Aruba Wireless Reviews

In this University, Wi-Fi is essential to the daily operations, from teaching, learning by staff and students to research by researchers. In recent two years, it contributes to our smart campus objectives, bridging IoT devices in multiple projects. 

With the powerful feature in ClearPass, AirWave, MM and other subsystems, this centrally managed Wi-Fi solution offers the University members and guests a unified user experience, enabling IT staff to administer all component, particularly in search of a technical issue. 

The ClearPass admin console provides an easy operating interface for checking every user's authentication steps, which is pretty useful to identify the root cause of an authentication issue. Also, the self-service portal allows end-users to manage their registered devices. 

Perhaps Aruba should publish some best practices for deploying its solution in different industries. 

Aruba Wi-Fi solution has been a good partner in my University since 2017.

A very powerful Wi-Fi system.

They provide very efficient support.

Aruba solution is not cheap. 

This solution has been deployed for an enterprise environment with 105 Apps and controllers in HA for a government entity handling the user capacity of 1500 people.

Multiple SSIDs have been broadcasted with independent VLANs and user policy has been implemented.

The controllers are in HA. Both indoor and outdoor APs have been used in the environment.

The solution has been differentiated for Guests, Employees, and an unrestricted group. The APs have been deployed across 10 multistory buildings in high interference zones.

Aruba Wireless has succeeded in facilitating the implementation of a centralized wireless network to the client, covering multiple buildings expanding across the area of 58000 square meters.

There are no blind spots and users enjoy uninterrupted Wi-Fi. This has given the users complete mobility and the Quality of Service with the necessary security imposed.

It has met the customer expectations and is ready to scale for growing business demand. It has offered visibility into the network and enhanced the troubleshooting experience.

It is easy to implement and manage through a web GUI.

The adding of APs simply involves configuring a network port on the appropriate VLAN and plugging in the AP. The controller pushes the config out to the new AP.

The Airwave is the best feature for a single management point for all APs in the environment. 

It offers many reporting features as well as visual RF maps displaying heatmaps of the AP signals and client positioning. 

The addition of the APs on the existing swarm is plug and play to the desired VLAN.

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.

We have been suing Aruba Wireless for two years.

Stability is guaranteed.

This is a very scalable product. 

Technical support is excellent. They are more willing to help and be there for the customer.

We did not switch products. Rather, our choice is based on customer requirements. It's the best-recommended product listed by Gartner on this segment.

The initial setup is absolutely straightforward.

Our in-house team is responsible for deployment.

The access points are more cost-effective over some other providers, both in cost per AP and the option of a controller-less environment. 

It's comparatively priced; it's a bit expensive compared to competitors but worth the investment because of the performance, stability, and ease of deployment.

We had been working with vendors like Cisco and Ruckus.

We provide services for clients, so it's always a different use case. For example, we work with a retailer and we focus on electronic tasks. Another is corporate offices in a bank, one of the biggest banks in Mexico. Another is massive events like the Olympics with different sponsors. There's a big difference in the type of use cases.

In the case of the contacts or the callers, Aruba Wireless offers a good user experience. For example, there are a lot of the contacts in the retail store, we are talking about 100,000 users connected at one time. After evaluation, Aruba Wireless was considered best for large numbers of users like this. 

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.

I have used Aruba Wireless for about five years. 

Aruba Wireless seems to be very stable. I don't remember having any issues with stability. 

Aruba Wireless is scalable. You can add more people. You can use the same configuration for 50 or 2,000, or 5,000 users.

Aruba Wireless technical support is too slow, or it used to be. For example, to test a domain in Mexico, they would spend about three months.

The initial setup is complicated because you have to modify many options, and you have to spend time handling those options, and sometimes you need attendants for these options.

We always evaluate options to see what's best. For example, sometimes, the ARM is more relative, and Aruba is more efficient than others. Cisco has the same functionality, but sometimes the main link will disconnect the users. You don't have that problem with Aruba Wireless. 

For those interesting in using Aruba Wireless, I would recommend taking a simplified approach to the license. They should analyze options relevant to their systems as it can get more complex. At this moment, there are a lot of licensing options.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Aruba Wireless a nine.

We use the product predominately for beacons and peer devices.

It has very flexible features.

I believe more security options are needed.

I have been using the product for seven or eight years.

We have not had any problems with the stability of the product.

It is a scalable solution.

When we have had to use support, everything from the service was helpful.

We have used Cisco products in the past.

The setup is not a problem, it only took five minutes or so.

We used five technicians for the deployment of the product.

I rate Aruba Wireless a nine out of ten.

We have about 30 APs and a lot of sites with centralized management on controller 7030. We use it to control the network in standalone mode and handle the active and standby modes.

All features are useful for me. It lets me perform some specific configurations depending on the site or the client. All WAN features are valuable.

Their documentation needs to be improved. Aruba's documentation is poor.

I have been using Aruba Wireless Controllers for about a year.

Its stability is okay. There is no issue with stability.

Its scalability is okay.

Their support is good. When I need to open a case, I get a fast response. I can contact the technician immediately. I would rate them an eight out of ten.

I also use Cisco solutions. Both solutions are very good and suitable for different kinds of networks. Cisco is very good for certain kinds of networks, and Aruba is good for other kinds. Cisco is simpler to deploy, whereas Aruba is more complicated and complex to deploy.

The initial setup was very complex because we deployed a new controller in a small network. It is useful for large networks, but for small networks, it is very difficult to understand all the models. If you don't use Mobility Master, the configuration and deployment are very complex. It took us six months to deploy it.

We got help from a third-party vendor, not Aruba. They were okay. We didn't have any problem.

You should know about the topology of the Aruba Wireless solution. It is very important because it depends on the size of the network. Otherwise, you might end up buying something that's not adequate for large networks.

I would rate Aruba Wireless an eight out of ten.

We run a number of guest wireless networks with captive portals with layer 3 networks. We run .1x for corporate SSIDs or wireless networks for additional certificate-based and/or WPA2 security.

Aruba has a lot of features that work particularly well. One of the things that Aruba is trying to do in most of its product ranges to make sure that all of their products now have a fully functioning northbound set of APIs. That basically means that you can plug it into any kind of system that you have for some operational pieces. For example, if you want to have Tufin, but more in line with things like change management. We're a ServiceNow shop, so we use that for change management and orchestration.

The ability to use the APIs that are available in the Aruba Wi-Fi controller means that you can get information from the system very easily by using APIs, or you can push changes to it. So, if you want to lock administrators there and restrict the type of functions that people can do, you don't have to give them access to the systems anymore. 

This functionality has been useful for us because we have recently outsourced a lot of our lower operational tasks to an outside vendor. With that, obviously, other people need to access systems, but we don't always want to give them direct access to the system. So, we can provide them with APIs to be able to perform basic tasks without giving them access to our dashboard services.

Aruba is an industry leader. The hardware is on par, and its performance is also on par with anybody else. The Aruba brand really only focuses on wireless, so they're not competing their R&D for switching data center products and cloud security. They're really focused on that and their underlying key pieces. 

They provide a role-based authentication that is native to the controller. A lot of other systems don't do that. They won't provide you the ability to basically have everybody join the network, regardless of whether or not they share the same network space, the SSID, or the wireless LAN. You can segment it down to a specific user role based on any kind of attributes that you like. That's their differentiator. If you need per user, per device, or per port segmentation, you can get that with Aruba. There isn't another vendor who does it.

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.

I have been working with Aruba Wireless for about four years now.

It is pretty good. There are a lot fewer people in the office, obviously, because of COVID. Under normal situations, we were probably about 2,000 users a day. Between 40% to 50% of that would be corporate users with mobile devices, such as iPhones, as well as laptop users accessing corporate resources and the corporate LAN. We also have guest users.

They are really moving towards making it cloud-based and less attractive for you to use on-premises. There are still a number of limitations with the cloud. One of the reasons we don't use cloud controllers is that they're not able to support more than 250 access points per tenant instance. For example, you have two sites. One has 200 APs, and one has 300 APs. You could put one site in the cloud so that you wouldn't need to have on-premises wireless controllers. You could manage it all from the cloud instance, and you would have zero hardware and all that kind of stuff. 

However, you wouldn't be able to deploy the second site in the cloud because you can't put more than 250 APs. So, now you have got to go back to doing it the old-fashioned way, which is to have on-premises controllers or two management suites. You don't want to do that because the way this new code works is that it is hierarchical, meaning that you build your configuration centrally, and then you push it down to your access points or your local controllers. So, if you've got one management session in the cloud and one management session on-premises, you would have to manage them at two places.

I do understand that you can configure that local hardware. So, for the site that has 300 APs and a local controller, you could plug that controller into the cloud, but it is still for two different models. So, the companies that just want to have a very simplified setup or want to make it less complicated, they can just say that we're going to go cloud or just stay on-premises, but now you have to have a combination of both, or you just stay with on-premises. There are still some basic limitations preventing us from doing wireless deployments where controllers are based in the cloud.

