Aruba Networks Wireless WAN Reviews

We use Aruba Wireless at a big trading center in two ways. One use case is a corporate network with restrictions, and another is for customers. For our corporate use case, we have around 30 people on various devices, like laptops and mobile phones. In the second case, we provide access to around 1,000 users. 

An engineer with enough experience can tune the network however they want. It's crucial. It's good to customize our information security how we like it and configure the solution to achieve the level of stability we need.

Support is a little expensive. It's also a little tricky to configure Aruba sometimes. For example, if we want to whitelist a device, it works in unexpected ways. I want to allow this device to connect somewhere, and it lets it connect to any device in the network.

Let's say I want to allow my phone to connect to the network printer, but if I add my phone to the white list, I automatically allow my phone to connect to any other devices, and it's not secure.

I've been using Aruba Wireless for a year and a half. 

My team is highly experienced, so I haven't needed support so far. 

Setting up Aruba Networks is a little difficult, but experienced professionals can handle it, and we have help from partners, so it's not a problem. In Ukraine, there are several companies with expertise in Aruba. We can pay them for the initial setup and some training.

We pay every year for Aruba Central. It's a subscription. In other cases, we use Aruba AirWave on-premise, and that's a one-time payment. 

I rate Aruba Networks Wireless WAN nine out of 10. It's a stable solution with advanced technical capabilities. We never need to worry if it's going to work. 

Like any professional solution, you need to do some evaluation before implementing it in a project. The customer must fully understand the project requirements before they buy and implement it. 

There is a clustering feature, so the APs immediately switch back to the next available controller. The users will not notice any impact and will feel connected to the network. They will not notice any disconnection.

The AirMatch feature is also very useful. If the radio channels and the power being utilized in the RF environment are filled up, it will update all of those channels and power transmission.

They have to work on their Aruba Central cloud platform. There are still some glitches such as not showing proper user details.

When we removed the AP from the Aruba Central cloud, it showed up as being connected to Aruba Central. They need to fix these issues.

I would like to see artificial intelligence and machine learning in the next release. Other vendors already have artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities in their cloud platform-based wireless solutions.

I've been working with this solution for the last six years.

It is a stable solution.

Aruba Networks Wireless WAN's technical support was very good in 2017 and 2018. Now, the calls go here and there, and we don't get an immediate response.

The initial setup was very easy. It's not that complex.

Compared to Cisco, Aruba Networks Wireless WAN's user interface is very nice.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate this solution at nine.

My clients use it for the employees to log in to the Internet.

Once we install it, we don't get any complaints or adverse feedback from the client. They use it. It's seamless connectivity. And in case any failure happens, there is a long warranty period. So once we've got the access point replacement also done for one of the clients, that experience also was good.

There is room for improvement in the pricing, it's quite a premium. There are a few other brands that are coming up which are offering lower pricing. So maybe Aruba could think about being a more competitive price point.

I'm a system integrator. I've been selling it to my clients who use it in their offices.

I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. 

I would rate the scalability a ten out of ten. It is very scalable. There are more than a thousand users in my client's organisation.

The initial setup is easy. If we need to deploy 10 to 15 devices, that can be set up in about half a day.

It is expensive. I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten.

I would highly recommend using the solution. Aruba is one of the best. 

Overall, I would rate the solution a ten out of ten.

I like the solution's ability to add multiple SSIDs on different levels such as enterprise and guest networks. 

Aruba Networks Wireless WAN is expensive. 

I have been working with the product for five years. 

I would rate Aruba Networks Wireless WAN's stability a ten out of ten. 

I would rate the tool's scalability a ten out of ten. We have 542 clients using the products. 

The product's lifetime warranty is second to none. They will replace a system that has gone down with an identical unit. 

The tool's setup was easy. 

You will need to pay an annual subscription cost. 

I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. Try to negotiate the best price that you can get. 

