Aruba Wireless alternatives and competitors

We work at a courthouse, however, we manage the data for the entire county. We have them at the Sheriff's office. They use them in commissary purchases, which is a separate SSI and separate VLAN. That's to segregate wireless traffic for different groups of people per their needs. 

We have lawyers that maybe need to reach back into the network and access their documents when they take a laptop to the courtroom with them. And so through that, we've done some radius authentication. Therefore, it's not just an SSI ID. They actually have to log in with credentials as well. 

Then, we have a guest SSID just for general public access, and that's basically running wide open. We do have a simple password audit, however, everybody knows it, and that's separated by VLAN as well and run through Palo Alto. We also have a whole different SSID for patrol units for the Sheriff's office, where they upload car videos and update their car computers wirelessly. We use it broadly. 

The solution has let us get network access to more people in different locations where wires aren't feasible - like in a garage or for the Sheriff's office uploads in courtrooms. In some of these courtrooms, you can't run additional wire due to the fact that they're historical buildings. You have to have wireless. Also, you have lawyers walking around and you don't want them tripping over stuff. It's useful in every aspect of getting public access - even for when there are events in the square, across from the courthouse. It's basically helped us better serve everybody and provided them with network access.

It always runs, and it's very reliable in terms of performance. They are very, very robust, very rugged, and can handle indoor or outdoor coverage. We typically don't have too many problems with the hardware.

The wireless LAN controllers at the time when we started rolling out, we went with it simply due to the fact that everything else worked that was Cisco. We figured, if everything else works and we're satisfied with it, let's go that route. However, now people want more access points and more spots. And if you give everybody coverage, the cost is crazy high. You can either say, "No, we can't," or you can go with the cheaper product, even slightly cheaper, plus you get more APs out there for more coverage.

At least with the WLC 2500 that we've been using, you can't take just the stock AP from them. You have to use lightweight firmware. You turn it into a lightweight AP and then you can join it to, or provision it to, the wireless controller, which should be automatic. In most cases, it works pretty well, however, it's still not there yet, as far as plugging it into this network that's going to tunnel back to the controller. I would say it works 7 out of 10 times. For the price, it should be a 10 out of 10. Especially with Cisco running an entire Cisco network with CDP all over the place, there should be no reason it doesn't tunnel back every single time. And yet, there are a few times where it doesn't.

It got to the point where, when I prevent in APs, I just take them directly to the switch that the controller is plugged into and provision them there instead of just plugging them in like you should be able to. 

The software on offer is not great. Cisco lacks in software updates, surprisingly. They don't update their firmware too much for the controller. This is not something you want to be done constantly as it does make downtime, however, I would like to see them more than once a year. Unless there's a critical flaw, or you're running an early release. They're their main releases, I want to say year after year, it's been maybe once a year, and then you have to push it out to all your APs. 

Their software's really clunky. It's not very user-friendly, which you can see that as a good thing and a bad thing. We should learn this stuff, but at the same time, it shouldn't be overly difficult. You shouldn't have your options hidden in menus. You shouldn't have to go 25 minutes deep to get to some security options for a specific SSID. 

Also the way the group their security settings is a little bit backward to me. It's not done by SSID. There's just a security tab. Then, you have to link back and forth through that. However, that's something that you're going to fight with through every controller, every different type of device. We all wish they were organized differently. 

We originally started using the solution in 2014.

We had one before then as well. Since we've gone wireless, or implemented wireless throughout the buildings here, we've always used Cisco. This is just a Cisco shop. 

The solution is extremely stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

The one issue we did have was with their mesh radios. I'm not sure that it was with the radio itself, the software in the radio. They run two different firmware. One is autonomous firmware, which they use with their AP line and then lightweight APs. With the autonomous one, there's no consistency there. For the indoor APs, you'll have lightweight firmware that you need on them. And then for the outdoor mesh radios, they're not fully autonomous, yet you have to have the autonomous software on them for the mesh feature to function. That's a little bit convoluted and I kind of wished that would just have it one way or the other.

The solution scales easily.

The number of users varies. Some days we have court cases and then you have jurors, lawyers, the media people. It varies widely. I would say on average, we have possibly 200 people a day on a slow day using it. And then on an extremely busy day, it could double that.

We use the solution quite extensively.

