Aruba Wireless Room for Improvement
The solution could be improved on the security side.
View full review »ML
reviewer1089651
Senior Sales Engineer at a tech consulting company with 10,001+ employees
The solution's documentation could be better organized in an information portal. There are many assets on the technical side so there is a lot of documentation. Sometimes it takes work to find what you need because of the vastness of information. You need to know the products to find things. The solution could offer some kind of portal for documentation to better organize things.
The cloud CHS and remote APs could be improved faster. The solution has already been integrated with the cloud and there are plans for other product integrations but they could occur faster.
View full review »Aruba is missing some features that are available in other solutions, such as the email notifications. It's a bit complex to configure the notification part. Mainly I'm talking about the rogue WiFi detection.
This email notification is crucial for us, but it isn't possible to configure with the built-in software. You need something else, like an external system log collector or another Aruba software. These notifications are essential in hospitality for PCI compliance. My colleagues in famous luxury hotel chains need that report.
One of the requirements for PCI compliance is rogue WiFi detection. When a rogue AP is discovered, they need a notification sent to a certain email. If there is no built-in feature, you need either to purchase an additional software to make sure that you are notified through that software. This feature is built into Ruckus.
Buyer's Guide
Aruba Wireless
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Aruba Wireless. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Aruba needs to improve two things. One is security. These days, security is about more than just the endpoints — it's also about the devices connecting to the endpoints. They need to improve wireless intrusion detection and prevention. If Aruba can do something like that, I think it would be a game-changer. The second thing is the range. Before Aruba, we had Ruckus, which covers a larger area than Aruba.
View full review »Aruba doesn't match some competitors in wireless signal strength. It isn't in the same class as Cisco Meraki, so I would use Cisco Meraki in situations where I need to cover a large open space. Meraki has more powerful signals going out.
Coverage and penetration have been the biggest disappointments. You should be able to connect to a visible Wifi access point. Often, people 20 meters away from an Aruba external access point need to move closer to get into the coverage radius.
View full review »RT
Rufino Tinio
Corporate Senior IT Manager at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
We would like to declare a specific number of devices that an employee or a user can use to access their Wi-Fi. Right now, it's a free for all.
The other features that I would like to explore are alerting and auto reporting of users accessing the internet. I want proactive alerts on the usage of these applications because I have to go to Aruba Central every time to see what's going on.
View full review »The Return Material Authorization procedure is time-consuming and needs improvement.
View full review »AV
Alejandro Villalobos Campos
Architect at VJCR
The most important thing that needs to be improved is the internal web feature. This allows all our units to use this as an internal GPS to locate somebody or some elements. However, the problem is that they need another unit different from the 535. This point is not good because we put that on this unit, and changed it from 515 to 535. For this unit, just to enable the possibility of locating equipment, we have very expensive equipment in the hospital and we put a GPS stack, so the system can track. We put them in all the time, but we need another unit to make it functional. Aruba can improve this by including the GPS stack in each unit. This would reduce our maintenance work.
Aruba Wireless needs to provide more visibility into the differences between their models so we can better understand them. The changes between the 515 and the 535 are just scalable in one step; We don't feel that one unit is going to be better in so many ways. Instead, it is just one change. The scale from one model to another is very short and because of this we are going to try to save money, we're going to pick up the lowest model because the newer model, doesn't have many additional features.
The bad things about the product are the price, the information about the product, and the time it takes to deliver the product.
View full review »We have an issue with the integration of Aruba Wireless with our LDAP servers.
View full review »I want to have a virtual controller, so I would like to see integration with other vendors of the LAN network. We need security features to recognize the traffic source and to apply Zero Trust security.
View full review »MS
M. Seidl
Help Desk Administrator at a educational organization with 51-200 employees
Aruba has been an excellent solution. However, I am aiding in transitioning my organization to a different wireless solution due to the cost. We need to expand our network and the cost of new APs and an upgraded controller have proved to be prohibitive compared to similar solutions on the market.
