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Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers vs. SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset

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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

    SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset

    Score7.6 out of 10
    N/ASolarWinds® Engineer’s Toolset (ETS) helps users monitor and troubleshoot a network with over 60 tools for network management. ETS allows users to monitor and receive alerts in real time on network availability and health, and perform network diagnostics for faster troubleshooting and resolution of complex network issues. With ETS users can deploy an array of network discovery tools including Port Scanner, Switch Port Mapper or advanced Subnet Calculator, manage Cisco® devices with specialized…

    $1,585

    Per Instance

    Pricing
    Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless ControllersSolarWinds Engineer's Toolset
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    One Time Price
    $1,585
    Per Instance
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless ControllersSolarWinds Engineer's Toolset
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    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 ControllersSolarWinds Engineer's Toolset
    Considered Both Products
    Cisco
    No answer on this topic
    SolarWinds
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    99%
    Would buy again
    103 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    11 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    96%
    Delivers good value for the price
    92 Answers
    90%
    Delivers good value for the price
    9 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    97%
    Happy with the feature set
    101 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    11 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    94%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    76 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    10 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    86%
    Implementation went as expected
    83 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    10 Answers
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    Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless ControllersSolarWinds Engineer's Toolset
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    WatchGuard Secure Wi-Fi Cloud
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    Cisco Aironet 1800 Series Access Points (discontinued)
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    User Ratings
    Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless ControllersSolarWinds Engineer's Toolset
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (109 ratings)
    8.6
    (11 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.7
    (6 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    Availability
    8.9
    (107 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    8.7
    (108 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.5
    (3 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 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 ControllersSolarWinds Engineer's Toolset
    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
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    I have found the toolset especially useful for scanning subnets to discover devices, and for setting up temporary real-time monitors when we are troubleshooting or setting up new connections. The most useful aspect has been the ability to apply the tools to help troubleshoot and pinpoint intermittent issues. More general tools like Orion often do not have the granularity to detect issues like intermittent packet loss which are especially impactful to applications like Voice. The toolset gives us another level of capability to dig into issues.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    • Various monitoring
    • Stores history
    • Suggests indices
    • Helps to find the SQL query text
    • Helps to see what machines/users the bad queries are coming from
    • Shows current blocking session
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    • The unifying component that is intended to be the initial interface to the tools seems clunky. I prefer to start the tools individually rather than using it.
    • The port scanner could use some improvements to make it easier to use.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    Cisco
    It's not simple, but this is the result of being very deeply configurable
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    Very easy to use and intuitive. Just be careful with the WAN Killer...it does what it says.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    No answers on this topic
    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
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    No answers on this topic
    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
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    Our organization uses it regularly. It is reliable, and we keep finding new uses for it
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Cisco
    You need to understand wifi basics
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    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
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    I haven't compared any tools similar to SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset. This might be because I'm pretty biased when it comes to monitoring, and reporting solutions. I've found that SolarWinds provides the biggest bang for the buck in my opinion. I'm sure there are other solutions on the market that compete, but I haven't tried any of them because I've been very satisfied with SolarWinds.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Cisco
    There are different vesrions for different requirements, there's HA as well.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    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
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    • Spend less time downloading free buggy tools
    • All the tools in one spot, so you don't have to look around for tools
    • Get to the solution sooner
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset Screenshots

    Screenshot of Perform network stress tests with Engineer's Toolset WAN Killer. You don’t need to use real traffic for studying network activities, like testing traffic and load balancing. Instead, deploy Engineer's Toolset WAN Killer to help interactively test connections and adjust the IP traffic generated to achieve the desired network load based on your requirements.Screenshot of Quickly troubleshoot your network with enhanced ping capabilities and packet route tracing, among other network bandwidth usage and monitoring tools included in ETS.Screenshot of Using ETS, you can run scans to gain insight into how routers, hubs switches, and other devices are configured by analyzing SNMP queries and viewing MIB attributes. ETS is designed to help you more easily understand whether your network and ports are using appropriate settings.Screenshot of Config Compare, a part of ETS, is built to compare the running configuration of a Cisco router with the startup configuration. With the Cisco configuration compare tool, you can easily detect the changes made to the network, switch, and router configurations that are not committed to non-volatile memory (NVRAM).Screenshot of Manage your IP network from discovery to address tracking. Discover subnets on a seed router and scan the subnet or a range of IP addresses, generate a list of subnets along with their mask, size, range, and broadcast address and actively monitor subnets to identify and track which IP addresses are in use on your network.