I use them a lot. Sometimes, I use them every day. They are pretty good. There is a problem in getting hold of people. That may be just because of COVID, but it is very much dependent on when you call and the type of issue that you have.

If it is a fairly standard issue, if you need assistance with a programming or configuration change, or if you need to know how to do something, you can normally get a very quick resolution. The meantime for resolution is pretty quick. It is within that call, half an hour, or one hour. You can generally speak to somebody. If it is some of the things that I have experienced or a bug, it can be very problematic. It could take days or weeks to get resolutions.

The basic stuff is really good. Anything past that, you probably need to have a dedicated support engineer on your camp if you're big enough, or you need to have resources that really know how to do the legwork beforehand.

I worked for a company that had Cisco for many years. Actually, towards the end of that, I switched them from Cisco to Ruckus. I did a POC and a pilot between Ruckus and Aruba, and Ruckus came out on top because of its simplified approach to wireless networking. I have also used Meraki, which is Cisco's cloud-only based AP solution. 

Cisco is like the other de facto. A lot of shops are all Cisco. Their hardware is probably on par with Aruba in terms of processing and handling capabilities. Features are also probably the same. It is more like a Ford-GM question. If you were brought up in a Ford household, you are probably going to buy a Ford sort of thing. I don't think there is much to them, to be honest.

The differentiator for me is that Cisco has a product, which is its network access control system, called ISE or identity services engine. That's a terrible product. It really is an awful product. It is very cumbersome, and it makes adding network access control to your wireless and wired networks very problematic. Aruba's product is called ClearPass, and it is a very flexible tool and easy tool. It is a much more reliable tool. While it doesn't have all the features that you can use with Cisco, it is a standard network application system, which means it will work with any vendor for any system. So, you can do 90% to 95% of the stuff you want, and it is a much more stable and capable system. This difference and the price are differentiators for me. 

From a purely wireless perspective, I think that Aruba is number one. Cisco is a very close number two, and then Ruckus is actually a distant third. Ruckus doesn't have all of the advanced capabilities, but what it does, it does very well. If you want a very basic entry-level wireless that is cheap for K-12 schools or a lot of environments like that, you can use Ruckus. If you need some of the advanced stuff, then you're going to have to pick one of the other solutions.

I would say it is straightforward. It is just that it is a backward way of doing it. They had a fundamental shift in the way you deploy configurations in version 6 to version 8. So, basically, you would do one way in version 6, and then they completely reversed it in version 8. When you come into the product for the first time, it is easy and fairly straightforward. It is an easy adoption process. If you have got lots of experience with the previous version of code, such as version 6, and then you move to version 8, it is very confusing.

Aruba is probably cheaper than Cisco, and yet you get all the things that you want.

I would recommend Aruba Wireless, but it depends on the size and the scope. If you are a large-scale enterprise, you are going to need to deploy something large. If you are a big university or something, you are going to have to pick one of the big three, which, in this case, is going to be Cisco, Aruba, or Juniper. Juniper's Mist is a recent addition that is hugely popular right now because of a lot of the stuff it does in the cloud. They are all cloud-based controllers, and they integrate machine learning into all of your analytics to give you data. 

I think that Aruba Wireless is a good product overall. They have some code issues with this change as most vendors do when they go through a major change. The product hardware is really good, and they have additional capabilities that Cisco doesn't have, like being able to do per-port tunneling so that you can keep isolation on. They are building features, and you could only make use of these if you extend out and use all the Aruba products like Aruba switches, Aruba ClearPass, etc. 

I've had a couple of conversations with them about the next release, which is actually pending. I don't think it is happening this year. It will happen next year. Version 10 is their next step of code, and it is geared more towards automating a lot of the setup. There are still a lot of manual tasks that you have to do. The automation piece has been something that has really garnered a lot of interest from the wireless community in terms of being able to set networks up. You can just buy access points and just throw them up, and once they're powered on, they communicate with zero-touch provisioning and all that kind of stuff. A lot of the automated processes are coming along, such as the ability to tie in cloud-based analytics to look at your reports, training, or data, like Juniper Mist is doing.

There will also be a change in the user interface. They have now brought in things like COVID tracking. It is not like they are adding features that the market wants. They will add the ability for you to be able to write things that you want to see so that you can basically do your own SDK, if you like, and more easily be able to tie that into what you're doing. I'm not sure whether they'll offer that within the version 10 code.

I would rate Aruba Wireless a seven out of ten. The negatives are the instability with the specific versions of code. These could be specific versions of code, but the newer features, such as WPA, WiFi 6, require some of the newer code. The newer code isn't really very stable yet. The high point would be that it is still an industry leader with on par hardware and performance like anybody else.

We are using this solution to provide office internet for our clients.

The functionality is very high and we can properly meet the clients' requirements.

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.

I have been working with Aruba Wireless for the past four years.

I have not found any bugs or glitches in this product.

We have more than 100 users.

Technical support is alright.

The initial setup is okay. It is straightforward and we have no issues with it.

The price of Aruba Wireless should be cheaper.

For the most part, there is nothing that needs to be added and I can recommend this product.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

I have worked with versions 2.207 and 3.303 and 305. Because I am the service provider for my customers, I've worked with Ruckus, Aruba, Cisco, and UniFi. Most of my customers ask for new wireless solutions. Last week I installed 37 access points. My customers are very satisfied.

Configuring the main controller is very easy; with Aruba, it's just plug-and-play. The roaming features are great too.

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.

I have been using this solution for five years.

I have not experienced any bugs, software, or hardware issues with Aruba.

This solution is both very stable and scalable. I want to mention something about Aruba's compatibility between various model types. If you already have version 207 installed and you want to switch to version 3.3, it's not compatible; you can't add it to your network. You need to create a standalone network for this access point only.

I only spoke with Aruba's technical support one time. With Aruba, you don't need a lot of support. It is very easy to use. 

The initial setup is very easy. You just need to configure the main device. If you have a standalone or virtual appliance, you can just configure it and install the rest without connecting to the main device.

Deployment time varies, but usually, it's very fast. Most of our customers need 10 access points on-site. For me, this only takes roughly 15 minutes to install.

I used to use Ruckus. Ruckus takes a long time to configure. Cisco takes longer too. Aruba is the easiest to install. Just configure the main device, and install the rest. Nothing else is required.

I'd like to mention something else. Last week, I installed roughly 37 access points — Aruba 303 I believe. Our clients complained about the coverage. Their access points should be able to cover 50 meters, but Aruba was only covering 25 to 30 meters, max. I know Aruba, and like anything, there are advantages and disadvantages. I like Aruba for its easy installation, management and because they provide the best and most optimized connection.

The most important thing is the heat map; you need to have a good heat map and make sure it's configured correctly with Aruba. If you don't have a heat map, you may have issues.

Here in Jordan, some providers will go to a company that requires 10 access points and tell them they only need five. In reality, they just want the job and the client. Then, after everything is said and done, the client complains about the five access points not covering the whole area. 

Some preparation is required before you can get started with Aruba. The total amount of power needed for the access points needs to be calculated. I would recommend doing this yourself as some companies just want to sell their products.

Companies in Jordan were quite loyal to Cisco, but in the last five months, I have installed roughly 500 Aruba Switches. Version 1920 is very popular; it's very fast and great for network stability.

Cisco and Aruba offer the same features. My customers don't need advanced features. What's the point in spending an extra $300-400 dollars for features you won't even use?

On a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of eight. If they increased their coverage, I would give them a rating of 15, not simply ten.

The solution has great integration capabilities.

It offers a lot of helpful common features.

The solution is quite stable and very robust.

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.

We've been using the solution for quite some time. It's easily been about five or so years at this point.

The solution is quite stable. It's very robust, in fact. Many enterprises deploy it and they can rely on its stability.

As a solution suitable for enterprises, it can scale quite well. A company should have no trouble expanding it if they need to.

Everyone has their own method of deploying this product. Each company is different. It may be pretty straightforward or more complex depending on an organization's needs.

Their pricing is on-par with Cisco. It's definitely not the cheapest on the market. It's on the higher end in terms of price. For example, you need to purchase extra tools in order to get better monitoring and performance visibility.

We're an Aruba partner. We provide this solution to our customers.

We tend to work with and offer the latest version on the market. The version we have now in our offices is more than five years old at this point. It was the latest version when we installed it.

Would advise anyone considering using Aruba first do a proof of concept. Different environments will have different needs. It's really up to the team and the performance walls that you're looking to test. If your company is pretty simple and small, it may not be necessary to have Aruba. It would be like buying a Ferrari when all you really need is any old car. However, if your organization is looking for a solution that is solid, performance-wise, this may be perfect. It's best to test.  

Also, a company needs to clearly identify their requirements. Do they need the high performance? Are they constrained by costs? All of these questions need to be considered before signing onto a solution. A cost-benefit analysis needs to be done before choosing any product.

Overall, I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. If it offered more free tools and had better day-to-day monitoring, I might rank it higher.