View full review »SW
Sanket Walekar
Network Security Engineer at Aadnya Global Services
There has been a recent decrease in the level of support. When issues arise, we often require additional support, and this aspect should be enhanced.
View full review »Configuration could be made easier with more bandwidth than they offer at the moment.
View full review »AM
Ajith Mathew
Network Team Leader at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
There are some issues we occasionally have. However, they are easily remedied.
Recently, HP acquired Aruba. There have been some changes in the licensing form. Platforms are changing. These kinds of things are slowly happening. However, it is not a problem.
The issue is that the delivery timelines have increased. That is not only for Aruba, even for all the partners; it is increased. That is something which they need to improve. The hardware takes too long to be delivered.
View full review »MP
reviewer1858131
Risk Advisor
The scope of improvement would go along with the technology's adoption into the market. Even though Wi-Fi 6 has been introduced, everyone is quite skeptical in the market in terms of the adoption part, as the platform network should be that strong to cater to that kind of bandwidth. While it may be great in the future, currently, the existing versions are incompatible with some of the networks which customers own.
They could improve the seamless roaming, which is already there, however, needs some tweaking.
View full review »MB
reviewer1312101
Network and Security Consultant at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Currently, the stability of the code is the basic underlying problem for us. They had an 8.6 release that came out two weeks ago, but we had to migrate twice because the code wasn't stable. We can't get things to work the same way. Version 8 was a big change for them. They made a change so that it is forced to be a managed hierarchical system. It means that you make changes at the top, and it pushes them downstream. There are a lot of problems with the 8.6 version code. I ran into four bugs in one week and was informed that we should just move onto the next one because all of those fixes have taken place. The feedback loop for fixes is not always really relayed back to you.
I don't have a lot of strong things to say about version 8.6. When we had version 6, the controller was pretty much rock solid. We had no problems. We made a heavy investment to migrate a lot of stuff to take advantage of things like WPA3, Wi-Fi 6, and all that kind of stuff, and we haven't been able to turn those features on because we are not confident that they are going to work just yet. So, right now, we're still very much stumbling through the version 8.6 code and just trying to make sure that it is safe before we turn on some of those features.
In terms of the marketplace, they are one of the top three leaders. In some respects, one of the things that they focus on is wireless. Therefore, there are some things that should be beyond reproach, as far as I'm concerned. In terms of the stability of the code, there are always going to be bugs, but the core stability of the code needs to be there. When it is not stable, that's a real problem for me because you lose a lot of confidence in the products.
View full review »AK
reviewer2031900
Software Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Aruba Wireless is a good product, but it still has some issues, especially at the beginning, where there's inconsistent syncing between the cloud and the APs. Sometimes, there's also a little lag when accessing the query.
Aruba Wireless could improve the interface, it does not have a smart web interface. Other solutions have smart web interfaces, such as Cisco Meraki.
View full review »Our customers ask for a security portfolio, which the tool doesn't have.
View full review »BP
reviewer2061732
Deputy General Manager at a healthcare company with 501-1,000 employees
An area for improvement in Aruba Wireless is creating a DMZ. Without Aruba ClearPass, you need to allow guess access directly via the internet, which means you need to implement the security in between, so this is what I'd like Aruba to improve in the product.
Another area for improvement in Aruba Wireless is delivery because right now, in the COVID-19 pandemic, the product doesn't have much availability. There's a limited supply of semiconductors, so I want Ariba to increase Aruba Wireless production. The product needs to be available and delivered to customers faster.
View full review »RS
Rahul Sivanandan
Associate Director – Network & Cyber security at Microland Limited
I haven't yet seen a cloud-based wireless controller in Aruba and I'm waiting for that as well as a heat map analysis which is also lacking. I'd like to see application visibility in the next release on the inbound and outbound traffic flow.
View full review »EZ
Edward Zeng
System Network Support Consultant at Auckland University of Technology
We're using the Aruba Sensor, but sometimes the sensor isn't talking to AirWave or the AP. If something happens, we need to receive an email directly from the sensor, but the controller doesn't know. If there's something like the high channel utilization from the sensor we send to the controller, the controller can change the channel because they're all in the same environment.