We do plan to increase usage, however, it won't necessarily be with this product. We'll probably like to go with a different product based on price and licensing.

Technical support is 10 out of 10. Cisco tech support is one of the best supports I've ever dealt with.

The initial setup was very straightforward. As we have added SSIDs, when we have had a hardware failure, the re-setup, for instance, is a bit more involved. When the controller itself was acting kind of finicky, we did an overnight request and got one in. Re-uploading that configuration was not as easy if that makes sense. If you're setting up a brand new device, it's very easy, very straightforward. If you're trying to restore from a backup configuration, it's not as easy. We ended up actually just resetting it up from scratch.

The deployment itself likely took three hours.

We had some bugs to work out after that, however, the majority of it was up and running within three hours.

For maintenance, you only need one person (a network admin) and then a backup person, just in case that person is on vacation or something.

We handled the setup all in-house. We do have their tech support. At one point, we did get tech on the phone and were working with them. It basically came down to firmware. The one they shipped us could not downgrade its firmware to the firmware we were running on. There was no good way to make it upload the config from an older firmware. They wanted the same firmware restorations. That was kind of a pain, however, we just ended up manually going through and resetting everything, which was not too terrible.

Cisco's APs are licensed and you need to buy them. Basically, for every AP, you have to have a license. Some of the other devices do it so that they support X amount and you can buy the licenses for zero to 20, 20 to 40, et cetera, and it's a little bit more affordable. That's kind of why I was trending towards Ruckus. They handle their licensing a little bit differently. 

Every time somebody asks "How much is a wireless access point? We need wireless in this room." Well, then you tell them the cost and mention "Oh yeah, and there's a license." It's expensive.

Users purchase each AP, and that's until the end of that product's life. If you break it down over a year, it's fairly affordable. However, nobody replaces one AP, we replace them all typically at the same time. Unless one dies or they need one expanded, as far as specific costs go, it's different for indoor and outdoor ones. It might be around $100 for a license. The internal ones are far cheaper than that. 

We had looked at Meraki before, however, the cost is just astronomical. We're a local government, so there's no money. The cost of Cisco wireless controllers has always been kind of clunky. I had heard a lot of good things about Aruba, and then I heard they were bought out by HP, however, it seems like it's still good. I was leaning more towards Ruckus based on just how it handles traffic and handles the guest VLANs and that it can do SSI de-scheduling. I still need to go back and do an in-depth read on the Ruckus option. I am leaning towards that one, even though it seems like it's a close tie.

I also looked at Ubiquity, however, from what I've read, their hardware is not really up to par when you hit saturation, and on certain days of the week here, we definitely have saturated APs due to the fact that we have court cases. You can go from the usual 10 people on an AP to possibly 40 plus people, all trying to check their internet over the wireless. It gets kind of crazy on those days.

We're just a customer and an end-user.

We use the 2500 wireless controller and all the APs that go with it. 

We have Cisco switches and routers as well. We were using Cisco firewalls up until about three years ago. And then we switched to Palo Alto. As far as switching goes, still happy with their switches. They're extremely pricey, however, they last forever, and they meet a lot of government requirements that we have.

I'd recommend the solution I wouldn't hesitate to do install it if the company can afford it.

I would rate the solution at an eight out of ten for its ease of setup, ease of scalability, and robustness.

We have a lot of use cases for Huawei Wireless. We have ISP providers. We have SMB customers. We also have a factory manufacturing Huawei network equipment, including optical transmission, wireless networks, routers, UHGs, etc. We also have customers using full cloud features.

At the moment, I only have experience with the on-premise deployment of Huawei Wireless, but the cloud solution looks good on paper. It looks perfect. I can say that Huawei's cybersecurity is very good, stable, and works for long periods. My company has four devices running uptime for more than four years without stopping.

I also like that the support for Huawei Wireless is swift, and support does precisely what you require, at least from the point of view of the technical engineer who communicated with Huawei support, as I'm more of a technical sales guy. Good technical support is vital to my company, partners, and customers.

My company had this ongoing project with an ISP provider in Bulgaria that bought some routers. Still, the existing equipment was a completely different brand, so this provider wanted to migrate to Huawei Wireless and wanted help while migrating the existing infrastructure to Huawei, so the technical engineer assigned to raise the ticket with Huawei for checking and setting parameters correctly provided feedback about Huawei technical support being good quality-wise and TAT-wise.

