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Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers vs. Cisco Mobility Express (discontinued)

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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

    Cisco Mobility Express (discontinued)

    Score5 out of 10
    N/ACisco Mobility Express was a controllerless wi-fi solution, used by businesses to quickly deploy a wireless network without requiring substantial IT resources. The product is discontinued.N/A
    Pricing
    Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless ControllersCisco Mobility Express (discontinued)
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless ControllersCisco Mobility Express (discontinued)
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless ControllersCisco Mobility Express (discontinued)
    Considered Both Products
    Cisco
    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
    Cisco
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    99%
    Would buy again
    103 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    96%
    Delivers good value for the price
    92 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    97%
    Happy with the feature set
    101 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    94%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    76 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    86%
    Implementation went as expected
    83 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Best Alternatives
    Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless ControllersCisco Mobility Express (discontinued)
    Small Businesses
    WatchGuard Secure Wi-Fi Cloud
    Score9.1 out of 10
    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
    Cisco Aironet 1800 Series Access Points (discontinued)
    Score8.5 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Cisco Catalyst 9100 Access Points
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Cisco Catalyst 9100 Access Points
    Score9.2 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless ControllersCisco Mobility Express (discontinued)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (109 ratings)
    8.0
    (5 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.7
    (6 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Availability
    8.9
    (107 ratings)
    8.0
    (5 ratings)
    Performance
    8.7
    (108 ratings)
    7.9
    (5 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.5
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Configurability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless ControllersCisco Mobility Express (discontinued)
    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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    Cisco
    As it provides virtual WLC functionality, it has incredibly amazing built-in features that perfectly suit small to medium companies. It has the capability to manage the entire organization network seamlessly. It might be possible that it won't work smoothly and elegantly for large firms where there is a bulk amount of data bandwidth used.
    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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    Cisco
    • Easy to setup
    • Less maintenance
    • Less disconnection
    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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    Cisco
    • Honestly, I haven't found very many issues since we started using it, and I'm glad for that!
    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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    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    Cisco
    It's not simple, but this is the result of being very deeply configurable
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    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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    Cisco
    We are using it 24x7 and it never hangs or create problems in connectivity.
    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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    Cisco
    After initial configuration and fixing minor issues with the firmware, the system worked really well, without any downtime. We were also satisfied with the throughput and range.
    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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    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    Cisco
    You need to understand wifi basics
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    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
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    Cisco
    Cisco Mobility Express is far better than other products. It is a renowned brand in network products, and they are reliable and efficient as compared to other products that I have used so far. It is highly recommended.
    Incentivized
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    Scalability
    Cisco
    There are different vesrions for different requirements, there's HA as well.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    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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    Cisco
    • It has given our IT team time back from not having to fix issues everyday with the network.
    • It makes it easy for visibility of the network and allows those who are new to it to learn it quickly.
    Incentivized
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    ScreenShots