Also, the controller can not do active/standby mode. It only works in active/active. I haven't seen any option for active/standby because we want to put one in the backup center. However, with the active/active mode, the traffic must go to the primary and the backup center.
I would like it if Aruba had a mobile app so I wouldn't need to log in on my laptop. They should also simplify the solution, so there aren't so many layers. It would be nice if the solution double-checked your configurations. For example, it could warn you if a configuration change in one layer conflicts with your current settings.
View full review »HE
reviewer1230060
Manager - Network Solutions at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
What I'd like improved in Aruba Wireless is for it to be a full cloud solution.
Making the setup more simple is another area for improvement for Aruba Wireless. There's a big solution for this, but it's not a huge enterprise solution, but Aruba Wireless has thousands of access points, so it's okay.
Security still needs some work with Aruba Wireless, because you don't know which users are accessing, what each user is trying to do, what the applications are and the intentions behind the applications, so there are a lot of complexities behind the scene.
The wireless access points from Aruba Wireless are not just access points, e.g. they form a platform that contains a lot of features such as cloud features, security features, even IoT, so I recommend to have these in all the product range, including small business solutions, so this is what I'd like to see in the next release.
View full review »The solution can be improved by simplifying the configuration. I would like to see a more user-friendly GUI that is not so easily confused when configuring clusters or even a single node when people are not paying attention to what layer they are configuring, whether it be at the mobility master level or at the node level. I would like to see more analytics that can help us pinpoint the cause of reduced performance related to the airtime and number of SSIDs being used.
View full review »The solution could be more user-friendly.
View full review »AA
Sigma.3 - Ashroff
Director, Technical Solutions at Sigma.3 Pte Ltd
Aruba Wireless could improve the dashboard. It is not straightforward or intuitive to use and could be more user-friendly. For IT employees the dashboards are fine but when it comes to the end-user it is difficult. The Mobility Controller dashboard is not meant for non-IT employees.
View full review »Sometimes the configuration is difficult.
Aruba needs to offer an IT telephone in order to can catch all of the market. Cisco already has an IT telephone security product. Aruba does not. If Aruba offered an IP conference option it would be great.
An area for improvement I found in this solution is the configuration. Though it's currently an improved version, it could still be made easier, so technical people could benefit from being able to configure Aruba Wireless within a quicker amount of time.
View full review »The urgent areas of improvement would be customer support, better tuned default settings, and documentation. Aruba’s TAC support for us has been frustrating most of the time, as there is a clear language/dialect barrier when speaking or emailing a TAC representative. We’ve found that we have more emails (which equates to longer resolution time) than typically needed to cover certain questions and updates – as the TAC directions and instructions were either incomplete or we couldn’t understand what they were referencing. There have been occasions where a local Aruba rep, has had to step in for the TAC due to this problem.
Out of the box the Aruba gear (at least with the IAP-225 APs) comes with all of the marketing promised higher throughput settings (which causes issues such as CCI) enabled such as (but not limited to): 80 Mhz channel width (which anybody rarely uses), all 2.4 Ghz channels enabled, and high transmit power turned on. Many of these settings are used rarely in most deployments, and will need to be tuned. Aruba should enable 40 Mhz channels, only enable channels 1,6,11 on 2.4 Ghz, and set the power lower – as this will give most deployments a better chance at succeeding. This would benefit those who just put them in and call it a day or have little to no knowledge on the inner-workings of RF. This isn't an Aruba only problem, many of the wireless vendors do this, and the community has asked for this to change – however, I felt it was worth noting.
Aruba’s documentation is pretty good, however there are cases where something is recommended by a TAC or an Aruba engineer that cannot be found in their documentation for the product itself, or their best practices guides (often referred to as Validated Reference Designs – VRD). The things that we've had to change/rethink but weren't in the documentation are: cluster sizes, standard L2 VLAN, disabling L3 Mobility, and client match.
View full review »SW
Shaker Wazani
Sales Enigineer at Smart World Computer Network
They need to increase the number of routers on the controller. The VSSIP needs to have at least 25 access points. I just need them to increase the access points without the controller.
