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

Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Our organization users want to move within our office premises for various business purpose activities, and for that we need connectivity also wherever they go within the building. We use this wireless connectivity to access internal systems such as email, hr systems and for attendance marking. Also the connectivity is important for collaborations activities.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Initial provisioning of the wireless network
Intergrations with other Cisco products such as Cisco ISE, Catalyst Center
Maintain operation smoothly

Cons

Best practise suggestions within GUI
Coverage Map
Artificial Intelligence within WLC
Better GUI

Return on Investment

Improved stability
Long-Term Value
Less deployment effort

Usability

When Cisco introduced catalyst controllers they have changed the wireless GUI drastically so initially there is a big learning curve on how to operate the controllers. But the good side is it is same as Cisco IOS-XE and we can use same commands to initially provision the controller. Wireless policy configuration part is somewhat difficult initialy but that acceptable as now they have made automation easy with all these changes.

Alternatives Considered

Huawei Wireless, Aruba Instant Wi-Fi Access Points and Cisco Meraki Dashboard

Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers the choice for on-prem deployments. We have experienced stability issues with other products such as meraki cloud wireless solutions (althouth it also comes from Cisco). Huawei is offering very competitive wireless solutions but they are yet to be proven in our regions.

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

Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI), Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE), Cisco Catalyst Center

Likelihood to Recommend

Cisco Wireless LAN Controller is really a great product for medium to large scale wireless deployments. For small scale Cisco has other options such as embedded controller options within the wireless access points themselves. Additionally if we are using Cisco Catalyst Center and ISE in that case using Cisco WLC will give us a lot of features.

Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers Feature Ratings

Comments

Please log in to join the conversation

My Review on Cisco WLC

Software Version