The technical engineer was also Cisco-certified and Juniper-certified and was not experienced with Huawei equipment. Still, he did mention that the Huawei Wireless router interface was straightforward, and even a person who's new to it would find it easy to configure.

Huawei Wireless is user-friendly, which is another pro of the solution. It's easy to manage, and even the program language setting can be done with fewer commands than Juniper and Cisco equipment.

Some of the features in Juniper need an external program, and the same features can be found in Huawei Wireless built-in, which I find remarkable.

The demo program is an area for improvement in Huawei Wireless as it's hard to use. As a partner, you can use the solution for free, for thirty days, for example. On paper, everything looks fine, but you have to get permission and explain why you want to download the software, even if it's just for demo purposes. I don't get why I have to do this as a partner and still give an explanation that this would be for a demo setup.

Downloading the solution isn't a click-and-install process that should go smoothly and efficiently. You have to get a lot of approvals and explain a lot, and in the end, you find out that you received the approval for one piece of software.

It looks like you need additional software to use the software. My company asked for approval and received the approval three days later, but you need to install another software to use some of the features.

In the past, most features were separate. Because Huawei wants a single pane of glass where all features should work with the Huawei equipment, Huawei decided to combine everything into the iMaster NCE Campus, which incorporates every other cloud solution. However, you still have to ask for approval for every piece of software, and without clear information on the features, the type of software, and the software files required, it's not so good from my point of view.

My company gave feedback to Huawei about this, and the explanation was that Huawei Wireless is a complex solution. Still, you can present your ideas to Huawei, and Huawei will give you advice on how to download the software, for example. However, this is a demo software, so how can you be sure what features you want to use without knowing how to work with the device?

My team didn't get the training, even if Huawei provided a lot of training. Every quarter, Huawei includes training for different types of products. Still, my team wanted to test the product and start learning through testing, but it looks like it's better to have the free online training first and see what the features are and how to set up Huawei Wireless before doing the demo.

In the future, I'd like Huawei Wireless to offer a free cloud solution or free licenses similar to what other vendors provide. For example, Aruba and Cisco offer two levels or types of WiFi equipment. Cisco has Meraki, and there's Meraki Go, a free cloud solution. Aruba has Instant, and Instant On, a license-free WiFi solution. Huawei Wireless currently doesn't have free options for SMB customers, which is what Huawei needs to bring in more SMB customers.

My experience with Huawei Wireless is less than a year, but my company has been working with Huawei for about seven years.

Huawei Wireless is a stable product.

Huawei Wireless is highly scalable. Even if you use its on-premise version, it's scalable, though it's less scalable than the cloud version. You have the option to expand the existing infrastructure to two thousand units of access points. You can set up several locations and manage a very, very, very big infrastructure.

The technical support for Huawei Wireless was good and responsive.

I've used Aruba, Ubiquiti, and Netgear, apart from Huawei Wireless, because my company also sells those brands.

We are distributors of Huawei Wireless, so we're not deploying it. We have partners who do the deployment with the help of Huawei's remote service desk.

My company is making money from Huawei Wireless, but I didn't calculate the monthly ROI, so I cannot provide a figure for it.

Right now, my company made a one-time purchase of Huawei Wireless. It depends, but in most of the projects where customers buy hardware with some software, it's a one-time purchase. Customers pay a yearly fee for other projects for support and additional software features, such as email protection firmware updates for cybersecurity. You'll also receive information about the latest attacks and get more protection if you pay an additional fee apart from the standard license fee. You'll also get an additional warranty for Huawei Wireless, a yearly contract.

I'm working for a distributor for Huawei in Bulgaria. I'm a product manager for Huawei network equipment in Bulgaria.

As a distributor, my company has some demo equipment at the office and different versions of Huawei equipment, such as switches, routers, and access point controllers. For example, for Huawei AirEngine, my company has versions 5760, 5761, 5762, etc.

At the moment, Huawei Wireless is deployed on-premises, but the team is working on moving to a cloud-based solution. Most brands or vendors nowadays focus on cloud solutions, so that's what my company is trying to activate. My company will present an iMaster NCE Campus demo to a partner, so the partner can start using that solution.

It's not just SD-WAN that the company is trying to move to because SD-WAN is part of a complete cloud solution, cloud management solution, and network management system, which can be used only for monitoring or remotely managing devices.

