Cisco Wireless 2500-series: Simple and inexpensive, but effective
October 17, 2016
Cisco Wireless 2500-series: Simple and inexpensive, but effective
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Wireless
We use Cisco Wireless controllers (2504) and lightweight WAPs globally. We primarily use Cisco wireless to provide guest access. We do occasionally use it for restricted corporate access as well.
- The 2500-series controller is fairly easy to set up and configure, which helps get up and running quickly, value-add!
- Upgrading the firmware and pushing updates out to the lightweight WAPs is easy, which helps speed system administration.
- GUI is useful, compact, and self-explanatory, at least with standard settings - though if you move to more advanced features, it can get a little tricky.
- The CLI is lacking. Does not work like standard IOS or NX-OS devices. Confusing combination of standard CLI commands vs. menu-like display.
- When a lightweight WAP goes offline, it "disappears" from the GUI, which makes it difficult to determine down vs. doesn't exist. A "red x" would be great.
- Lightweight WAPs are limited in that SNMP is not supported. Monitoring systems would have to inspect the WAPs via the controller.
- The cost of the 2504 controller is very low, and if you get the lightweight AP bundle, the price can't be beat. Can get up and running very quickly. We have 4 controllers globally, with lightweight controllers in every region, some local, some "flex". Works great.
Aerohive is decent but used to be very buggy and support is poor. We actually use them for remote access more than wireless. I've used Aruba previously (4+ years ago), and it was more complex and expensive to manage, but was very feature-rich and had good monitoring. For our simple, inexpensive guest access requirements, Cisco was the way to go.