We are a solution provider and Aruba Wireless is one of the network products that we implement for our customers. We offer it to our clients to provide wireless and cloud services.

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.

I have been working with Aruba Wireless for about two years. The company has more than 10 years of experience.

Aruba Wireless is stable and we plan to continue using it in the future.

This is a scalable solution.

The technical support is good, although it sometimes depends on who it is that handles the case. 

We deal with several wireless networking products from Aruba, Ruckus, and Brocade.

Sometimes, the initial setup is complex. For example, if I need to integrate with other vendors then there can be issues and we have to do a lot of work to solve these kinds of problems.

The length of time required for deployment depends on the size and density of the network. There are a lot of parameters that dictate how much time it takes, but the average for us is a three to four-day deployment.

We have a design team and a technical team who take care of the implementation and deployment. Most of the time, they consult with me if there's an issue with the design or they need more details. We provide a consulting service for this.

My advice for anybody who is implementing Aruba Wireless concerns the design stage. I suggest trying to design everything using a single vendor. Do not use a multivendor approach because you will have issues with integrating systems together.

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

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Aruba was our primary wireless solution until very recently.  

In the end, when you bring on a wireless solution, you only need a wireless solution. That is the intrinsic value. We had both Aruba ClearPass and Aruba AirWaves. We had all the management features also available from Aruba. These worked well together as a class of products.   

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.  

We have been using Aruba Wireless for four or five years now.  

I think Aruba is stable because it was working okay. There was no problem with downtime. The issue for us with functionality was because we have much more reflection in our building due to the height of our ceilings.  

We bought the product through a reseller. For support, we needed to go through that reseller instead of Aruba self. It is hard to judge the capabilities of Aruba support directly.  

We had Aruba and we just replaced it with Juniper Mist a few weeks ago (September 2020). The AI-driven management solutions from Juniper Mist suits our business more than the Aruba solution we used before. I think Aruba did the work we needed before, but better management is the reason why we moved over to Juniper Mist.  

Before Aruba, we worked with HP Colubris. We stopped using the HP Colubris solution because HP no longer provided it. That is what happened.  

Aruba is comparable to competing solutions when it comes to price. I am going to say that the support pricing for Juniper Mist is higher than Aruba. I think that is because Juniper is more of a cloud model than Aruba.  

You do also have a cloud solution from Aruba called Aruba Central, but I have not compared prices for that.  

The advice that I would give to someone considering Aruba as a wireless solution would be to look into the Aruba Central cloud solution that they are offering right now. I think we are at a time of brand control that needs to be managed and needs to be supported. I think that working with a cloud-based solution is a better option than on-premises solutions.  

I think what is more important than a particular tool is that you also have the depth of wireless knowledge to really be able to competently manage such environments.  

On a scale from one to ten (where one is the worst and ten is the best), I would rate this product as a seven-out-of-ten. To improve on that score they would have to make Aruba more available to cloud management. They just recently started with Aruba Central and they are not as far along as Juniper Mist is with having a mature cloud solution.  

The problem for Aruba is that Juniper Mist is a new product without a longer legacy. They can start from ground zero. Aruba needs to support the older controller-based models and that may slow them down when it comes to development.  

I am a system integrator and Aruba Wireless is one of the network infrastructure products that I have experience with. We have customers using versions all the way from AP-100 to AP-535.

We have these devices in many industries, with a focus on educational institutions.

The most valuable feature is the client match. This feature continually monitors the client and provides automatic load-balancing, as well as other advanced features.

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.

I have been using Aruba Wireless since 2007.

The stability has been great.

We haven't had any trouble with scalability. 75% of our clients are using Aruba Wireless.

I have a lot of experience with wireless networking products from Aruba and Juniper. I also have some experience with Ruckus.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward and the deployment is quick. With our experience, it is pretty easy to do.

We integrate Aruba Wireless and other devices for our customers.

My advice for anybody who is considering Aruba Wireless is to try it. If you try it then you're going to like it.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

We use Aruba Wireless strictly for corporate use. Within our company, there are slightly over 100 people using this solution.

I really like the user interface.

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.

I have been using Aruba Wireless for three years.

We have been experiencing some scalability and stability issues on our Apple devices.

There are a lot of competing solutions on the market. I think Aruba should lower their prices.

Aruba Wireless is a very good solution. Should you choose this solution, be sure to start from the beginning and learn as much as you can. This way, you will have a better understanding of its uses — how to navigate and use it properly.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of eight. I can't give it a higher rating because of the issues we have experience with our Macintosh devices.

Using this solution district-wide in all of our secondary buildings. We have over 1000 IAP-225 APs deployed, along with ClearPass.

We currently use the MAC address caching through ClearPass to allow guests to connect from a prior authenticated attempt. We also use the Visual RF component in AirWave for tracking devices.

There aren't a lot of features that Aruba has that their competitors don't. With that being said, some of the implementations or features do work as advertised: easy deployment of APs, MAC caching, and aesthetically pleasing GUI for configuration.

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.

Four to six years.

We have encountered stability issues. The APs would sometimes randomly reboot; no idea what was causing it and support was less than helpful. The clients connecting would have a magnitude of issues until we turned off or disabled some features (some of which we really wanted to use).

We have encountered scalability issues. We were initially hooked by the simplistic nature of the "controller-less" idea. We have come to find out that we need to revamp our networking from 1-2 clusters per building (depending on size), to one cluster per network closet. This is not in the official documentation, so it feels like bait and switch. We also need to redo our VLANS, as now we've been told to go to one big L2 network for data, again not located in the documentation.

Customer Service:

Customer service is very poor. We've had many problems with Aruba TAC, such as (and not limited to): not being able to understand them, them not being complete in their requests, and outright incompetence. We've had to bring in Aruba reps and other third parties locally to assist in getting issues resolved.

Technical Support:

Technical support is very poor; see Customer Service section.

We previously used Extreme Networks. We switched from 802.11n to 802.11ac, and Aruba was rewarded the bid mainly due to cost.

The setup for the APs is straightforward; however, you need to be extremely knowledgeable to set up ClearPass.

Implementation was done by a little bit of both an in-house team and a vendor team. The vendor helped us get the ClearPass set up; otherwise, we set up the AirWave appliance (monitoring solution - similar to a controller).

Not sure about ROI, but with the money spent attempting to fix the problems caused by this solution, it's definitely not as good as we would like.

In regards to perhaps a 'hidden' ROI, one of our building's WiFi was extremely unreliable that the staff and users of the network simply gave up using it. We are pursuing a different vendor at this location.

Get multiple bids/quotes, and talk to the representatives about the limitations of the product; pretty standard.

Before choosing this product, we also evaluated Cisco, Extreme Networks (Enterasys at the time), and Xirrus. This process was completed before I came aboard.

Honestly, and simply put, I would look elsewhere. I feel this company falls short on its promises, has been a pain to work with, and the product I feel is inferior to its many competitors.

Don't be fooled by the marketing hype; it's a fair product but it's not everything they promise.

We are using different versions depending on the customer. We have about 400 or 500 customers. Some of them are Aruba, some of them have other technologies. Different versions are deployed all over. We use it as a wireless device manager where appropriate.  

There are only so many features in Wireless controllers. The fact that Aruba has a virtual controller onboard the internet access points makes it cheaper than to buy Aruba Central licenses or Meraki Cloud licenses. That probably makes it most valuable.  

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.  

We have been using it for a year-and-a-half.  

The stability is very good.  

It is very scalable.  

The technical support is good. My impression is that pre-sale support is very good with Aruba. Their global presence is important. I do not have to deal with any other technical support because they have a follow-the-sun type of system that uses different support teams. When I ask for support, we get it and we get it during regular business hours. I never phoned anywhere else but the North American team. They are good and responsive.  

Installation is pretty straight forward.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate Aruba wireless eight-out-of-ten. Nobody would get a ten.  

The primary use we have for the product is for users' corporate mobile access.  

The most valuable feature is the fact that it can work with many devices. It supports everything that we need it to. Whatever features are required from an enterprise standard, it supports all of them. The main advantage is broad device support.  

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.  

We have been using Aruba Wireless for between seven and eight years now.  

Aruba Wireless has been a stable solution for us. Once it was set up correctly it was fine. We had some initial hiccups. We still have issues with upgrades sometimes. Except for mostly minor issues, it has been a good solution.  

Aruba Wireless is easily scaled between a lot of devices and a lot of endpoints. When we decided to use it as our solution we had planned to use it exactly for its ability to scale. We went through a massive scaling and did not have issues with devices and endpoints.  

Right now we have 30,000 users and around 45,000 devices between those users. It does not seem that there are many limitations for scaling the product's use.  

Technical support is good. The only issue we have had with them is that we often have to be referred to their engineering response team. That situation actually happens most of the time. On the other hand, we do not need to use support very often.  

So, yes, we get support for the product and we eventually get the solution we need, but most of the time it gets referred to their engineering team to get the complete solution. Overall, the support is pretty good.  