Aruba Networks Wireless WAN is very stable and reliable. In the solution, the first part is obviously its security part because security is what is concerning in any Wi-Fi situation. In the aforementioned scenario, Aruba Wi-Fi solutions are very secure. They have some Triple DES or whatever security standards are there. So, corporate people are comfortable using Aruba Wi-Fi, especially in any enterprise or SMB segment.

The price for the license could be a bit improved since it is the only area with an issue.

I have experience using Aruba Networks Wireless WAN for years. I used to supply Aruba even before HP acquired Aruba. So, I used to supply it from eight to ten years ago.

Aruba is a very stable system.

Most of the enterprise customers, big names, buy it without giving any second thoughts.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

I'm not aware of its scalability, but I have seen that a big complex, maybe a 14 to 15-story or 20-story building, can be covered up. Many hotels are covering it up. Also, they have around 10,000 users. Aruba Wi-Fi is very good.

Though not all are my customers, I am aware that many of the big hotels, like Marriot, work using Aruba. Few of the five-star hotels in and around Bombay.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

Though I am not aware of the customer support, I am assuming it will be as per HP standards, which is quite good.

The initial setup of the solution is simple, and the setup is as per industry standards. Hence, everybody has to follow the setup phase.

Regarding the time needed for deployment, the survey takes time, first of all. Then, you have to set up the Wi-Fi. Actually, if you talk about the installation part, installation takes time because different rooms and false ceilings are there, and so the installation of Wi-Fi takes time. Once the installation is done, the setting up of the Wi-Fi takes maybe a couple of hours. In short, the installation takes more time since it's more on the infrastructure side.

The solution is deployed on-premises.

Aruba has an annual subscription, and they have three years and five years costs. People generally take the three years' cost. It has to be taken because, basically, licenses are needed more from the security perspective, nothing else.

It is expensive, but it is also very competitive. So I wouldn't say it is very high on the price. It can compete with many, many local players as well as equivalent players.

I rate the pricing a seven or eight on a scale of one to ten, where ten is the highest and one is the cheapest.

Aruba has a very good reputation. Aruba products are very stable, and they give regular updates. Whatever Aruba has mentioned in their literature, regarding their bandwidth, etcetera, is correct. One can rely on what they write in their literature.

I would definitely recommend the solution to those planning to use it. In the Wi-Fi space, Aruba is an extremely good product.

For Aruba's software and hardware, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

I use the solution for cloud operations.

It's just a normal tool. I would really say nothing is valuable to me about its features. It's not special.

It had been working in the past few years, but after aging, it has dropped down.

The solution has bugs. It really has bugs, and you have to wait until it happens, then you realize it. The aforementioned area can be considered for improvement.

I have been using Aruba Networks Wireless WAN for five years. I am a customer of the solution.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a five, six, or seven out of ten. It's not bad.

I rate the support an eight out of ten since it is good.

Positive

Regarding the initial setup, if one is difficult and ten is easy, I rate its setup a three to five. You have to be a big technical person to deploy the solution.

I rate the solution a six or seven out of ten.

Warehousing and manufacturing are the primary ones that I've been in, but we also do campuses, schools, and healthcare.

I believe their Adaptive Radio Management (ARM) in its current form provides the best automated management of transmit power and channel. It does a really good job of managing proper design and wireless environment.

It is a little bit cumbersome to configure. If you're designing a WLAN and you want to do and cover certain types of clients, you really have to know different settings and how they interact with one another. If they could automate that so that if you are designing for one type of equipment, you could, in essence, run a wizard. That would certainly save on a lot of calls to tech support.

I have been working with this solution for 10 years.

Its stability is good. I've not seen major failures.

It is absolutely scalable.

It is pretty straightforward. Setting up the environment is fairly straightforward, adding access points to the environment is fairly straightforward, and the upgrade process is relatively straightforward. It comes down to when you're doing something specific in the design for the client that you're trying to deal with. That's where it becomes a little bit more complex. You need to know where to go and look, but the standard setup is very straightforward.

