Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers vs. WatchGuard Secure Wi-Fi Cloud

As we manage multiple sites (over 30) at different locations across our borough, the Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers makes it seamless and a lot simpler. We don't have to set up multiple wireless networks and policies for each site, they can all be done from the WLC. You can tag the same polices, security practices, RF polices etc. to each site, rather than setting each one up the same every time. This takes a lot of time out of administration and makes it a lot easier to manage day to day.

Incentivized

The WatchGuard Secure Wi-Fi Cloud works well in any scenario. With the number of AP model options, this solution can work at a coffee shop all the way up to a multi-tenant facility with thousands of users.

Incentivized

• It is good kind of design with the multiple flow profiles and also location base whereby the long very, I think the traditional controller doesn't have this, so we need to have that specific. Every day is getting the same profile but this have a little bit difference. It's very good with the site tagging and also designing all the location-based requirements.

Incentivized

• enable wireless access on watchguard-based networks
• ensure reliable performances
• allow fast wireless data transfer operations

Incentivized

• I guess the biggest problem with the WLC is there are some scalability issues. So one example is in the 9800s, WLCs, as opposed to the earlier version, which is the AOS WLCs. Cisco has migrated from, for example, SNMP to NETCONF for telemetry. We've seen decreases in performance due to the scale of data that's been sent over NETCONF. That's quite a visible decrease compared to the older version. So the older version on SNMP was actually running faster and it was extracting data faster than the current version.
• Another issue that we see is in terms of scalability is once the number of APs gets close to limits, so the 9800-80 has a limit of I think 6,000 access points per controller. Once we hit that limit, it becomes very slow to do things like generate show tech. We've had show and show tech wireless in particular take up to eight hours and Cisco has said that that is an expected timeframe for us to generate essentially a crash dump. That makes our troubleshooting very difficult because it takes us a long time to get the data to Cisco support. It also makes our monitoring difficult because sometimes we had to scale back the amount of data that's been extracted because it can't send enough data to our monitoring systems.

Incentivized

• Better Access Points from WG
• Map Feature

Incentivized

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

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

Incentivized

High availability options are very good. You have multiple options so you can select whichever suits you well. Also you can mix it up if you have more controllers so your downtime risk decreases sharply. Users will not feel any connection issues thanks to powerful and flexible high availability options that Cisco provides.

Incentivized

While it works well in general, there are some bugs in both the GUI and functionality. It has caused spikes of downtime in our network. The HA also is quite cumbersome and specific to set up, while not having the most reliable working around.

Incentivized

When it's a config issue, TAC is usually useful. If it's some bug and BU needs to be involved, it might take forever.

Incentivized

The support team is great! I have never had an issue getting the support I needed. They make it a point to stick with the issue until it's resolved to the customer's satisfaction. They do not make you feel like you need to hurry up and close the ticket. They make sure the solution is working as designed.

Incentivized

You need to understand wifi basics

Incentivized

Not much yet. In my experience from becoming a network engineer four-ish years ago to now, like I said, I used that 5520, which was a Cisco product. These 9800 are a lot smaller and tinier and they seem to do a lot more that the other ones couldn't do. It's a good product.

Incentivized

WatchGuard Secure Wi-Fi Cloud offers the cloud management solution unlike Ubiquiti which needs a controller that you need to setup, configure, update, and maintain. Also Security is offered with Secure Wi-Fi cloud.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

• The newer controllers are more robust and capable of supporting newer WAPs, such as WiFi 6 or WiFi 6E. With the announcement of WiFi 7 WAPs at Cisco Live 2024 in Melbourne, we will be better equipped to provide services for high-throughput applications and support clients in high-density environments.
• The overall GUI has improved from 8540 and it is easier to manage.
• One point I would like to mention is that integrating Prime with the Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers would be great, as it would allow us to receive real-time user data.

Incentivized

• It is not the cheapest one by price but with all the features it is it worth
• They follow costs after buying are not so high because of the centralized and easy deployment and managemet
• To see where we have a bottleneck is so easy in the WatchGuard Cloud

Incentivized