Other than that, it has everything we need, and we do not need any new features.
The downside is right now there is a shortage of hardware. It's hard to acquire switches and access points.
View full review »CC
reviewer1328712
Cisco Network Engineer at a pharma/biotech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Because it's cloud-based, it takes time for the floor maps and the heat map to load. I understand the reason for this but it would be nice if once you click on the flop map, instead of waiting sometimes 20 or 30 seconds, it would come up a lot quicker.
View full review »One area for improvement in Aruba Wireless is its dashboard or interface because in some cases, it's not as easy to use as it should be, but overall, it's okay.
Pricing for the product is also on the higher side.
Another area for improvement in Aruba Wireless is technical support because it's hard to reach when issues arise and the speed of answer could be faster.
Other areas for improvement in the product include integration and configuration.
View full review »AA
Amin Ancheta
System Engineer at Trends and Technologies, Inc
I don't have any access in the Aruba dashboard. I need more access. I only install the hardware and the software part for the client. However, there are no admin privileges, which is an issue. You need to contact them and make a special request. They should allow everybody to fiddle with their settings if they bought the solution.
View full review »Some of the diagnostic features I'd expect to help me troubleshoot parts of the network are missing. I'd like to have diagnostic tools to pinpoint where devices are not getting good signals and why.
View full review »The support should be faster.
View full review »It would be helpful if they would release training materials and updates to enhance their offerings. When it comes to switching, there can be occasional variations, such as with the cooler switches. Also, there might be technical issues with the code that could lead to variations in performance. To enhance the system, more work on integration would be beneficial.
Aruba Wireless can improve the assigning of access points. We have times that the nearest access point is not assigned but one far away. The integration between access points could improve.
View full review »AE
Amr Elbadry
IT Manager at MNHD
The stability and management could be improved.
View full review »EW
Eric Winiger
IT Operations Manager at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
The ARM functionality does not always seem to perform how I would like. In some cases, I have had to manually assign channels to avoid channel confusion. Overall, it is a small task to worry about.
View full review »The configuration of the virtual controller could be improved. When they reach a maximum of 100 the configuration is lost.
In the next release, I would like the WiFi text included.
Whether videos are online or in live sessions, it can take a long time to deliver videos in Aruba Wireless.
View full review »DM
reviewer1383753
Sr IT Solutions Architect at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
The area that has the most room for improvement is upgrades. What we have seen many times now is that new releases tend to have bugs. Sometimes the bugs are a little bad and cause some undesirable issues. The new code in the upgrades or something leads to conflicts. I would say testing releases before making them available is one of the areas which Aruba needs to improve most with the wireless product. More comprehensive testing is required for a better, more reliable end-user experience.
It is not necessarily testing more often, it is just for new releases. The testing they need to do is to work more closely with different environments and take notice of where issues tend to occur. They should have some idea of what environments are experiencing issues more often by now because of which companies are reporting the issues. They can make compensations for testing in those environments.
I do not have any new features that the product requires off the top of my head. I think that more than improving the product, there are management portfolios and other peripheral things that could be better integrated. But just doing better testing is the main improvement that they need to make.
View full review »The Aruba Central cloud portal needs a lot of work. It is complicated to navigate.
View full review »DN
Dale Nevarez
Network Administrator at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
There is so much licensing, you literally pay for every solution, add-on, or cool feature. Compared to others, we were in the middle with pricing, but as you start to invest more into features it will get very pricey.
View full review »HL
reviewer2132793
EDP Supervisor at a real estate/law firm with 51-200 employees
Aruba Wireless is a little bit complex to use and operate. So, it can be an area for improvement.
It did take us a while to get used to the setup.
We have had issues with the availability of the equipment. We always have trouble locating equipment, finding suppliers who sell it, or finding someone who has stock.
View full review »The solution is now taking eight to 12 months to deliver the product. It takes too long to receive it right now.
Depending on how you design the setup, it can get complicated.