The number of users of Huawei Wireless within the company isn't significant because it's just demo equipment, and it's not the main wireless equipment used in the office.

The number of people required for the deployment and maintenance of Huawei Wireless depends on the size of the project, the circumstance, and the requirements. For example, there's a project with one hundred and sixty access points with four service engineers, so deploying Huawei Wireless doesn't require many people.

I suggest anyone looking into implementing Huawei Wireless to ensure correct WiFi planning. As long as you receive the exact WiFi access point model and the exact location, everything will be fine. The deployment of Huawei Wireless would also depend on your partner. Support depends on customer requirements. You can order support contracts if you want everything to be smooth and up-to-date in the future. You can order support contracts upfront, before, or even after deployment.

As Huawei Wireless is a very good solution, I'd rate it as eight out of ten. I can't give it a ten because I don't have a vast experience with it, and there's no perfect solution.

My company is a Huawei partner.

This product is a wireless access point and we use it as part of our network infrastructure to provide wireless access to our employees. It is possible, for example, to integrate a guest's mobile device as their extension. In the past, phones were only available as a physical device in-room.

Once a customer is checked in, they are given a QR barcode that they can use to download the app. Then, that phone will act as their hotel room extension. When they are anywhere on the hotel premises, the operator can reach them using Wi-Fi. It's very simple.

We are a solution provider, and some of our customers are also using it. They are both SMB and enterprise customers, and they use it in the hospitality industry for providing Wi-Fi.

This vendor also sells telephone equipment that we require for other use cases. When our customers use the same vendor for telephone equipment and wireless access points, it makes it easier to implement and manage.

When the use case is a hotel, this solution makes it easy to update everything for the guests, such as the hotel page or advertising. Everything can be integrated using this Wi-Fi solution.

We can manage all of the access points and policies from a single pane of glass.

We are very satisfied with the performance.

Integrates well with PMS, bandwidth managers, and other systems.

Better integration with third-party systems is what our customers are expecting in the future. For example, if they want to add four or five access points and they want to use Alcatel-Lucent, it will not work with an existing Cisco or Aruba product. This is a problem with other vendors, as well, because they use their own protocols that do not work with third-party products.

Essentially, we would like to see better interoperability with access points from other vendors. Multi-vendor installations will work alongside each other but will not work together. They will each be part of their own cluster. Ideally, we don't want multiple clusters. The protocols that they use should not be vendor-specific.

If all of the manufacturers supported interoperability then customers would not need to make an additional investment. Rather, their existing equipment can be used. This would be preferable to the situation as it is now.

An example of this is telephone systems that use the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). Any phone of any brand will work. If it supports this protocol then we can just connect it and use it. If the same thing were true with access points then we could mix and match without any problems.

We have been using the Alcatel-Lucent OmniAccess Stellar access point for approximately four years.

This is a very stable product. The manufacturer provides a lifetime warranty so there is no need to worry in that regard. It is well supported.

We are using this product with many of our customers, and there haven't been any issues with stability or performance.

This is suitable for small, medium, and enterprise-level companies.

We have approximately 200 clients that use this solution.

The Alcatel technical support is fast. You simply call and they can provide you with support, 24/7. We can also contact them by email.

Certification is required to access the manufacturer's support.

We are a solution provider and we have more than 500 customers that have purchased similar equipment from many different vendors. As such, I have experience with similar products from Cisco, Juniper, Ubiquity, HPE, Aruba, and others.

The Alcatel-Lucent feature set is similar to what Cisco and Aruba are providing. The use cases are similar, as well. This is one of the reasons that we recommend Alcatel-Lucent.

The choice of product is largely dependent on the customer's preference. For example, some people like Cisco products. If their mind is set on Cisco then we can't often change it, so we sell them the Cisco product. If it is just a question of performance, then whatever the customer needs can be provided by Alcatel-Lucent.

The installation is straightforward and although it is not complicated, we need to have the proper expertise. If somebody doesn't know this product then it will be very complex. That's why we have people who are trained on the product and have certifications from the vendor.

For people that are certified, the setup is easy. This is the same case with other vendors; those who are trained on the product can configure it. It depends on the technician's expertise.

The price of this product is average and it is a one-time, perpetual license.