The initial setup was a little bit complex because our environment is complex. Because of that, I would say the initial setup was complex. It may not be as complex for other companies.  

It took almost a year for deployment. But there are two sides to the setup. One is the product is good and it can be configured to do what we need. But our environment was complex because it involves some legacy devices and some really advanced new devices and technologies as well. It is good that the product is able to support both of those needs.  

We have a couple of IT specialists, one architect, and a development operations engineer for deploying the updates and maintaining the solution. In total, it is around four or five people who maintain the product. Not everyone needs to be dedicated to it full-time.  

The advice that I would give to others who are looking into implementing Aruba starts with that it is a good product. It has some really good features. But the other reality is that you might need to be prepared to face some hiccups with any upgrades and with the setup.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate the Aruba Wireless solution as a seven-point-five out of ten. Because of the upgrade issues and the persistence of those, I would rate it a seven.  

Aruba is moving to the cloud platform model. We are presenting solutions using Aruba Central to clients for the management of their infrastructure. The majority of the implementations we have are still currently are on-premises. Customers now are slowly implementing cloud solutions for Aruba. We have 80% on-premises and 20% migrating to the cloud version of the solution.  

With Aruba Central, we can manage controllers, EAPs (Employee Assistance Programs), switches, et cetera. Everything in one place. So we can manage anything we need to using Aruba. Aruba on-premises wireless is something we use for education. It is mostly implemented in schools and in universities. We use it to establish APs (Access Points)  around the campus to make sure there is coverage campus-wide. Then they have mobility controllers on-premises that control all the infrastructure.  

Another use case is for companies that have branches from the data centers. At the prime location, they have APs powered within the company and Mobility Masters in the data center. The Mobility Masters cluster-connect to the mobility controllers and then control all the APs and all the wireless infrastructure. Then we have links connecting the branches. On the branches, we have small mobility controllers that feed all the information to and from Mobility Masters. That is, the Mobility Masters connect to mobility controllers and then the mobility controllers connect to the APs.  

Portugal is a small country and our smallest companies always have EAPs. EAPs are a version of a solution from Aruba that the NAC (Network Access Control) AP has inside a virtual controller. These NAC APs control all the other APs.  

It gives us a reliable, mature solution that we can roll out to our clients.  

Wireless technologies, relatively speaking, are a new solution. The technical guys from Aruba are very good. The support is very good. It is very easy to implement the product. Another solution that Aruba has is the NAC and the ClearPass. ClearPass is a good solution for additional security of access points and it is integrated so it is very easy to deploy. It is very interactive and not so analytic as other solutions so, in my opinion. Aruba is a very good company — very good technology-wise — and they make very useful products.  

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.  

I am with the sales service for Arrow, Portugal which is a solutions company. My role is to help the partners in designing solutions. I am working with Aruba products as a partner and reseller for three years now.  

Aruba Wireless is stable. Very stable. Because Aruba has already been around for more than 10 years or so, it is a mature product and a very stable product. If there is a problem, the support team is very good with working through the problems. When a client wants a new version, we have confidence in Aruba that everything has already tested and we have access to stable versions of the release. We have access to all the information for the versions whether they are the old ones or the new ones.  

My impressions about the scalability and the product is that it is highly scalable. You can start with a low quantity of access points — as low as one installation — and then scale it to thousands if you have to. You can do the upgrades in the mobility controllers to allow the growth of the infrastructure. Because of the way it is created, it is highly scalable and highly reliable.  

Of course, we have plans to scale our own usage of the product. Because we work as a value-added distributor of Aruba in Portugal, we have to meet the needs of our client base which is growing all the time. We have plans to increase the implementation of the product in our market to meet those demands. It is partly because we are working with a superior product like Aruba that we are growing in our market.  

The Aruba technical support team is very good. They are very skilled people and can help you with the support you need when it comes to their products. They are very good at turning around a response within 24 hours. It is fast and helpful.  

In my experience the initial setup of the Aruba EAP solution is straightforward. We can call on all the APs and then you have everything connected. Now they also have a Soho gateway solution that it is integrated. It is very easy to turn on this solution. I can install the Soho add-on instantly for the Aruba solution. I think that they are doing very well to keep the customer in mind when building and testing their products for ease of setup and use.  

Our deployment did not take a very long time. Even initially. For clients, the deployment takes more or less time than ours. It depends on the size of the implementation. If you have to do only 10 APs in a small deployment, it can take only two or three days to complete the whole thing. If you have a bigger implementation, it depends on the size of the project. It could take weeks for the deployment if it is a very large one.  

We did not have to use an integrator, reseller, or consultant for our deployment. We could do that ourselves. But we do work with all the integrators in Portugal because we help them to sell the solution so that they can implement it for the clients. We help them sell the product and then they do the deployments.  

The advice I would give to a customer that wants to implement this product is that they must have good support from a product partner. Try to find a certified partner to do the job of planning and implementation. This should be a certified HP partner to do the job as Aruba is an HP company. Choose the right partner, the right technical guy, and the right company to implement the solution for you. It will make sure you have the solution deployed in the way you need it to be done to fit your needs and expectations. That is the most important thing that I can think of.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate this product as a nine-and-a-half.  

The primary use case of this solution is to manage all of our wireless devices.

I like the way it groups and manages access points.

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.

I have been working with Aruba Wireless for three years.

I have almost 1,300 access points and on an average day, I have less than 1% down. I am usually sitting at 100%. This solution is stable.

This solution is very scalable.

The technical support is very good and I haven't had any issues with them. They were pretty responsive.

They had their wireless in place for eight years and I have been here for three. I wasn't a part of the initial decision-making process.

The initial setup was straightforward.

It only takes a few minutes to deploy. I would say that it is about as long as it takes to reboot the access point.

The pricing is reasonable. If you compare it to other solutions then it's reasonably priced.

I think that Aruba Wireless is a great option. I hardly ever have problems with access points and the failover mechanism works well. 

Overall, It's a good solid system.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We have used Aruba Wireless, with an Alcatel-Lucent logo, as the wireless connection for our office and guest users for nine to ten years.

We just use Aruba Wireless to provide our wireless connections.

The most valuable feature of Aruba Wireless is application monitoring. I can choose which application can connect. You can select the menus. It's very important that it's easy.

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.

Aruba Wireless is stable. Now we don't have any issues. In the early versions, there were problems, but now all is okay. They've advanced a long time ago.

With Aruba Wireless you can scale to 10,000 IPs. It's very scalable. In our office, we use around 100. We have customers around the world. 

We use Aruba Wireless with thousands of internal users in our office. We resell the product around the globe, so we have thousands of people connected. No extra staff is required to maintain the installation.

We use web resources to fix problems or for the recovery of data. We start around the Aruba network site. We found out the solution to recovering data there. 

We don't escalate issues to technical support. We have a lot of support here with our team.

The initial set up of Aruba Wireless is in the middle, i.e. not so easy and not so complex. You need to learn to understand the process through the provided documentation.

We installed Aruba Wireless by our internal team, as we resell their products.

We saw an ROI. We are looking for eventually replacing Alcatel-Lucent because it's a senior to Huawei and Aruba. 

With Huawei, you are talking about an enterprise solution. With Aruba, you are talking about a standard solution. Hopefully, we will take the best of each of the previous vendors.

We do not have a leased license with Aruba Wireless. We bought ours earlier. We don't use the cloud solution of Aruba. We bought the license for life. We don't rent the license or pay a monthly fee.

We are looking at Stellar solutions currently as an alternative: OmniAccess Stellar solutions. The new product line from Alcatel is what we are using for it.

Aruba Wireless is very expensive. They changed a lot of models in the last two years. The cost has increased quite a lot in my local area. 

Other than costs, it depends on whether you have a discount on the license. Aruba Wireless changed all of the portal payments a couple of years ago. This created some issues. 

On a scale of one to 10, I would rate the product with an eight.

Implementing wireless networks.

It seems a little bit more difficult to implement than Meraki.

Clear pass, it helps a lot with admin.

Analytics and big data.

• A solution to problems for end users with friendly and easy to use work environments.
• It helps the user to have a better vision of what is happening in their network.
  

We have begun implementing its infrastructure, and it has helped us have better control of our wireless network.

• Aruba Central
• The easy use of APs
• It has helped us have better control over what is happening in our network. 
• User management has helped us control their access and bandwidth on our network traffic.

• They should provide usage guides and solutions to frequent problems.
• A telephone line dedicated to technical support for not-so-skilled users.
  

I use Aruba Wireless to manage and monitor mobile users.

It has helped in making deployments easier despite the configuration's complexity.

I have found the Access Point (AP) group profile feature extremely useful. It makes deployments look easy.

• They should simplify the configuration flow. 
• Additional detailed reporting for client traffic would be a great addition.

The primary use is for distributing internet bandwidth. The performance is good.

The benefit is the constant delivery of internet bandwidth. Everybody is getting internet access properly. When 40 - 50 people are sitting in a small area it is capable of delivering internet to them constantly.

