Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers vs. Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers vs. D-Link Wireless Access Points

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.

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I believe that Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers are well suited for the enterprise environment for medium sized to very large companies. While there are smaller WLC appliances for smaller sized businesses, a case can be made for simpler or more cost effective wireless licensing solutions (e.g. Cisco Meraki). Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers are extremely well suited for dense deployments like stadiums, arenas, hospitals, theaters, and large offices because of their ability to support a large number of APs with a very diverse technology feature set.

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Best in small networks & appropriate in industrial areas. AP works fine in any temperature & location (in remote locations office or remote location). Open area wireless connectivity is good with good range. Simple VLAN management and management are good. Backup and restoration is very good. Small home offices using wireless network work awesome.

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• 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.

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• The cisco wireless controller allows for very granular access to internal and external systems.
• The system allows for allowing special needs uses (medical, security, guest) very easy.
• The system allows for various levels of bandwidth to a variety of users.
• The security, flexibility and ease of use is phenomenal.

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• Due to multiple switches in a single network environment, communication issues are common; therefore, productivity is effected. After installing D-Link Wireless, we resolved these kind of issues in our network.
• One windows solution make management easy via D-Link Wireless.
• Logs and troubleshooting is now easily handled. Pictorial form help in configuration and users management.

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• 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.

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• Configuring wireless settings is very confusing because various settings are scattered all over the interface in different tabs
• Lots of settings use Cisco's technical verbiage rather than common phrasing, so it's confusing what a lot of settings will do and requires researching the meaning before modifying the setting
• The interface could be easier to use to do simple tasks such as reboot an access point

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• Hanging issues are common in large scale networks. Even wireless controller is hanged in peak hours.
• Issues in VLAN configuration and port configurations.
• Cost is high in front of other brands.

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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

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Although it is a very good product, support is easy and can manage by Level 1 support persons and downtime is too much less but still there is a cost factor matters which is consider by each organization. Furthermore, organizations also compare with other competitors so it is hard to pursue and defend the high prices.

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It's not simple, but this is the result of being very deeply configurable

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As I said before, the only thing we miss in our old model is the fact that the management interface never received an improvement in design. It has the same look and feels since it was launched. It's not that it's hard to use. It's just the case of could be modernized.

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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.

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Downtime fear is the first fear which IT persons look and want to eliminate as much as they can but eventually you have to face it as nothing is perfect. Cisco Wireless Lan controller are feasible to use and easy to manage and other than this their issue reported are pretty low so you can get the best up time. now it also depends on scenario as well as environment.

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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.

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Cisco Wireless Lan controller are feasible to use and easy to manage and other than this their issue reported are pretty low so you get the better uptime. if your get the uptime then it means its a stable product in your environment. Product performance also depends on the product management and Cisco Wireless Lan controller management is easy so you can get the great output.

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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

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As usual, the support from Cisco's TAC (Technical Assistance Center) is lacking. Granted, they always get the job done, but the amount of lead time on a non-emergency is enough to make you just handle it yourself. The good news is that if you ask for Cisco's assistance and forget about it, they'll jump on by the time you've forgotten where you were in troubleshooting it and have it fixed for you.

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You need to understand wifi basics

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Originally, when we deployed our first controller it was on a very limited basis. We only deployed it to our administration building and our High School. It was pretty straight forward. Because this was new to us we leaned heavily on our Cisco partner to assist us. With our last upgrade, we upgraded the controllers, added redundancy and expanded the building count along with new SSID's and restrictions. It went much easier, but again, we did rely on Cisco TAC and our partner to clarify and assist as needed. Having already been familiar with the product help tremendously.

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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.

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The Aironet access points are used for employee WiFi access, and they integrate well with Meraki. They would offer a separate guest network, too, but the decision was made to physically separate the guest network, so even if a bad actor would gain access to the ethernet port of the AP, they'd still not see any company traffic.

We studied and selected D-Link due to usage in a limited area, and it is a very cost effective solution; therefore, D-Link Wireless AP and D-Link Wireless Controller [were] selected for our organization. We also [researched] Cisco, but Cisco was an expensive product and not appropriate in our required area or task; therefore, we selected D-Link.

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There are different vesrions for different requirements, there's HA as well.

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Cisco is a brand name and people trust on it. if any one thing about the networking then Cisco is among those brand which is count as trusted brand and people rely on it. Also it support is good so people can use it. Cisco Wireless Lan controller are easy to use and manage so it requires less effort.

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• 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.

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• We have had our [Cisco Wireless LAN Controller] 5508s for a very long time now and although they are getting dated, they have earned us our money's worth with consistency, stability, and ease of use. Users have minimal wireless complaints and when they do seldom are they WLC-related.

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• Organizational needs are fulfilled [which] means return on investment.
• Smooth connectivity increases productivity. Yes, we are satisfied in this area.
• Management and troubleshooting are core features & very quick in production area.

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