Cisco 5520 Wireless Controller vs Cisco Catalyst 9100 Access Points

• It has the ability to manage all Cisco access points that we have, regardless of the model. The limit is 1500 pieces of equipment.
• The WLC enables roaming functionality in the localities, this helps with collections, wireless IP phones, and access with notebooks.
• The WLC manages the quality of the "air" and "signal" of the 2.4ghz frequency, avoiding noise and interference.
• The WLC has an interesting feature of visibility of the traffic of the internal network.

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• [Cisco] Catalyst 9100 Access Points are built solid
• [Cisco] Catalyst 9100 Access Points have a great range of coverage
• [Cisco] Catalyst 9100 Access Points are easy to configure and manage

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• 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.

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• Higher cost than most other solutions
• Complex integration with other network solutions
• A lot of technical documents that can be difficult to follow

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• [It provides] centralized management.
• 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.

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• 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.

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