That's really subject to the type of environment you're deploying. If you're doing a full controller model with 200 APs, the initial deployment could be 150 grand. Maintaining that or maintaining support for that per year could be something like 10 to 15 grand per year.

In the cloud sense, the cloud is by the number of APs. So, everything is readily available.

I would not hesitate to implement it. It is a good product. I would rate it a nine out of ten.

We're basically using the solution to replace our StarVPN connectivity. Prior to this, we had a bunch of VPNs that were creating our WAN that would link back to our central office. It simplified our network. That's what we used it for. We installed one in every office to create the WAN between offices. In the potential next phase, we were looking to then possibly decrease our internet connectivity to each site, however, we didn't do that quite yet.

The two most valuable features for us were the fact that we were able to simplify and recreate our WAN with a similar security presence and also the ability to run a single WiFi SSID across the entire company with authentication.

It worked as delivered, and therefore, there's nothing to really add. If you were asking me what they could do better, unfortunately, I quite honestly can't think of anything right now. It doesn't mean that if I was in the middle of using it, there isn't something that would be annoying to me. However, right now, it’s absolutely fine.

The integration, pricing, and configuration could always be improved upon.

I’ve used the solution for two years.

It's quite stable. It didn't come down yet. We didn't have any issues for the past year or so. We did execute a couple of updates. Those were clean and it worked just fine. It’s reliable. The performance is good.

It worked for the scale that we asked it to. That said, we installed it and we didn't grow it. The whole company, about 175 people, use the product.

The technical support was great. We’ve been satisfied with their service.

I’ve also dealt with Cisco and found Aruba more affordable with better support.

It was straightforward to set up. It worked as advertised. I didn't do the actual deployment myself. However, my deployment team was able to roll it out earlier than projected. Prior to making the selection, I had estimated more time than it took for us to deploy. In that sense, it was fantastic. The deployment was very quick.

We've got five people supporting all of our networking and hardware requirements. We don't have any one person dedicated to it.

I’m not sure of the exact pricing of the product.

This solution is more than worth considering. I've used Aruba in different organizations. It historically has, to me, been an easier install than Cisco wireless solutions have been. It consistently gives similar services at a lower price point. I have found that their pre-sales teams and support have been better than similarly situated Cisco WiFi and WAN products.

I’d rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Aruba Networks Wireless WAN is deployed for communication, and we have about 13 sites controlled in a centralized location. We have next-step security authentication, and it supports end-user secure connectivity. The combination and mechanism of multiple servers are used to authenticate the user to connect to the network securely.

Our whole company uses this network, providing wireless connectivity on all sides. So this solution impacts our day-to-day tasks.

The most valuable feature is security, which is important to the company and end user. In addition, the solution's strong security mechanism and user-friendly web console are great. The software and hardware are excellent, and we can efficiently deploy and manage these devices.

Regarding additional features, the solution currently has a Windows update problem. As a result, the solution requires daily Windows updates and installations as well as launches of new patches. It also requires updates to the iOS firmware to support the day-to-day patches submitted by Windows.

Because we work out of Pakistan, we sometimes have to deploy this solution in areas with a lot of dust. So, it would be great if Aruba improves the environmental hardware materials to mitigate troubleshooting and decrease the amount of dust it accumulates.

We have been using this solution for seven years and recently deployed the latest version. It is deployed on a local network.

It is a stable solution.

The solution is scalable. We have a lot of users, most of whom are IT specialists. For example, we have four people required for maintenance in the IT department and two junior network engineers continuously controlling the solution.

The technical support for this product regarding the vendor is great. Our principal or local vendor is available to facilitate any issues that arise.

Before using Aruba Networks Wireless WAN, we had been working on Cisco and Awale, which are somewhat competitors of this solution. We also deployed Awale, which works fine, but Aruba Networks Wireless WAN is widely used in our company.

The initial setup was straightforward, and it took about two days to deploy. We used a third party to deploy the network and performed day-to-day tasks easily. There was no issue with installation, and deployment on a large scale was painless.

