Cisco Aironet 1500 Series Access Points (discontinued) vs. Extreme Wireless Access Points

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.

Incentivized

The Extreme access point solution has been used in the cooperative scenario with VLANs for employees in access through 802.1x authentication and also for guests through the captive portal that allows access of people for a limited time and prior registration. The equipment has great performance and connection speed and supports a high density of users connected at the same time without lag and crashes. The management of this equipment is being carried out through software with cloud management and is accessed by our infrastructure team to configure and monitor alerts.

Incentivized

• 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

Incentivized

• Extremely easy to provision new devices, once the profiles are set up, due to centralized management
• Very quick provisioning of new devices, due to centralized management and predefined profiles

Incentivized

• In the facilities where we operate, we had to put a reinforcement on the ceiling to avoid problems due to the weight of the access point.
• On the appearance, it could be smaller and lighter.
• As for the hardware, I think it's incredible, I don't see any points to improve.

Incentivized

• In my experience, licensing has become a nightmare. Licensing must be tied to a device, they also won't let you activate used units from other companies if they are donated or purchased third-party.
• Customer service is outsourced overseas.
• In my experience, technicians are incentivized to close tickets quickly - whether the issue has been fixed or not - which can be frustrating to work with.

Incentivized

There is no other better option than this. It's the line between the commercial Cisco grade AP's and industrial ones.

Incentivized

Everything clear and easy to use

Incentivized

It has worked for us as advertised with little technical issues. The system has been stable with no major downtime.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Set up was easy, speed is excellent, we have had the office full and no noticeable reduction in service/speed.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Support was always responsive and willing to help, but at times did not know when to call it and send a replacement to stop the bleeding. I respect that fact that they wanted to get the solution working, and the wanting to learn more and understand, but at times you cant do that at the expense of the customer.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

The Aerohive wireless devices are comparable to Cisco's wireless solution, in regard to performance, features, and management. But the cost of utilizing Cisco Wireless Access Points versus using the Aerohive access points is staggering. Since our wireless access points do not maintain a constant heavy load, we chose a more cost effective solution and have not had many issues with them.

Incentivized

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.

• 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.

Incentivized

• Less downtime to our business units that use Aerohive
• Radios are very compatible with most wireless devices out today
• I spend less time managing Aerohive than any other wireless product

Incentivized