View full review »TL
Tat Lam
Advisory Systems Engineer at a government with 5,001-10,000 employees
I believe that Aruba's support could be improved.
View full review »What I would like to have with these kinds of devices is the most enhanced security. For example, if I could apply security from wireless devices, that would be great.
I would also like more enhanced reports on user adoption, who is getting what bandwidth. That is the kind of report I should be getting.
View full review »The price could be better. In the next release, I would like to have more analytics features.
View full review »SS
Shrijendra Shakya
C.T.O at Sastra Network Solution Inc. Pvt. Ltd.
The Help option within the GUI needs to be improved. It would be perfect to have it more descriptive about the functions and features it has.
The online documentation resources could be made more readily available for troubleshooting than to be engaged with the support through email and calls.
During the shipments, the firmware versions on the shipped outdoor APs, indoor APs, and controllers could be matched so that adaptation for the APs is easy.
They should add more features available on Aruba Airwave to the GUI.
View full review »NG
reviewer1264056
Network Engineer at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Improvements to the GUI, such as being able to search in the Mobility Master, would be nice. It is hard to find and provision APs when you have a substantial install base.
View full review »It could always be improved to be a better risk-related investment. We need to maximum our investment and to have it work to its fullest potential for us. I'd like to see it get to the point where SDN works well with HP Net Protector.
View full review »JS
reviewer1367016
Pre-Sales Manager at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
What needs improvement in Aruba Wireless is its access point, in particular, it should have more flexibility. Aruba Wireless has Campus AP, Instant AP, and Unified AP, but it would be better if the product has a generic access point that you can manage over the cloud, on-premise, etc.
Another area for improvement in Aruba Wireless is scalability.
In terms of what additional features I'd like to see in the product, I'm unsure if it's already on the roadmap, but if possible, it would be good to have an SD-WAN functionality on the AP in Aruba Wireless.
View full review »YK
Youngwook_Kim
Engineer at Eden
The certification for licensing could be better.
View full review »The user interface could be improved in Aruba Wireless. This would make the setup easier.
View full review »HA
Huthaisa Al Saaideh
Network Infrastructure Engineer at KAIZNE
Most of the access points don't include the chargers. If you want to increase your coverage, then you need to have a charger. When our customers ask about access points, we always recommend Aruba; however, when we tell them that they need to buy the chargers separately, they become upset, saying: "We already bought Aruba access points, the chargers should come with it".
This is my main concern. In the last five years, I've installed nearly 300 Aruba access points and most of my customers have complained about the chargers. If this problem was addressed, I wouldn't have any other complaints.
View full review »ED
reviewer1273800
Infrastructure Manager at a media company with 5,001-10,000 employees
When I compare Aruba with Juniper Mist, Juniper is the more an AI-driven management solution. It is more of a modern solution, I think. Aruba needs to be more competitive with Juniper.
View full review »ML
reviewer1089651
Senior Sales Engineer at a tech consulting company with 10,001+ employees
Perhaps one of the things that I think Aruba can improve on is developing their current information channels. Aruba has a lot of information available about their products and to find the information you need is not always so easy. It is more complicated than it should be. I think that they are great and do have a lot of information available — probably all the information that any user really needs to do things themselves. They are doing things well and trying to do things in the right way. They should just improve more on the organization and searchability of the information to make it easier to find what you are looking for.
View full review »SG
reviewer1359489
VP at a comms service provider with 11-50 employees
Aruba Wireless is among the leaders in the market. We are not talking about basic access points. As a leader, they keep ahead of the field.
View full review »GF
reviewer1375509
Network Administrator Wireless at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
You have to use the command line for a lot of commands but then get back to the GUI for the main actions. A lot of the access point commands are in the command line interface, versus being in the GUI.
Some control systems have the ability to right-click to go to the common line. I would like to see that incorporated onto the interface.
View full review »The ceiling grid mount clips have room for improvement.
View full review »The configuration is extremely detailed and can be quite complex. For a small IT staff, it is difficult to make changes without outside consulting or Aruba Support.