Regarding licensing costs, our procurement and finance departments are directly involved, and we evaluate the functionality of this product. Based on the market comparison, Aruba Networks Wireless WAN is cheaper than Cisco, and the web experience is great. As a result, its functionality and performance are practical.

If we were not using Aruba Networks Wireless WAN, we would use Cisco. Cisco and Aruba have the same solution and provide a controller-based network and ISE. The functionality of both devices is the same, and the key difference is the vendor and branding. The dependability and scalability of both products are good too.

I rate this solution an eight out of ten. 

We have vertical markets and there's almost no real use case since it's all industry. Aruba is not really designed to be used in private households. We do have a few private customers. However, they have a very high demand on security. If they have a high demand on the performance, we definitely reach with Aruba however, the majority of our customers are industry related.

For one customer, what happened was they used to be on a different network on NPLS. That was very expensive and software-defined wide-area networking is a huge cost saving and much easier to be managed.

The solution can save money and can be easily implemented, depending on the environment.

It’s very stable and reliable.

There aren’t really any large improvements necessary. There are smaller improvements we request, however, they are communicated directly. We are not an end-customer. We use our direct channels.

The initial setup is complex.

I’ve been using Aruba since 2005.

The solution is very, very stable. It’s not buggy. It’s not glitchy. It doesn’t crash or freeze. It’s very reliable. The performance is great.

It is scalable in its limits. It's scalable. The main purpose is for bigger organizations - for public, schools, universities, or bigger industries. You could scale it down also to household usage or to high-demand private usage. You can do a lot with it.

We have implemented it twice on a university campus and there we have maybe 2,000 to 3000 users. We have industry users. I would say it could be anything between 3,000 and 10,000 users.

If it is a midsize company, they don't have planning for scaling expenditure. With the bigger companies, they plan to expand, however, then you always bump into Cisco. It’s the biggest competitor and the most popular one.

Customer service from HP is pretty good.

Positive

We didn’t really use a different solution. There wasn't much in the market in 2005. When we started, we started with wireless into the early and late nineties. By that time, you had very small island solutions. There were three coming market and a few other products that were controller-based, and almost nothing was controller based.

If you look at the competitors, they're almost all the same, they're just the different flavors and whatever you are used to it and how comfortable you feel with the product. We do WAN products with Aruba. We do WAN products with Fortinet as well. We do software-defined networking, the same as Aruba offers; however, there's not much difference between them.

We’ve also used Ruckus. We have a few customers in the carrier business, and Ruckus is primarily used in the carrier business. It's placed in the same league as Aruba.

In terms of the initial setup, it’s complex. It's not straightforward. The only straightforward item is the very instant access points; however, as soon as we’re working in a complex environment, then it takes a lot of knowledge. It takes good knowledge and could take a few days to implement.

I’d rate it a two out of five on a scale from one to five, where one is extremely difficult, and five is extremely easy.

We are a very small company. We normally use the IT department of our customers, and they are trained. They keep maintaining their own system. For smaller customers, we do the maintenance, and we also do the monitoring. We have partner companies. We swap our 24/7 services. If you offer 24-hour service, it takes about six to eight technicians to take care of the 24/7 services.

We don't monitor if the company or the customer has any ROI. It's quite difficult to answer what the ROI is, and what the return of investment is. Most customers don't even look at ROI on wireless.

The license is a one-time subscription. It's a one-time purchase, however, the update is a subscription.

It is unfortunately very expensive. The subscription, the software maintenance subscription, and even the one-off pricing are very high.

The license costs reflect the features. The more features you require, the more you have to pay.

We use different versions of Aruba.

We are Aruba partners. As a partner, of course, I will try to encourage other people to look at Aruba and implement Aruba. Some of the features are not unique however they are very highly developed, and the solution is highly sophisticated. It's the best of its breed. As a partner with different vendors, however, you have to look at the requirements, and you have to make a decision on the requirements.

I’d rate the solution a ten out of ten.