Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless LAN Controllers Review
June 12, 2024

Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless LAN Controllers Review

Austin Hixenbaugh | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Modules Used

  • Cisco Catalyst 9800-40 Wireless Controller
  • Cisco Catalyst 9800-L Wireless Controller

Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers

It's kind of our controller for our wireless access points. We have multiple networks on our campus, so I have multiple networks that come into it and provide internet access to, whether it be a private company or educational company, our college that we work for. So we have stuff like that that we use it for.

Pros

  • I actually really like, I know this is weird, A lot of people hate it but not hate it, but network engineers don't they like CLI stuff, but I like more of the user interface for it. It's definitely way better than the past one that I had. The 5520 and it is got a lot of neat features. Show me what networks are being utilized, how much bandwidth's going through them, users and things like that. What computers connect to, what access point, things like that. That's pretty cool. That gives me enough detail. It helps me troubleshoot things very easily on a daily basis.

Cons

  • Maybe some of the stuff that is on the device itself for me is a network engineer and I'm CCNA certified and I like to delve into different things. But I would say certain things that if I want to implement, there's a lot of different options that I'm kind of like I'll be going through the menu on the user interface especially and be like, I don't really know what that does. I can go research it a little bit or maybe I've heard about it but I don't really know how to implement it. Maybe provide some type of guides. I know they have some guides online for it, but maybe some walkthroughs, some video walkthroughs maybe on how to, maybe this piece can be implemented, what it's for, things like that. Or have tutorials on the device itself to show you, hey, this is what we use this for, do you need this? Or things like that.
  • I haven't had any yet. I don't know if I have enough time to have seen anything negative. Positive, It's just been better. I got faster access points, faster throughput than what my previous ones had. Can use a lot more access points as far as, I can't remember what the top of the other one was. I think it was lower, but I could use up to like 5,000 with my current one so I can manage those. So it's been nice, just a nice product.
  • Cisco Aironet 3800 Series Access Points (discontinued)
NA
Cause it's worked great for me so far. No issues.
I haven't had any issues. I say 10. It's perfect. It's got great availability.
My previous controller didn't have the capability, really had it sort of, but not the capability to say, okay, this little office space in this building needs only these SSIDs. It was more so I had to go to each access point and say this is what it needs to do versus now I can do policy tags and I can tag things and say put them in a specific group. It's like, okay, this suite 1700 needs these SSIDs and I can map it together and then notate it. If someone else came behind me, they'd be like, oh, that's why this space is roped off. It has this what they need to have SSIDs in and all that kind of stuff. But it's been better for those scenarios.
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.

Do you think Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers delivers good value for the price?

Not sure

Are you happy with Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers's feature set?

Yes

Did Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers again?

Yes

Cisco Catalyst Center, Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)
For this specific product. It's pretty well suited for management of access points for not a huge campus, I would say for this specific one that I have. But I mean it can manage up to 5,000 access points. So it's a great product. Less appropriate would probably be really massive for the product that I own. The one, that version of it for what I have, I wouldn't say use it for something that's like this mega corporation, huge ginormous corporation because you need the higher end model of what I have. But in general it fits my needs, it fits what we need. It's the capabilities, but there's faster and better ones that I could have got if I needed it.

Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers Feature Ratings

Wireless LAN
Not Rated
Zero-Touch Provisioning
Not Rated
WLAN Performance Monitoring
Not Rated
Topology Maps
Not Rated
Layer 7 Visibility
Not Rated
Power over Ethernet Support
Not Rated
Wireless Security
Not Rated

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