View full review »DD
DImo Dimov
R&D Engineer IC Design at inLab Ltd
I believe more security options are needed.
LM
Liyakath Muhammed
CEO at Radax Software Solutions
The console is difficult to use. The firewall settings could be improved.
View full review »The solution needs to add features and enhance security.
View full review »AC
Antonio Chuquimarca
Project and Services Manager at Gensystems
Many features are already in development. For example, Aruba Central, or the server to verify the type of equipment is connected to the network centrally. It's very useful and is a good solution for home or business, and it supports more than 200 pieces of equipment.
We're not really missing any features at this time.
They could work on energy consumption as this equipment needs a lot of energy. This is probably what needs to be improved in the future, as, currently, this type of equipment consumes more than 60 watts. I understand that it needs more power to work, however, there must be a way to lessen it in future releases.
MP
MarcoPiazzalunga
Networking Solution Architect at ALE
Aruba Wireless has already improved all that we need. There is a new version, 8.x, that provides a mobility controller. They probably upgraded their cloud servers.
We have Mobility Manager. The idea is to have a mobility-based machine that can manage a controller around the company.
For a more senior tool, a local application monitoring related to IoT vendors would be useful. Because the company is stable, they have good quality.
View full review »JG
Jacob Golick
System Specialist at a newspaper with 501-1,000 employees
The price point is pretty high compared to Ubiquiti and other equipment.
View full review »I worked on getting the root cause of multiple alarms of wireless access points in our management platform and found it to be caused by a software bug of the current version in the wireless controller. While doing this task, I found that the TAC support people I worked with have limited knowledge or comprehension of the what's going on as I was passed around to other engineers a few times.
View full review »Before HP bought Aruba, the release dates for codes were very predictable and quick. Code release were always visibly available. But since HP's acquisition, normal and quarterly release dates have been delayed, probably because of continued integration between the two companies. One specific issues is that we want to deploy their latest and greatest AP, but they don't have a GA code version available yet. We're still waiting.
I know that's a very specific complaint, but it actually has impacted us because we keep a flush on the older access points on hand just in the event code gets delayed by a few weeks. It's now been delayed by a month to two and I have to buy older access points. I can't deploy the latest and greatest.
I'm hoping things get smoothed out when they start getting their product lines and their flow of products and code deployments get fixed. I've been a little disappointed in that.
Also, I've found some of their onboarding stuff to be overkill and not worth the price. Their base stuff that's included in ClearPass is absolutely amazing, but the fringe things are superfluous and overcharged. The core stuff, though, is exactly what you pay for.
AP signal strength and price. I know this is a competitive market, but APs should not cost so much if they do not cover a large area.
View full review »You need to make sure that the controllers at the access points have the capacity to handle the additional licenses. Otherwise, buying additional licenses won't necessarily scale.
View full review »The controllers used to include heat map functionality. This was removed in a recent release. To get this functionality now, you need to be using Airwave (AWMS), which adds additional cost. On the other hand, Airwave can be used to manage a multi-vendor environment, so there may be some other benefits to having it deployed, but it would be nice to have the heat map back in the controller.
View full review »MS
Mathew Simupande
HPE Business Development Manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
The management system would be better if it were more polished, if it had a better interface like, for example, Meraki.
View full review »Customer service really needs to be improved. If the customer support was better, I would recommend it to others more than I do now. I say that even though we are upgrading to newer units this summer.
View full review »Larger network for Aruba users and partners. I would have liked to see more manufacturer driven events and outings to drive brand recognition and familiarity.
View full review »EP
reviewer1268583
Network Engineer at a university with 201-500 employees
I would like to see a faster web interface in the controller and more troubleshooting tools, including real-time troubleshooting tools.
View full review »HS
Hery Hafif Setiadi
System/Network&Security Administrator at Asuransi Astra
- They should simplify the configuration flow.
- Additional detailed reporting for client traffic would be a great addition.
Sometimes there's some small problems, but this is the nature of technology.
View full review »NS
Napa Sittipan
Technical cons at Tangerine Co.,Ltd.
