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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers

    Score9 out of 10
    N/AThe 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.N/A
    Pricing
    Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
    Editions & Modules
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    Pricing Offerings
    Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
    Free Trial
    No
    Free/Freemium Version
    No
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    No
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup fee
    Additional Details—
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
    Considered Both Products
    Cisco
    Chose Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
    We just upgraded from the old Cisco 3800 Series Wireless Controller, but I haven’t reviewed it.
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
    I mean, within the Cisco portfolio, Meraki is a cloud-based alternative. With other vendors, Mist being a primary one. Again, just much more scalable. Much more ... Many more features to kind of use.
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
    Our Aironet WLC were end of life and Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers were suitable replacement
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
    Similar configuration since they are both IOS XE
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
    We are moving into a more unified and centralized design, and the benefits offered by the 9800 compared to the above listed 5520 series and 8500 series of wireless controller is much preferred. The staggered upgrade option is again another feature much improved moving to the …
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
    Easy to manage and centralized policy manager
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
    Used all the Cisco 5504s, the 25, 06s s, all of the old legacy Cisco controllers. And on the competitor side, we did have a few sites that had Aruba and not a fan of that. Cisco is much easier to use, implement and to deploy.
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
    I've used Ruckus Zone director, so another controller. It's way more robust. There's more features and there's more devices that integrates with. So overall, a more comprehensive solution, I think.
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
    Honestly, I haven't used a non Cisco wireless controller since about 2004 when I used to put autonomous APs in. It's the difference between eating broken glass and having a five star meal. I mean there's no comparison.
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
    From a wireless standpoint? Just any, well, we have the 9300 switches from Cisco. We also just went to the new firewalls that Cisco just came out. I forget the product name right now. So I like the wireless controller from a ease access or be able to configure better than the …
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
    More advanced and easier to stand up with virtualization.
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
    Cisco is more industrial grade
    Incentivized
    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 …
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
    I use it every day for daily work
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
    We use Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers as standard in the company
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
    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, …
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    99%
    Would buy again
    103 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    96%
    Delivers good value for the price
    92 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    97%
    Happy with the feature set
    101 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    94%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    76 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    86%
    Implementation went as expected
    83 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
    Small Businesses
    WatchGuard Secure Wi-Fi Cloud
    Score9.1 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Cisco Aironet 1800 Series Access Points (discontinued)
    Score8.5 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Cisco Catalyst 9100 Access Points
    Score9.2 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (109 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.7
    (6 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    Availability
    8.9
    (107 ratings)
    Performance
    8.7
    (108 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.5
    (3 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Configurability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Cisco
    Well suited for most of our customer base because it is a versatile, scalable, large multi-campus organizations. Not so: Brandish deployments where there's a much more simplified feature set needed. So where we can basically rely on Meraki as a cloud base with easier to deploy.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    Cisco
    • 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.
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    Cisco
    • The biggest issues we have had have been software related. Requiring code upgrades or reloads to fix an unfixable problem.
    • Some of the troubleshooting utilities aren't perfectly clear as to what theyre doing or how to set them up or what to expect results wise or resource wise.
    • I think there is a lack of filtering in certain displays where you cannot use the "contains" option for certain device type filtering. But those options should be universal in all views.
    Incentivized
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    Likelihood to Renew
    Cisco
    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
    Incentivized
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    Usability
    Cisco
    It's not simple, but this is the result of being very deeply configurable
    Incentivized
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    Reliability and Availability
    Cisco
    Honestly, in the six years that we've been using it, we've had one, I would say show stopping event. There was an issue with in an HA setup they would every so often when rebooted lose all configuration. So that was a bit disappointing, required quite a few hours to resolve, but Cisco had to fix very quickly and once we implemented that, we've not had any further additional issues.
    Incentivized
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    Performance
    Cisco
    We have been using the Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers for over 2 years and the whole system has been very stable. We currently run them in HA and have found when this has been activated (due to power issues etc.) the units change roles seamlessly, minimising the downtime to almost nothing. Except when we have had major issues, our wireless networks have a solid uptime and keeps our whole borough up 24/7 without problems.
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    Cisco
    the overall support on the 9800 Wireless lan controller is good. Wireless issues are sometimes hard to troubleshoot since it's the RF that make it complex and the diversity in clients and requirements. The engineers do a good job in understanding the scope and issue, altough not all issues can be solved
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    Cisco
    You need to understand wifi basics
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    Cisco
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Cisco
    There are different vesrions for different requirements, there's HA as well.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Cisco
    • 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.
    Incentivized
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