It delivers constantly, there is no break in the internet using these devices. It also automatically gets connected when the internet comes back. Failure is very low.

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.

It's completely stable.

Scalability is good. Suppose there are 20 people in a room and suddenly 10 more people come into the room. It automatically scales up and provides the internet.

A situation where we have had to contact technical support has never happened in the last year. It has been really constant in the distribution of the bandwidth.

I wanted experience using more products. We were already using another product but I thought, "Okay, let's try Aruba this time and see what the feedback is like." I thought Aruba would give me better performance, after looking at the performance of the existing devices.

When selecting a vendor, the most important factor is that support has to be there. I would look for constant support from any vendor. It can't be that the product is sold and after that there is no support. There has to be constant and quick support from the vendor.

The setup is straightforward, it's not complex. Things are quite easy with Aruba.

We were looking at different products for our new premises. Aruba was known to me so I compared Aruba with Ruckus.

I would definitely recommend Aruba devices.

I rate Aruba Wireless at nine out of 10 because of the performance and stability of the product. It's not a 10 because it needs enhanced security and a more granular level of reporting. If these kinds of things were provided it could be a 10.

For campus wireless coverage, and it is performing very well.

The performance and the application monitor. You can select the applications you want to use and block your network. Most importantly, it has a lot of bandwidth and good connections.

I would like to be able to customize Captive Portals.

Stability is good.

The scalability is very good. You can use it from SME through to enterprise companies. It provides full coverage.

We provide technical support ourselves.

I have been involved in setups for our customers. It's not too complex. Of course, you need to know the solution very well.

I would recommend it for the performance and support.

For me, the most important criteria when selecting a vendor are

• performance
• reliability
• support.

I rate Aruba at eight out of 10 because every software has problems at times. It also doesn't fit all our customers' requests.

I have a small office with about five APs. It has a good central management system to help manage my wireless devices, just to ensure that everything is working correctly.

It makes things easier because it's SD-WAN. With the central management system, I'm able to access each device. I can configure one device and then it provisions all the other devices with the same configuration, rather than my having to configure them one by one.

The central management system. It's called Aruba Central, which allows you to manage the APs, the switch, and the controllers, etc.

The management system would be better if it were more polished, if it had a better interface like, for example, Meraki.

Scalability is pretty good. I believe they recommend having up to 50 APs per cluster, but it can scale even more than that. I don't really need that in particular, although it's an enterprise-standard product. The throughput is pretty good.

I haven't used technical support as of yet.

I used to use Meraki but with Meraki, if you stop paying for the licenses, you basically don't own the device. Once you stop paying for the licensing, the device is pretty much dead.

The initial setup was pretty much straightforward to be honest. You only configure one AP and when you plug the other ones into the network, it recognizes that that AP is the master and gets the configuration off that.

I did look at Ubiquiti because the price point was cheap. But after looking further into it, the main reason I chose Aruba was because they have a lifetime warranty on their APs.

My advice would depend on the needs. It depends on what size of business you have and what you are looking to accomplish. In general, I'd recommend Aruba Wireless. 

The only other thing I would let you know is that, if you want a centralized management system that is able to manage all your networking devices such as the wireless, the switch, the routers, and the firewall, then Aruba may not be the one, because Aruba doesn't do firewalls. For example, with Meraki, you can have a full Meraki network with the switches, routers, firewall, APs, all managed on one central network. With Aruba, if you have a firewall, you'd have to use a separate management system to manage that.

The most important criteria when selecting a vendor would be

• support
• durability of the device
• brand reputation
• ease of use.

I would rate Aruba Wireless at about eight out of 10. I haven't had any issues with it to date, and it's a pretty robust product. The reason I won't give it higher than that is because of the GUI. They need to make it more polished like Meraki's. But other than that, I've been pretty happy with it and I like all the additional features there.

Wi-Fi. The performance is okay.

Scalability.

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.

I am satisfied with the stability.

I am satisfied with the scalability.

Their services are okay, satisfactory.

It is straightforward.

It's a good product, you can go ahead with it.

When selecting a vendor, the most important criteria are a stable product, the cost, and security features.

I rate Aruba Wireless at nine out of 10 because it is reliable, and all the features are okay.

We're primarily using it for wireless users. It's actually to monitor use; we're using stand-alone wireless controllers in all our sites.

Before we used Aruba Wireless we had individual access points connected to our switches. We didn't actually have a centralized switch that could control all of our access points. Now, bringing the Aruba Wireless Controller into production, it's really giving us good visibility. All our access points are connected to one controller. Through that controller, we can actually handle each access point; we can disconnect or connect that access point, and then we can tell, or see, or allow how many users are, or should be, connected through that access point. These are the developments, or the functionalities, that wireless controllers provide for us.

The most important feature is all about the two wavelengths, the 2.4GHz and the 5GHz, and the access points which are connected to this wireless controller.

The perfect thing is that if we really want to know where a specific user is connected, it gives us the ability to see that and how that user is actually receiving. We can know the speed and their IP, their MAC address and, most of the time, how much bandwidth they're using per day. The wireless controller actually gives that functionality as well.

The other good thing is the dashboard. It tells us who is using most of the bandwidth, and how many APs are not in good range, or that do not actually have good security. It shows us which users are trying to hack or how many users are trying to use BitTorrent. So it gives us very good visibility into the user, so we know who we have or who we are providing internet or bandwidth for.

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.

Every month Aruba has new firmware. I don't know if it's good or bad but it's not good in terms of production. We can't upgrade our firmware every month, especially an enterprise company, because if we upgrade our firmware based on the latest firmware that Aruba has, that firmware is not stable. They're not 100 percent sure about it.

My suggestion is, take your time, or invest in your knowledge. Bring on more engineers. Don't produce or broadcast firmware every month. Just have two or three firmware updates each year, and make them stable. Perfect. The way that Cisco does.

The amount of work that the controllers are handling is perfect. It's very good.

Tech support is pretty easy to work with, pretty fast. But when it comes to sending your logs to the Aruba guys, then it takes time. I had some crash logs the other day. I sent them and it took about three weeks for them to analyze the logs and then, in the end, they told me they really didn't know what was going on.

So the help desk, the first level of support is very good. But when it's going to the engineers to analyze logs, then it takes time.

The setup was a little bit complicated. It really depends on the person. If you really don't know and it's your first time that you are touching an Aruba device, then it takes a lot of time. You're not going to get it, if you have never actually touched an Aruba Wireless Controller. You have to have an experienced engineer with you to show you what to do: how to add an AP, how to proceed with all the other configurations. Once you have had your hands on it a couple of times, then it becomes easier.

It's not expensive. That is the reason we switched to Aruba.

Take the training at first and then implement it. Be sure to have full knowledge of your network, know how your network has been set up. And have a senior engineer or have one of the Aruba engineers so they can help you with the project that you have. Ask them how to actually implement Aruba into your network and they can advise you.

I give this solution a 10 out of 10. It's a new product, Aruba is somewhat new to the market but I think they are doing an excellent job. For a newbie type of product, it's not very easy to compete with the market, especially with the Cisco controller manager. But I think Aruba is on top, nowadays, in the market.

• Branch and campus access
• Guest and employee access
• Device onboarding and device access
• Guests are divided into groups. 

• Providing WiFi access to employees and guests.
• Traffic segregation
• WiFi roaming
• Digital branch 

• Superior WiFi access and RF management
• WiFi security via WiFi Firewall 
• Access control
• Integrations with other systems

• 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.

We use Aruba wireless APs to provide wireless services for a private high school campus which is located on a 60-acre campus in Rockford, IL, with an enrollment of nearly 900 students.

Increased productivity with mobile devices has improved by expanding wireless coverage throughout the building. While our building has been covered by the Aruba APs throughout the years, we are now replacing older APs to increase bandwidth to support an increase in the number of users with dedicated devices. Nowadays, the end-user devices require faster bandwidth from APs, and the newest APs obviously support faster standards and improved bandwidth connectivity.

We appreciate that the Instant models do not require a dedicated "controller" to manage the APs. This cost saving allowed us to purchase more APs in our initial order. We started out small and slowly added more APs as each annual budget allowed. We still have the possibility of adding a dedicated controller which affords us more options, but at this time we haven't needed it.

The web interface to manage the APs is intuitive and makes managing the system easy. 

Firmware updates are quick and do not require much downtime.

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.

Stability of wireless services provided by the Aruba APs hasn't been an issue. If there have been any issues, they've been minor and have been resolved by firmware updates.

No issues with scalability. Scalability has been one of the easiest aspects of the Aruba Instant product line. As long as the models are compatible, you can simply connect it to your network and it will learn the settings from the other APs on the network and join the AP network. This is one of the best features of the Aruba Wireless Instant product line, besides the fact that you do not need a dedicated "controller."

The first level of technical support is frustrating, and I stated that technical support was the one area where Aruba Wireless needs improvement. Higher levels of support are better. Considering that you have to pay yearly for support, I expect a higher level of support. On a scale of one to 10, I'd give their first level of support a four. They have to improve.

