Cisco Aironet 1500 Series Access Points (discontinued)
Score 6.3 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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Cisco Catalyst 9100 Access Points
Score 9.4 out of 10
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The Cisco Catalyst 9100 Access Points includes the 9115 and 9117, and designed to meet high demand network access.
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Pricing
Cisco Aironet 1500 Series Access Points (discontinued)
Cisco Catalyst 9100 Access Points
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco Aironet 1500 Series Access Points (discontinued)
Cisco Aironet 1500 Series Access Points (discontinued)
Cisco Catalyst 9100 Access Points
Likelihood to Recommend
Discontinued Products
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.
Cisco Catalyst 9100 Access Points are well suited for most applications as they scale very well and can be configured to work in a lot of different scenarios. However they are quite costly so they may not be suited for all business purposes. But they do perform and deliver and rarely cause issues.
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
The Cisco Catalyst 9120 Access Points have been a solid deployment for me. Using their interface is a mix of new and old. They run IOS, so if you know the CLI, you can easily navigate around them. You can join them to an older controller if it supports a certain version, you can join it to a new 9800 controller--very straight forward--and you can run the embedded wireless controller on them directly. I've found this to be very useful at smaller sites. The Cisco Catalyst 9120 Access Points are not limited to feature sets like the older generations' mobility express platform.
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 is providing the best in class access points. We would be focusing Cisco Catalyst 9100 Access Points to have the common platform. We are waiting for cloud implementation on DNA or cloud monitoring of 9800cl in Meraki dashboard. It's reliable, tagging gives a lot of flexibility. Virtualization finally works as expected.
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.
Cisco has been very good at correcting early issues with their code. Their TAC support has been fantastic when I would open a case with issues I was facing. Even though the hardware was new, they were very familiar with the interfaces and issues I was having. In the past I've been concerned about adopting a new product right away because of support issues. That was not the case here. Once I had the deployment up and running, they have had a good run of reliability.
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.
In testing, Cisco Catalyst 9100 Access Points outperformed all other APs in our testing. Performance was second to none in the testing lineup. Reliability has been proven over the many years we have used this product. The new 9100s have also not presented any hardware reliability issues for us so far. Some of the other vendors offer some nice to have features such as Bluetooth device diagnostics and very deep AI assurance.
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.
These access points offer flexibility in deployment scenarios, supporting both standalone and controller-based architectures. Organisations can choose the model that best suits their current needs and scale as their requirements grow. Cisco Aironet Access Points are compatible with Cisco's Wireless LAN controllers, allowing for centralized management and monitoring of a large number of access points across the network. With the recent changes, it will even support cloud base controllers.
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.
