Item: Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers
Rating: 10
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

In our environment, we have over 6000 students and 1900 staff users that require access to the internet and network resources. We brought on the Cisco wireless solution originally to accommodate staff laptops and notebooks. Eventually students notebooks were requiring wireless connectivity too. With the expansion of the 1 to 1 plan, and BYOD (bring your own device) our wireless environment has expanded. With a strong secure wireless solution we can also accommodate visitors, students and support technicians much easier.

Pros and Cons

Pros

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.

Cons

On 5508 and 5520's it is possible to drill down to specific users, but can be tedious.
Some of the security regarding rogue access points can be difficult to tweak when dealing with neighborhood homes with wireless. If you fully implement the block rogue option, you can easily disable neighboring wireless systems.

Most Important Features

Uptime is the most important thing we
Bandwidth control, along with flexible security.
Ease of managing WAN
Ease of monitoring clients accessing / connecting to AP's

Return on Investment

The Cisco Wireless LAN controller investment is sizeable, but we have found it well worth the money.
A solid well versed technical support team can be handy at times.
Cisco SmartNet is painful and can be a limiting piece for smaller organizations.

Alternatives Considered

We looked at Meraki, Ubiquiti and Aruba along with Cisco. At the time, all of the systems were decent well designed systems. Cisco was decided upon because of the depth of products, the support and recommendations of others. We are very happy with the system, and plan to stick with it. While on the high end of the cost spectrum, we have found it to be worth the cost.

Key Insights

Do you think Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers's feature set?

Yes

Did Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Securly Filter, Lightspeed Filter, Fortinet FortiGate

Likelihood to Recommend

In a corporate environment that requires strong security and the ability to block / allow a large variety of users, the Cisco Wireless platform excels. The system is extremely robust and can provide literally a blanket of coverage, with very good performance. They also offer external/out doors access points which provide excellent performance.

Because the system is well built and designed, you often go through the lifetime of the product (you really need to apply updates) with very little issues. However, when you reach the end of the support life on the box, it is not cheap at all to upgrade/replace. You really need to keep an eye on the current life cycle and plan accordingly for a replacement date and fund.

Using Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers

Users and Roles

Educational - Students / Staff - Wireless for Chromebooks

Support Headcount Required

3 - It is a blend between highly technical with experience directly with the Cisco Controllers and AP's, along with a strong technical network support position, along with our Director who oversees the operation of the system.

Business Processes Supported

Teaching Staff - Access for Notebooks, Chromebooks and Wireless Devices for teaching purposes.
Students - Access for student Notebooks, and Chromebooks . Network connectivity / Internet access.
Administration - Wireless access gpt laptops, notebooks, displays, both for business usage and internet access.
Student Health - Allows students with special needs with monitoring devices for health to be in touch with medical professionals continuously.

Innovative Uses

We allow access to the public via our wireless with configurations tagged as events. Once on, and forced off. It limits access or rather blocks access to our internal network while allowing streaming and internet access for events.
With the flexibility of the wireless system we can configure service access and portals for our external support companies.
We can segment wireless access that allows students and staff to use our wireless while being physically outside of the facility. This was especially good during COVID.

Future Planned Uses

We plan to integrate it into our security systems - camera and proxy systems.
We are planning to expand our streaming services at our remote sites utilizing wireless.
We are planning to integrate it into our network security systems allowing us to actively block non-district devices from accessing our networks via wireless.

Likelihood to Renew

We just upgraded our controllers this summer. They have become a major component of our network services and we recognize the need to keep it up to date and current to maximize what we can get out of them.

Evaluating Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers and Competitors

Products Replaced

Key Differentiators

Scalability
Integration with Other Systems
Other

We have slowly worked for consistency across all of our network, wireless and phones systems. It makes it much easier when issues do come up that we can call on one vendor to assist us. The single vendor also makes it more difficult for support to play the blame game and point to other equipment.

Evaluation Lessons Learned

We are deep into our network selection and hardware choices. One thing that we may have done differently is get feedback from other places. We recognize that Cisco is by far NOT the cheapest, and can be challenging to implement in a mixed environment, however, the equipment and services offered are reliable and consistent. We are happy with the end results.

Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers Implementation

Implementation Rating

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.

Implementation Details / Implementation Partner

Implemented in-house
Third-party professional services

We did much of the ground work in-house, but did lean heavily on our Cisco Partner. That company was Network Solutions, Inc. out of Granger Indiana. They were extremely family with the product and services and rolled the deployment out nicely. They are an important part of our support team as well.

Implementation Phases

Yes - Pre-Deployment - Network segmenting, WiFi naming, access groups.
Hardware / Controller installation and integration into our existing network.
Installation of Access Points to our target buildings.
Bringing each building up individually in an effort to minimize district wide outages during the deployment.
Test period with select staff and locations
Final rollout to all staff who were to be on the wireless network.

Implementation Issues

Access Points would not join/pair with the controller. This was often due to the Access Points not being on the proper Subnet and/or VLAN.
Devices would not connect to the SSID/WiFi service as we hoped. This was due to initial configuration changes on the devices themselves.
Clients when "roaming" through a building would often suffer weak signals or loss of signals. We learned to take into account building structure as well as how to tune the WiFi regarding signal strength, frequencies allowed to broadcast, etc.

Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers Support

Support Rating

With the combination of Cisco TAC / Support and our Cisco partner we have always gotten good results.

Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers Customer Support Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Quick Resolution Good followup Problems get solved Kept well informed Immediate help available Quick Initial Response	None

Premium Support

We have the standard Smartnet contract with Cisco and couple that with our vendor/partner who offers support contracts for the various equipment and services. Between the two support solutions we are able to resolve most if not all issues in a timely fashion.

Exceptional Examples of Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers Support

Cisco assisted us when we upgraded Access Points in a large project and we discovered a firmware mismatch. Cisco worked with our people and our vendor/partner to resolved the issue in a timely fashion.

Using Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers

Usability Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Like to use Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using	Lots to learn

Easy Tasks

Monitoring client usage regarding locations, what SSID they've used, etc.
It is a simple process to verify access point signal strength, if they are saturated, etc.
While it takes a bit to do configurations of SSID's, it is very easy to deploy and/or remove SSID's from sites across the entire enterprise.

Difficult Tasks

Attempting to track down network neighbors is not difficult but it does require several steps. Once you understand those steps the comfort level does go up.
Initially locating unknown devices that are on the wifi can be daunting. The process is a bit easier with the latest controllers.

Mobile Interface Availability and Impressions

Yes, but I don't use it

Comments

Please log in to join the conversation