We did for a very brief time, it was a consumer "off-the-shelf" product to get us by in strategic locations in our building. It was not intended to be a long-term deployment.

Initial setup was straightforward. We followed the very basic instructions (connect to the new WiFi network, then go to a website, make some simple changes, save, reboot, done); updated the firmware, and we were on our way.

Pricing is competitive. Licensing is needed to maintain access to the latest firmware, which wasn't made clear originally when we started with Arbua (or things changed, I'm not sure which). I would just say, make sure you budget for it. In addition to the licensing, you do get "support," for what its worth.

No, we received guidance from others in our community and stuck with Aruba.

We currently utilize the Aruba Instant 205 and older Instant 105 models. I would give both models a rating of an eight out of 10. We will be upgrading this summer to move our Instant 105 models out of circulation and will be implementing three new Aruba product lines.

Make sure you get the maintenance licensing, don't skimp on the models. If you can buy a more powerful unit, get the more powerful unit, it will be supported longer and offer a longer ROI.

Our primary product is the Aruba Instant IAP-205-US Wireless Network AP, JW213A. We have 16 locations. Currently, 12 locations have Aruba wireless APs.  Within the next 4-6 weeks, all locations will have Aruba wireless APs. All locations except our main location use Aruba Central. Cloud Central gives us one management console where we can configure the same wireless networks for all locations.

Many of the devices (laptops, tablets, phones, inventory devices) throughout our organization require wireless capability. Our Aruba configuration gives us the flexibility to be wireless, keeping the same three wireless networks at all locations.

With our Aruba configuration, we have a robust, rock-solid, enterprise wireless environment, that is literally maintenance free.

Overall, the wireless networks that we have configured are the most valuable.

We have three wireless networks: One for employee use, one for guest use, and one for our warehouse use, which uses MAC authentication. These wireless networks just simply work, they do not fail.

The IAP-205 devices are very strong with great range. Very durable equipment; it always works.

The Aruba Central cloud portal needs a lot of work. It is complicated to navigate.

We have used this product for over six years. We have transitioned from a physical controller (model 620) for wireless, to the "instant" (virtual) controller, eliminating the physical controller.

Overall, I would rate our experience with Aruba Wireless products an eight out of 10.

The product is very durable, does not go down or fail. It rates a 10. The Aruba Central cloud portal needs work. Compared to the Cisco Meraki dashboard portal, the Meraki dashboard portal is a nine out of 10, while the Aruba Central cloud portal is a five at best.

Aruba Wireless' network is the primary connection method used for connectivity to the university network. We use a master/local setup of controllers. On each of the three campuses we have two local controllers supporting the wireless network.

Wireless affords people the ability to stay connected. Mobility allows people the freedom to move about and not rely on being tied to an Ethernet cable only.

Cost reduction in wiring would be one valuable feature. Another would be the freedom of not being tethered to a cable. Mobility is a major plus. It takes a little time to learn and understand the tree and leaf hierarchy but is easy to manage once understood.

Sometimes you are not able to get an engineer on the phone on first call. There have been instances of waiting for a callback.

I would rate this product at nine out of 10. Aruba provides great service when a call is placed for assistance. One drawback for me is the language barrier. Sometimes it is a little difficult to understand the technician on the phone.

It is our primary wireless solution. We use a HA paired controller in our main DC. We use the 7200 model. We provide a corporate and guest SSID.

Its manageability of APs is the most valuable feature: ease of adding APs and the ability to configure the APs on the fly. 

Also, their support engineers are great to work with.

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.

We had a small Cisco wireless environment originally and to upgrade or expand that environment it would have been a very expensive purchase. Also, instead of one controller that does everything we needed it to do, it would have taken two to three other devices with Cisco to make it work.

Enterprise wireless for employees includes multiple wireless controllers, ClearPass Policy Manager, and wireless access points.

ClearPass is user friendly for managing the entire solution.

ClearPass is a unique product that contains multiple solutions like BYOD, Guest, NAC, AAA, UEBA, etc. There is also quick support from Aruba TAC.

Access point mounting options.

None. The product is very stable.

None. Never seen a scalability issue.

Excellent.

None. Aruba Wireless was the first and has remained til today.

You need training on configuration of Aruba products since it deals with a vast range of technology apart from wireless.

A recent change is that ClearPass licensing is superb. It counts user-based instead of device-based, for BYOD on-boarding.

Cisco.

Excellent support and stable product.

The primary use of this system was to provide the best possible WiFi experience for students, faculty, staff, and guests of our campus. We had 88 APs throughout 14 buildings on campus. During the academic year, we could have hundreds of users connected to the APs at any given time. 

Compared to what we previously used to have, this product has enabled us to have more devices connected to our WiFi network. 

The feature that I love the most is being able to broadcast different SSIDs with different protocol requirements. 

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. 

The system was very good, but we needed to upgrade in order to adapt for our needs, and doing so with Aruba would have been more expensive. 

No issues.

We used a network vendor to work with us whenever we had an issue, so they took care of everything for us. 

With our previous system, we had to delete users who had not connected to our WiFi for a period of time. With this system, we did not have to worry about that. 

We used Cisco and switched because of the price. In order for us to get what we needed from them, it would have been too costly. 

Initial setup was very straightforward. We set up the switches and APs, then took it from there. 

Besides paying for the APs, you need to pay a license each year for their use. Therefore, watch out for that and do the best you can to keep costs down.

I can't remember, but we probably did.

It is a great product if it has what you are looking for. 

We provide Aruba Wireless in over 30 schools in Southeastern Wisconsin.

It has improved overall IT efficiency across the board. This has resulted in fewer wireless issues encountered and a more stable environment.

ClientMatch and AirWave: These have increased management purposes, reporting, etc.

Some additional reporting features about the clients would be nice when not combined with the AirWave management package.

I administered Aruba Wireless systems at two organizations. The first was a private college with around 12,000 endpoints campus wide, which included over 500 Aruba access points of various models and generations configured through the Aruba 7220 Mobility Controller. The second was a private high school with around 5000 endpoints and 130 Aruba access points, models 125 and 134, and configured through an Aruba 3600 Mobility Controller.

I have been maintaining Aruba Wireless systems at these two different organization for around 4 years in total.

A reliable wireless connection is imperative in a modern school setting. Our organization is forced to resort to inefficient methods without wireless internet. Aruba provides an easy to manage solution for my team.

The most valuable features have been the following:

• Reliability: Stable platform from controller to AP.
• Responsive support: When support is needed, the Aruba engineers are normally quick to respond to problems.
• Ease of Deployment: APs are very easy to configure to the network once they contact the controller.

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.

Aruba is an excellent option for campus wireless. It can be more labor intensive initially than other options, such as Cisco Meraki, however it provides a reliable wireless platform that can be easily maintained by a small network team.

I sold both the Aruba hardware and software, primarily the IAP 100, 200 and 300 series, along with AirWave as well as ClearPass to SMB clients primarily with less than 500 employees. At the time, I worked for PGH Networks, a local MSP and Aruba certified partner.

I used this solution for four years from 2013 to 2017.

Aruba provided a great product offer for clients of all sizes and scopes. Everyone needs WiFi. Aruba allowed for the detailed control and management of an entire WiFi network from a single screen backed by a support team with local SEs who work with business partners to ensure the product's success.

• Instant access points and ClearPass
• IAPs could be deployed without a controller, solving sticky clients by peeling away users crowding one AP and can have settings pushed from a master AP.
• ClearPass and AirWave gave highly accurate detailed reports of who used which applications when and the ability to throttle users if they were bogging down the network with superfluous activity.

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.

Provide WiFi access for an elementary school pre-kindergarten to eighth grade. Serving about 350 students with mobility Internet connection. The building infrastructure is a solid, old school, preventing your regular AP from being able to penetrate through walls.

Teachers and students have access to technology within the classroom which is used daily side-by-side complementing their education.

Most valuable feature of the solution is the ability for a student or teacher to be able to roam freely from classroom to classroom, no matter the floor, without dropping a signal.

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.

We had Aruba controllers and APs installed in over 1,000 retail stores and in several large distribution centers.

The product improved overall scalability and simplicity in configuring and replacing. This product replaced old Symbol wireless AP’s that required individual configuration and management. The use of an Aruba Controller to configure multiple APs was game-changing. We went with Aruba over Cisco at the time, simply for cost.

The most valuable feature in this product would be the stability. You build it, install it, and it’s good to go, with no further tweaks needed unless adding or replacing APs.

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.

I would rate it at eight out of 10. It proved to be stable with minimal failures that I saw in the three- to five-year time frame I worked with them.

We have Aruba IAP-225 APs in both a school and a health center environment. We initially had 15 of them installed at the school about three years ago and kept expanding to 45 APs at this site.

Our school was a challenge as each room has cider block walls, so we deployed a single AP in the ceiling above the wall of two classrooms. We primarily have laptops and iPads that connect in various classrooms and for training.