The solution's GUI for configuration could be better.
View full review »SM
Samy Masihy
Wifi Solution Architect at Netpro SpA
The pricing could always be better.
Technical support needs work. It's hard to reach the right people you need to help you when you come face to face with issues.
I can't say that they are missing any features at this time. There's nothing I can think of needing in the next release.
View full review »The speed could be better. I heard that Aruba is trying to shape the speed inside the wireless controller, but that has not been adopted yet. If they put some kind of mechanism inside the wireless controller for the speed such that, "Okay, this many users will have 20 by 20, 20 in the upload, 20 in the download. Just this many users. And this many users will have this type of speed or that type of speed." I think it would be very good if they actually bring that functionality inside the wireless controller.
I would also like to see stable firmware.
View full review »- Needs integrated wired, which is not traditional HPE.
- The new 8400 failed at Lab, plus its integration with Aruba Central.
- Needs a good enterprise story, including branches and campuses.
There is plenty of room for improvement. Reliability of a flawless upgrade after the 4.x releases is rare. There is a lot of manual intervention required lately due to random bugs. If you have a mix of APs using different firmware, it takes nothing short but an act of god to upgrade successfully.
The product’s performance got worse with newer releases as well. It seems like they are adding more frivolous features and sacrificing stability and speed. The latest design of their APs removes the console port and requires purchasing an expensive proprietary cable just to access the console.
View full review »PV
Prem V
Presales Engineer at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
I would like to see the management improve.
View full review »JA
Jorge Aldana
Director of Networks at Sellcom Solutions
The network times for protocol synchronization can be improved. Sometimes it's complicated, and we need to tweak it to coordinate or synchronize it to the clock at the network access point.
I have some issues with the introductory domain with the frequency that we use. For example, it's very common to have a box with a frequency channel with the introductory domains in Mexico. The access points have some issues in this release; I think it's version eight.
Sometimes the documentation is confusing. You have to figure out a lot of different placements on your own because of the outdated information.
Some additional reporting features about the clients would be nice when not combined with the AirWave management package.
View full review »The AP's didn't automatically connect to our central office upon deployment.
View full review »MZ
MichaelZhang
IT Director at Guangdong Technion Institute of Technology
Perhaps Aruba should publish some best practices for deploying its solution in different industries.
View full review »MM
reviewer1434741
Head of Operations & Support at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
The solution is quite expensive. If they could make the cost a bit lower, that would be helpful. It's pricey compared to, for example, D-Link or TP-Link. Other commonly used products offer more competitive pricing.
The solution should offer more simplified tools.
There needs to be better visibility on the day-to-day monitoring.
It would be ideal if they had cloud services whereby you could manage everything from the cloud. This may be on the most current version, however, on older versions, they don't offer this. Even if you deployed on-premises, you should be able to control everything from the cloud.
View full review »I'm very interested, and I've heard really good things about, the SDN solution; the enterprise controller. I'm planning on getting more information on that.
View full review »The next step is to create better unified story with HP switching. They're part of the same competitor, and their main competitor, Cisco, has a great unified wired/wireless story, and Aruba need to focus on this. They have great management tools and security capabilities, and they need to extend that to the wireless network.
Also, they need to enable the data they collect to be used by more companies. If you think of where wireless is big - schools, hospitals, retail environments - it would be good to capture that data and share it with third-parties so they can enhance their customers' experience.
The user interface on the product isn’t terribly intuitive in some areas, especially when setting up VSC’s.
View full review »KR
reviewer880782
Networking Enterprise Specialist at a educational organization with 5,001-10,000 employees
The reliability could be improved.
View full review »LC
Luiz Canario
Integration and Support Analyst at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Their documentation needs to be improved. Aruba's documentation is poor.
RN
SeniorWi09c2
Senior Wireless Network Support Specialist with 1,001-5,000 employees
Sometimes you are not able to get an engineer on the phone on first call. There have been instances of waiting for a callback.
View full review »It's a little bit over-complicated. They could simplify the interface. Also, the update procedure from their website could be a little better. Finding the firmware the first time is a pain.
