The Cisco 5520 Series Wireless LAN Controller is a highly scalable, service-rich, resilient, and flexible platform that is ideal for medium-sized to large enterprise and campus deployments.
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Cisco Aironet 1500 Series Access Points (discontinued)
Score 6.2 out of 10
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Currently supported by Cisco, but no longer sold, Cisco recommends migration to the Cisco Catalyst 9100 Family of Access Points, which offer greater performance and flexibility.
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Pricing
Cisco 5520 Wireless Controller
Cisco Aironet 1500 Series Access Points (discontinued)
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco 5520 Wireless Controller
Cisco Aironet 1500 Series Access Points (discontinued)
Cisco Aironet 1500 Series Access Points (discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
Cisco
At this point the Cisco 5520 Wireless Controllers are end of life as a Cisco product, so I would not recommend them to anyone looking to purchase a wireless controller for an enterprise. However, many people are still using these, and they do work reliably, even if they are a bit long in the tooth now.
Cisco Aironet 1550 Series Access Points is very useful for outdoor locations that are more exposed to the wilderness or the weather, which provides uninterrupted wifi access during high winds and bad weather. It also is useful for hazardous locations that are prone to danger or wildlife. Unfortunately, it would not be appropriate to get a Cisco Aironet 1550 Series Access Point if it is only needed for basic wifi use, or indoor use, as the extra features and price would not be necessary.
Outdoor mesh bridging of access points brings significant cost savings to many of our production facilities. Deploying mesh APs is a significant cost reduction over trenching conduit to connect remote areas via fiber.
Cisco APs are extremely resilient, with a failure rate of below 5% in some of our harshest environments.
Cisco APs have the intelligence to identify wireless interference sources with Clean Air technology
We have had some issues with access points losing their configurations and going offline. This is not a common issue and we are not entirely certain if it is a fault of the controller or the individual APs. That said, the controller does not appear to retain the knowledge of the offline AP which can be a management headache.
This equipment from Cisco has been dependable and we are able to easily continue to add access points or make changes easily to the Wi-Fi password settings.
We have been operating this equipment for a number of years and it does not give us any issues.
Overall the usability is ok. The centralized management reduces complexibility and offers bulk features like adding access points to specific groups which automatically applies linked configurations.
On the other hand the GUI is very outdated and some features are not displayed correctly on new browsers. Also automation possibilities are very limited compared to the new 9800 series controller.
The Cisco Aironet 1560 Series Access Points served their function well. They were reliable, provided decent speeds, resisted the elements, and provided a good investment. The only downsides were mostly appearance which doesn't matter that much. However, I believe that the tech in the access point is not future proof which is why I did not give it a nine or ten star rating.
Cisco support is always ready to support and engage in any problem or issue. Starting from the implementation support, troubleshooting any software issue or hardware. Their engineers are engaging whenever we ask for support, keep following up with us, and troubleshoot any problem till we find a solution and be satisfied [with] the service.
Initially I had a problem with the regulatory and channel selection, it was a bug on the AP as it was fairly new, solved by TAC on engineering release, and since then it has been performing flawlessly.
Just take your time when setting up the HA pairs as those can be tricky. Also take your time setting up AP groups and make sure they are on all the SSIDs you need to be on.
Cisco Identity Services Engine is well integrated on Cisco 5520 Wireless Controller because the WLC supports a lot of authentication methods and security protocols (such as PEAP, EAP-TLS, Captive Portal redirect). They perform very well with ISE. Cisco ISE is able to manage centrally the AAA sessions from all the WLCs keeping a central point of management for wireless infrastructure.
Making the decision to use Aironet is more related to the type of scenario that you have. We chose Aironet because we mainly manage all the network internally and already have Cisco products to integrate with Meraki which is a good option if you are starting from scratch.
The software of the Cisco Aironet 1560 is highly scalable, the software is very powerful so that the APs can be customized to the maximum and achieve the best performance of the network at the wifi level. The use of it is very easy for people with low knowledge.
Implementing the [Cisco] 5520 [Wireless] Controllers offered us a huge improvement in administrative time over our previous Cisco 3850 deployment. Being able to see all of our APs on a single controller as well as centrally manage them is a great benefit. This also removed the need to deploy specific equipment in different IDFs throughout our Industrial locations and instead only requiring switches with Power Over Ethernet (POE) capability.
Wireless performance has improved with the deployment of our 5520s, which allows our plant operators to do their jobs more efficiently while on the move.
Having three Cisco 5520 Wireless Controllers provides tertiary redundancy for our wireless networks. The solution is elegantly simple. Preventing downtime is, obviously, a profound part of our supply chain capabilities.
With only a few DOA's or failing devices, the AP's are of very high quality.
We expect them to run stable for many years, which is why our initial investment will be an intelligent choice compared to installing a cheaper product.
Although the AP's from Cisco is cutting-edge technology, the 802.11ac standard will be considered legacy in a few years, meaning that its a balance to purchase a well-designed product that won't outlast the tech that it provides. Imagine having an investment in a large fleet of high-quality 802.11b AP's 20 years ago. Although they would still be working flawlessly due to their good quality, the bandwidth would probably be unacceptable to most modern consumers.