We had such great success that we have deployed 40 APs in a five level building to support a new Health Center that opened in January.

We have just started to use the captive portal option at our health center to direct clients to our patient portal while restricting bandwidth so they do not get carried away in the waiting room.

The full mounting kit has worked well above the ceiling.

The best part of the configuration is the virtual controller that we use to manage the environment. It provides redundancy of any AP acting as the controller should it go down. There are other controller purchase options for higher numbers of APs to support, but having this option has kept costs down and the devices have a lifetime warranty. The virtual controller has options for updating and remotely restarting any AP from one controller panel, and monitoring and configuration has been fairly simple from one console.

The ceiling grid mount clips have room for improvement. 

Support through third party vendors or direct from HPE has been easy to manage. They are very responsive.

We purchased Aruba Wireless for our new office that we were opening in Austin, TX. I needed a solution which was simple to administer, easy to implement, cost effective, and tied into our existing Active Directory environment.

As we have acquired a few companies, having the ability to have multiple RADIUS connections has helped us.

• Having it work with our Active Directory domain. 
• Having a RADIUS authentication was a bonus.

My biggest issue is the logging. It is hard to read when troubleshooting issues.

I would buy it again.

Doctors offices, car dealerships, and small business. It is used to provide internal, guest access.

We originally were using SonicPoint and had tons of connectivity issues. We switched to Aruba to fix all the issues with all my clients.

I like the IAP line and being able to have a true mesh without the need of a controller. The features included in them are also very nice with a built-in website for ToS for guest access.

The price point is pretty high compared to Ubiquiti and other equipment.

None, which is why this product turned into my go to solution.

The largest implementation that I was able to do was about 15 APs, with no issues.

I have never had to use technical support. The product is very simple to use.

I used SonicPoint. The connection stability was very poor. Though, the firewalls worked well.

The initial setup is straightforward. Configure one IAP and all the rest self-configure to that one.

Price is fairly expensive, however it is worth it. If the “master” fails, another AP can take over the role.

We evaluated Ubiquiti, Hive, Netgear, Cisco, and Meraki.

Grab a couple and test them out. The features that these things have available and the ease of setup are fantastic.

We are using Aruba Instant in four remote branch offices. We chose this solution at the time because of its controllerless feature and easy setup.

It provided an easy WiFi solution for our branch offices to deploy. We could usually have them up and running from out-of-the-box in about 10 minutes.

The controllerless feature. It will randomly pick one of the APs to be the designated master. If that access point fails, the role is moved to another AP. This saves a lot on management and infrastructure costs.

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.

Occasionally, it needed to be rebooted. I used to have issues with DHCP. It is extremely buggy and difficult to upgrade with different firmware versions/models.

I do not know what the maximum number of APs in a cluster can be (for the Instant series), but I never seemed to hit a limit. At one site, we had 12 clustered together.

It seemed to be good when we needed it. This was before HPE purchased them. I have not had a need to contact support since then.

The other way around, we have switched away from Aruba to Ruckus. Aruba’s poor performance and random upgrade issues caused too much time consuming maintenance and troubleshooting. Ruckus Unleashed has been flawless; performance almost doubled, and it is far easier to configure.

The initial setup was very simple. There were some settings which were confusing and unlabeled when trying to use the online help with the newer firmware.

Trial different solutions and compare pricing to how well they perform, their stability, how easy it is to maintain, etc.

At the time when we first started using them, we did not evaluate other options. They seemed to be only ones back then who could cluster APs without requiring a separate controller.

Perform a site survey and get a model that supports the latest AC technology.

At first, the product was a solid 10. As time went on, and newer firmware was released, the product has dropped significantly to maybe a four or five rating out of 10 due to various bugs and design issues. We no longer use Aruba for any new sites and are slowly phasing them out from our locations with a different controllerless product that has drastically increased reliability and performance.

We currently have 500 access points deployed and operated by two controllers. Recently, all of the AP-125 models were replaced as part of a three year site wide upgrade, using AP-205H, AP-215, AP-225, and AP-325 models. 

Our wireless overhaul has reduced the number of wireless related help desk tickets by nearly 90%.

I work in a concrete fortress built 70 years ago. It obviously was not designed with wireless internet in mind. The software available allows me to make very specific changes to individual access points when throttling power/settings, which are critical to good working wireless signals. 

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. 

HPE Aruba technical support is a nine out of 10. 

Quality of the product and the OS interface are a nine out 10.

We have made a full 32-site school transition from Mary to Aruba wireless.

Reliability, stability, and best use of our network.

The Aruba 335-AP.

There were stability issues, but only on initial deployment.

Very few scalability issues, mostly user error.

Great support.

We used Meru. We switched to Aruba for the newer technologies they presented.

It was pretty straightforward.

Licencing can be surprising and needs improvement. Look into all features, what you need versus what you want, and know that nothing comes without some kind of license.

Meru, Cisco, Aerohive. 

It's a great product, easy to use, easy monitoring, and great tech support. Plan out placement as thoroughly as possible.

• Different roles assigned to corporate and guest users.
• Corporate users authenticated via 802.1X against ClearPass with machine authentication. 
• Guest users authenticated via captive portal; ClearPass guest self-registration process.

• Better failover. 
• Aruba Mobility Controllers configured in master standby mode. 
• Centralized licensing. 

• HA: Apps failover without reboot. 
• ARM: Auto adjusts the power and channel. 
• Rouge Detection: Helps in identifying threats.
• Role assignment: Each user is assigned a different role based on the radius attributes returned by ClearPass.
• Firewall rules can be applied per role.
• AppRF: Helps to find out which applications are used by the clients.
• Denies inter-user traffic: It easily blocks traffic between users.

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. 

We use wireless for all testing (on Apple, Chrome, and even tablets). We moved our school over to having a managed wireless network. This was my first time doing something like this and my colleague nor myself had any issues with the software or hardware. 

We have a large investment in Aruba Networks WiFi technology. We have recently deployed a mix of Aruba 225 and Aruba 335 units to provide complete and full coverage over multiple floors. We like the automatic hand-off of a connection to the access point with the strongest connection. We have had no issues deploying the access points, and look forward to years of service from these products, which is a strength that we are seeing. 

It has great equipment for wireless AP needs. We purchased 1000 units for each floor of our schools. They have a ton of useful business-related features and security features, but the biggest selling point was the ability to create two different SSIDs to control public versus private wireless networks. 

AirWave (monitoring tool)

If there is a network issue, there are so many ways to access the monitoring application. Also there are maps and labels to tell you exactly where an issue may be. The TAC Service is very responsive and persistent.

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.

Stability and its ability to handle more devices has been an improvement for our organization.

Installation is relatively easy.

Configuration was not all that complicated, but there were some forums online that helped us just in case. They shed light on the deep config options.

We only had a summer to deploy.

We will be buying the ClearPass solution, which will be pricey. However, in the trial version, it has even more tools to manage a busy network.

We are the one of the official distributors of this product in Middle East.

ClientMatch technology and Air Monitor features of Aruba Wireless are special and classy.

• Point-to-point deployment products
• More varieties in Outdoor Access Points

Very Rarely.

Scalability has been one of the best features in which we can make our customers happy.

I would rate technical support as 10 out of 10.

We use a previous solution, but we switched due to stability and the possible integration with different products.

Basic initial setup is very easy when it comes to a new user on-premise.

Pricing support has always been cost-effective. Licensing is a one time purchase (only the cloud license has to be renewed, which is worth trying out).

It is always in comparison with Cisco Meraki and Ruckus, but Aruba is outstanding, especially when it comes to the hospitality sectors.

Try it out. You will enjoy the hard-core concept put behind Aruba Wireless.

The APs has a very competitive price and the functionality is really good. I have installed them in buildings made of stone and the signal goes through the walls with no problem. I also use this equipment for very big classrooms and it works great.

• The antenna’s gain: It is really powerful. 
• The access points support a high number of connected clients. 
• It has an easy configuration wizard.

Price.

Not really.

Not really, it has supported all the protocols that I have needed.

Technical support is very good.

I have used Cisco, Ruckus, D-Link, and Proxim. Aruba is equal or better than Cisco. The price and performance were the reason for the change.

The initial setup was very easy and intuitive.

Pricing is very competitive.

I tried Cisco, Ruckus, Proxim, and Juniper.

Try it. It works fine.

In the Aruba 2540 Switch Series portfolio, it is very important that these switches have advanced security and management tools, such as the following:

• Aruba ClearPass Policy Manager
• Aruba Central
• Aruba AirWave

It has not made improvements for my company, but from our partner company. They have a list of branch offices across country, and use Aruba cloud-based central support and for remote manage of equipment.

Our partner has been using this solution for a year.

They haven't found any issues yet.

They didn't found any issues yet.

They didn't found any issues yet.

Excellent.

They are very good responsive and very good knowledgeable.

Partner had been using Cisco. They switched to Aruba, because of price and functionality, also with an option for adding a SW, like AirWave, Meridian, ClearPass, and Central.