View full review »This is an ever growing industry and there are lots of new features that are being requested on a daily basis by different companies, partners and suppliers.
View full review »Aruba Wireless has room to improve the connection from one AP to another.
View full review »GV
Gaurav Vyas
Head Of Information Technology at Jekson Vision Pvt Ltd
When we connect to Wi-Fi devices it could be easier because sometimes, it takes a lot of time to complete.
It is not as easy as some other products to configure, including setting policies.
Otherwise, everything is fine.
View full review »MP
MarcoPiazzalunga
Networking Solution Architect at ALE
I would like to be able to customize Captive Portals.
View full review »I believe it would benefit from more reporting, other than just a dashboard. It needs some type of report builder so you can have PDFs to show upper management what is going on in the wireless network.
View full review »I haven't encountered an area for improvement and am quite satisfied with the product.
View full review »The GUI dashboards should more user-friendly.
The location-based software isn't quite there yet and we haven't been able to use it the way that works best for us.
View full review »The RF needs to be improved.
View full review »It's too pricey, to be honest. There's not really much difference between the wireless vendors and competition is tight. Aruba would have a bigger advantage if it weren't so pricey.
View full review »They may have already improved on this but it would be good to have more than 4GB for the firewall. I think this is the only thing I can think of for improvements.
View full review »IR
IgnacioRodriguez
Specialist Design and Solutions at orben comunicaciones
Analytics and big data.
View full review »SV
Saseendran Vasu
Organization Civil Engineer with 1-10 employees
I would like to see more security features. Also, it should have more than one, maybe five, access points. Wherever we go, we should get the same speed continuously, without disconnecting.
View full review »MAC authentication against an external Radius server while using 802.1X. This feature will help the L2 devices to authenticate via external Radius servers.
As L2 devices cannot do 802.1x. This feature is available in Cisco WLC, named for its MAC Filtering.
View full review »Aruba adds more and more features to them all the time, but having to buy additional licenses for new features can get pretty expensive, especially when a client wants to stay up-to-date.
View full review »More stable cide
View full review »SM
reviewer1429029
Converged Services Project Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Better integration with equipment from other vendors would ease the deployment process in some cases. It is also helpful because certain vendors concentrate more heavily on a certain side of the industry. For example, one may focus on security but neglect availability. Being able to integrate gives a better overall solution.
Security is something that can be improved.
View full review »ET
reviewer1422075
Team Leader Network and Communications at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Better integration between the controller and the ClearPass portal would be a nice change. Currently, they're separated, but if they could be combined and managed in one portal it would be much better.
View full review »The ability for newer devices to easily communicate with older style APs. I wish the APs had the ability to enter in notes about a specific AP. For example, AP Mac address goes to classroom 123.
View full review »An area of this product that could use improvement would be the troubleshooting. At times I had to engage Aruba Support which ran some pretty complicated troubleshooting commands. I would not have been able to do with existing CLI documentation.
View full review »I don't like how the traffic comes out of the controller. Users connect to the wireless APs and all the traffic converges to the controller and then back out again. This is probably not a limitation but a design issue.
View full review »CM
reviewer1775661
CEO at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
They should have more support for implementing Aruba Wireless in Smart Cities and outdoor applications.
The price of this product could be improved.
View full review »Price.
View full review »Additional troubleshooting capabilities for the ClearPass product.
View full review »Access point mounting options.
View full review »I'd like more specific details of each user.
View full review »1. The new version is not stable.
2. Teintroduce the Visuel-RF mapping system in the Aruba controllers.
3. Download the firmware without a support account
4. stabilization of clearpass
5. Prepare documentation that handles concepts and not "how to"
View full review »- They should provide usage guides and solutions to frequent problems.
- A telephone line dedicated to technical support for not-so-skilled users.
My biggest issue is the logging. It is hard to read when troubleshooting issues.
View full review »- Point-to-point deployment products
- More varieties in Outdoor Access Points
Buyer's Guide
Aruba Wireless
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Aruba Wireless. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.