policy tags, etc. is a nice way to configure different access point groups or locations. Also Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless …
Chose Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
Compared to older Cisco WLC, Catalyst 9800s are easier to manage and SSO HA is more reliable. Compared to Aruba IAP, the number of features is greater. Meraki is easier to set up but having a central controller gives greater control.
What I like most about the Cisco 3504 WLAN Controller is that its user interface makes networking very simple. Shows real-time information about the network which helps admins watch the traffic flow and client connections using the dashboard. Since it’s so simple, people find it very easy to start using the system. The complexity in setting it up for the first time could hinder efficient deployment in fast-paced environments.
I think any size organization can benefit from them. The smaller "L" models work well for a smaller organization and of course, the same answer for the larger platforms. The failover/redundancy options are quite nice and the unified setup and UI is always nice for consistency.
I think the updates are great. ISSU upgrading code is fantastic. I think the speed with which CAPWAP converges or reconverges, I think the redundancy mechanisms for roaming APs to other controllers is very good. I think overall, getting away from more of a monolithic processor where subprocesses handle what they call the WNCD tasks, I think fundamentally is an improvement in performance.
The radioactive tracing, all of the troubleshooting and all of the logging and all of the importing and exporting features for logging and analytics within the controller itself is really, really good compared to the predecessor AireOS.
I have been using the Cisco 3504 wlan controller for about 1 years now. I have found it to be very reliable, but cumbersome to setup and configure. The GUI is not very user friendly, but if you configure it a few times you get used to it. It is lacking in some of the latest features that are offered by other vendors. The power usage is pretty good and the amount of AP's you can add is pretty standard
Cisco is everywhere. If you are looking for WLAN, Switching, or other related products, Cisco is the 800 pound gorilla in the room. With this in mind, you'd figure that their wireless controller would be their flagship product, right? Unfortunately, this is not the case. For the price point, the 3504 is a pretty lackluster product.
I was given the task to setup a new wifi network in a very large building. With many departments and a complicated layout, we needed to have a solid router to handle all of the network traffic and throughput. I was given the task to find a reliable, robust and cost-effective solution. With the Cisco 3504 WLAN Controller, I was easily able to setup an autonomous access point with a few clicks. The cloud based controller software was easy to use and had many features I was able to utilize and control, all other things are perfect .
The only downside I would say is the GUI performance is a little bit slow, even with a newer 9800, performance still lags a bit even compared to the previous generations. So I would like to see that improved. But aside from that, that's really the only issue that we have with it.
We have been using Cisco 3504 Wireless Controller in our network infrastructure for a long time now and it has been a very critical and beneficial addition in our network infrastructure. it has provided us with the tools required to efficiently manage and monitor our wireless network and users. it is a highly reliable and efficient device for any kind of environment.
Despite common software and hardware issues this is still the best product on the market for large scale enterprise deployments. Cisco has worked with us extensively to reduce the amount of bugs in every iteration however new bugs are introduced or new incompatibilities always arise with major releases. Thus, while I'm hesitant to recommend the product it's still much better than all the other competitors such as Aruba and Juniper in the WIFi space. There is also extensive integration with DNAC/Catalyst Center and ISE in an SDA deployment. Recently there has been a number of critical issues with the controller software and Cisco has proved themselves to be incapable of timely troubleshooting and diagnosis. This has reduced our confidence in the product and it's current and future stability and maintainability. At it's current state the product is taking up too much of our engineering resources to maintain despite also paying for premium support from Cisco. As such I have reduced by rating as we are likely to look at alternative vendors for our long-term wireless management solution
The centralized management give a good overview of the Cisco 3504 WLAN Controller. Its rich in security features like advanced security, RF optimization, and scalability. Cisco provides extensive documentation and support, although it can be highly technical. It is easy to configure and setup the Cisco 3504 WLAN Controller. Strong security features, including WPA3, rogue AP detection, and WIPS, enhance network protection.
Due to our HA set up we have always managed to access our wireless networks without problems, when issues occur. When we have lost access to the GUI, due to internal network problems, console access is always welcomed and brings with it the normal Cisco CLI syntax. From previous versions of CLI, it is now a lot simpler and reflects other Cisco products, making it easier to troubleshoot and navigate when necessary.
Monitoring is very good Seamless integration with Cisco ISE RRM configuration very easy. It has REST API support IOS-XE is very powerful operation system. Multicasting and mDNS features are really good and very easy to configure. It supports Pyats and Genie so getting constructed data from python script calls very helpful.
Cisco TAC is well known and SLA levels are great. Cisco support website and Cisco communities are another help for issues resolution. TAC is always supportive over Webex and helps to resolve issues pretty fast. This is another assurance for people to go with Cisco as the TAC capabilities are proven for all product lines.
The main reason why our company chose to opt for the Cisco 3504 WLAN Controller was the magnificent quality-price ratio of the product. It is very easy to handle if you have the appropriate technical knowledge and if not, you will always have Cisco technical support supporting you for whatever you need. Once the product is configured, it works stably without intervention and is fully integrated with the company's other Cisco solutions.
Ubiquiti WLAN is very much a consumer platform. It is not production ready, it is buggy, it has issues. It is cheaper than Cisco, but you get what you pay for. Aruba doesn't integrate nicely with our existing largely Cisco based networks, so when time came to replace AireOS, the Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers came out on top.
Positive impacts, yeah, is good to have a central location to control all these profiles for different countries and locations. And the drawback, like I said to you really because of the too many integrations that have a dependency on the software version. For example, Cisco ONE for Access have certain software that can run through and then this scatter center need to make sure it's working with the others APS version that is currently working. And we also, the Cisco Catalyst Center also have some kind another version of software that you need to support this controller. So it's like two tier three tiers of the software version that we need to match. Then only it can work.