When compared with other vendors, the cost of Alcatel-Lucent is less than Cisco but more expensive than Linksys.

Overall, this is a good product and I recommend it.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is a wireless LAN solution providing wireless access points for the organization.

What I like most about Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is the cloud based management of the entire system. The product was also easy to deploy and easy to troubleshoot.

I haven't really come across anything that was a big issue with this product. I can't think of anything that would have raised a flag about something needing to be improved in Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN, but it could be their support. We had some issues, and we couldn't figure out why they happened, but some of their first level support staff does not seem to be well-versed with how to solve those issues.

Nothing really comes to mind about what I would like to see on the next release. I know they are using the six GHz band now for Wi-Fi 6, submitted out as an option, seeing use of the six GHz band down the road for Wi-Fi 6.

I've been using Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN for two years now.

Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is a stable solution.

Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is scalable.

Support for Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN needs improvement, as it seems their first level support staff isn't that knowledgeable on the solution, however, their response time on the issues is okay.

We used a different solution before switching to Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN. We decided to use Cisco products because the Meraki devices were much better than other platforms, particularly in cloud management, ease of deployment, and ease of troubleshooting.

The initial setup for this solution is a combination: it could be straightforward, or it could be complex, e.g. setting it up would've been complex in some situations.

Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is a cloud solution with on-premise deployment, and we did the deployment ourselves, without an integrator, reseller, or consultant. The deployment did not take long.

We tried Aruba, but we didn't get any feedback from the vendor.

We try to have a relationship with the vendor, e.g. we have a Cisco rep for that, but they wouldn't really help us with the Meraki blocks. I'm a network engineer assigned to the company that uses Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN.

We cannot have more than 400 users of this product, and we currently have 200 to 300 people using it. For deployment and maintenance, we only have one staff who takes care of it, e.g. one engineer. We have no plans of increasing the number of users of Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN, unless we expand in size.

My advice to others looking into implementing this product is that it's definitely a good investment. They just have to be mindful and really understand the technology. They should be able to go through the documentation on the website, to really understand the product features and functionality, because sometimes they may need to exert effort in examining issues on their own, because sometimes support doesn't really provide a proper, tangible response.

I'll give Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN a rating of eight out of ten, because we're very satisfied that it meets all the technical attributes we were looking for, and it's a solid infrastructure. It works with our problems, e.g. any major problems.

Ruckus Wireless is used for networking and security. They have both cloud-based and on-premise controllers available. You often see this solution in the hospitality sector. 

Ruckus Wireless is more of a plain Wi-Fi solution where it does the basic job well. Additionally, it has good conductivity, easy to use, simple to manage, and its access points can be used as standalone devices which gives flexibility in the SMB market.

The solution lacks a lot of features other solutions provide. If you are an organization that is more focused on security or you need a lot of other features, such as location tracking then Ruckus Wireless may not be the right choice. If you want a solution with more than basic security I would choose Arista or Aruba.

Ruckus has gone through too many changes in their management, and in the last four or five years, they have been lacking feature sets that others provide. Additionally, the integration, network security, and BLE features need to be improved. There are key features they are still lacking.

I used Ruckus Wireless within the past 12 months.

The solution is highly stable.

Ruckus Wireless is scalable. However, in terms of the scalability of the controller, there is always a limit on the number of access points or clients the hardware can support. If the access points are placed in a decent place with multiple options of controllers everything works well.

Ruckus Wireless is the best fit for the SMB market which they have a dominant presence.

We have deployed the solution in an educational institute and in a restaurant that has a lodging segment and a coworking space.

I have not faced any problems with the solution to need to contact the technical support.

The solution is straightforward. It can be done in a short period of time.

Once you deploy Ruckus Wireless correctly, there is no maintenance required. It is close to maintenance-free, except for some operational jobs which depend upon what the customer may want and that is where you need human intervention.

If you walk into any restaurant or hotel you will find Ruckus Wireless solutions because it is economical when it comes to pricing. There is a basic subscription for the license and support.

I have evaluated Arista and Aruba.

I would recommend Ruckus Wireless to anyone who is looking for a plain Wi-Fi solution. If you want Wi-Fi that will provide wireless connectivity that is good and stable, this is the solution to pick. If you need a solution with a lot of features for the network, such as wireless intrusion prevention or internal location tracking, there are other solutions that you should look for.

I rate Ruckus Wireless an eight out of ten.