Initial setup was complex, but when you finally set up the whole network, there are no problems.

ROI is that cost for managing a branch offices which are far away from the main building. Now, it is very low.

HPE acquired Aruba. I think that was a really interesting acquisition. To be able to combine those product sets, the traditional wire line and the wireless, and then the Clearpass solution from Aruba, is what I'm most interested in; the enterprise security and to have the whole picture.

We're a reseller, so for us, it's another option to present to our customers. We've traditionally had a lot of Cisco networking in our background, so to be able to provide that to our customers is important. We think there are a lot of things changing in the industry right now, in IT, so we want to make sure we're staying ahead of that and helping our customers find the best solutions for things. A lot of things are changing.

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.

I've been in networking for over 20 years, and I've dealt with some of the traditional HPE ProCurve stuff a while ago. Just recently, my company signed up to do more HPE networking, so I was planning to learn more. Our recent experience is limited with the products; that's in one training class.

It's stable.

I know that we actually have a very large organization that's doing a full HPE rollout right now. We're going to assist with that. It definitely seems very scalable.

So far, so good. I haven't really opened a lot of support cases. I don't do a lot of production support. The pre-sales folks I've talked to so far have been knowledgeable. I've attended a training class and the instructor was good.

We're switching from Cisco. It was an executive decision, that's what I'll say. In those large organizations, that's how that works out sometimes. We're definitely going to help with that.

The product seems pretty good so far.

Aruba's good. It's almost over-complicated for what we need it for.

Aruba gives me the security that I need because we have WiFi for employees, and the public. It allows me to monitor them and block them or do whatever I need to to keep them in check.

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.

They're good. As long as you have the right controller in place to have enough APs for your business, then it's great. You can stack them. They're just a good product.

You just plug them in, and once you get them configured, they're great from there.

The licensing could always be a little bit cheaper. Everybody complains about that, but you just plug them in and I rarely have to think about it and that's the product I want.

I looked at Cisco and I can't remember the other vendor. Once again, Cisco was price-point was higher. Aruba gave me every feature I needed and more so they were a good fit for us.

Make sure you know how many APs you want to throw up there. Remote APs, stuff like that, and size your controller properly, but not for now but five or six years in advance because you don't want to replace it every other year so that'll be my biggest piece of advice.

As a network engineer, the feature that I value with Aruba is the management of the devices, like the one-touch provisioning of a wireless network.

Aruba Access Points are like plug-and-play devices that you just turn on and leave there and will automatically speak with its controller! It just makes the network administrator's work easier.

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.

I used to troubleshoot these devices for six years.

Due to the software bug I encountered (forgot the version), it appeared like that multiple access points were unstable, software speaking, but were not down physically.

Just slightly above the middle rating because not all technical support have the same caliber of troubleshooting an issue.

I also worked with the Cisco wireless solution as I manage several enterprise networks that use different solutions. I would say that managing Aruba products is easier than Cisco.

For a person who has been brought up with Cisco devices, I could say it was complex when I started working in Aruba's CLI.

We just used the cheat sheets we have in our SharePoint, following what the previous engineers did when setting up.

From a person who tried managing multiple wireless device platforms, there were little to no incidents that we receive for Aruba devices for a specific period of time. Though the biggest contender of this product line has been setup to majority of our customers, it appeared that Aruba devices are more stable.

Aruba is the only other wireless vendor besides Cisco that offers the flexibility of using AP's in any combination of the 3 controller-based architectures.

Lots of Flexibility but with flexibility comes complexity. Flexibility is great for large organizations but the Aruba instant AP may be good for smaller organizations.

I have worked with Aruba gear for 4 years.

Any issues I encountered were resolved quickly with an excellent TAC.

Aruba has a very scalable product with different hardwar, software and complementary products such as AirWave and ClearPass.

TAC is really a 9+

I have worked with other great vendors like Cisco, Meraki, Motorola, etc.

There are ways to sidestep the complexity available with Aruba, but if you do not need the advanced features of Aruba then Aruba instant or another vendor may suit your needs best.

It gives us centralized management for all campuses and all wireless access points. Students have guest networks, so the centralized management help us to manage all of users.

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.

We've been using it for about four to five years.

We've had no issues with deployment.

We've had only minimal outages over the past 5 years thanks to the High Availability solution for the controllers and the access points. If we do have an outage on one controller, the access points can free-associate to another controller on another campus and still function properly for the students and staff. So this is a very stable solution.

We've been able to scale sufficiently for our needs.

Customer service and technical support have always been great. We've never had an issue getting support from Aruba. We've always had quick responses and very helpful solutions when we contact them.

Before Aruba, we were on individual "fat" access points, so we had to manage each one individually.

It's pretty simple. Once the master controller and the local controllers are set up, it's just a matter of syncing the configurations, so you do the configuration once on the centralized controller, and everything gets replicated to all the local controllers at each campus. Adding, removing, changing, bringing on new controllers to replace old controllers is a pretty simple process.

I think originally we were in the $30-50,000 range, with yearly maintenance costs and support for licensing, which cost $10-$15,000.

We needed a more centrally-managed solution so that you didn't have to manage each individual AP. When we sought out quotes, we looked at Aruba, Meru, Cisco, and a couple of others. Based on the features and the scalability and all the deployment solutions and everything that we needed, Aruba was the best solution for us.

Make sure you get a proper configuration. Do a proper site survey of your location to know what you need to configure and how you need to customize it to your own environment so that when you deploy your wireless, you're not popping up with any surprises from a bad signal or bad interference in certain places. Just make sure you know your area and you customize your solution around what your area provides for you.

It's very adaptable from the access point line. We've found that ClearPass products have met our performance marks to the letter. They sold us on foundations stats and provided us with everything we asked for. They didn't come up short and were dead on the money.

It's provided our students with such reliable service that they just expect it to be there and take it for granted. They come to school, blackboard their work, get on YouTube, chat with friends, etc., and then go home, not realizing that they used the college network. We've been able to give them the best experience possible, and their feedback has been amazing. If there are ever any hiccups, the complaints and tickets pile up very quickly.

Our users, for the most part, haven't noticed hiccups because of the HA capability and the speed at which the controllers can authenticate. In fact, the last couple updates have boosted the quality and redundancy. Students have been able to watch YouTube videos without any noticeable rendering issues during hiccups.

We have a few IAP's and that's sort of like the standalone home router stuff. They're lacking in functionality, and though they are designed for standalone small deployments, they don't give you the good standalone fun stuff that you expect on a smaller scale router, like good DLNA. I wish they were a little bit more progressive on their IAP line.

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.

We're essentially an Aruba shop. We have uniform wireless AP's ranging from AP 125's, which are slowly going to be de-commissioned on our next product cycle, all the way up to AP 325's in our fleet. We have three 7240 controllers, and one 7210 controller as our test platform box that we use for benchmarking and a few other projects. They're basically fully-licensed and we are basically all-wireless. We do not have any HP switching gear in-house or Aruba switching gear. All of this is controllers and access points for the hardware side. For the software side, we have AirWave, which monitors our entire wireless fleet in controllers, and ClearPass. We have three ClearPass appliances -- one is a hardware box and another is a VM box. Both of them are 25K units and one 5K unit appliance, as well as hardware.

We've been using them for about 10 years I would say, maybe nine years.

It deploys extremely quickly.

The controller is a rock solid 10 out of 10, the access points are 9.5 out of 10, ClearPass is 10 out of 10, and AirWave is 9 out of 10.

It scales incredibly well. We did have some scalability issues with the system a long time ago, but they fixed that rather quickly. We also changed product lines at around that time. We were outgrowing the product a little bit too quickly, but since we've moved to the new controllers, it's been rock solid.

Technical support is very good, but it's dependent on the engineer you get. Sometimes you'll get a fantastic engineer and your problem is solved right away. Sometimes you might have to jump through a few more hoops. Sometimes you get the Cisco experience where you must follow the bouncing ball and complete all the 10 questions. You know how your product works, you don't need to complete 10 questions. You have a problem and want an engineer who can solve this really quickly.

I've noticed that it's been getting better over time. It used to be bad about four years ago. Over the last two to three years, it's been getting a lot better. As long as you fill out the surveys, I tend to find that the service has been getting better and better and better. You get your resolution pretty quickly. So I'm generally quite happy with the tech calls.

I've noticed they've scaled back a little bit of their SE's. I guess that's because they're such a big company.

The initial setup tends to be both straightforward and complex. Although I haven't done an initial setup in a while, everything just clicks together very well. When I did do an initial setup, the wireless controller was up and running within a few minutes. Deploying new controllers into the cluster takes seconds. There are a lot of wizards and guides built into the controllers for setup. So it's very easy.

ClearPass is a little harder, and AirWave is medium difficulty. ClearPass is the hardest part to get going without a good amount of training.

Day-to-day costs are generally very low. We have very few problems with the system, so our maintenance costs and hours that we put into solving problems is generally very low, which makes my life really easy to work on other issues that come up. Our wireless system generally doesn't generate a lot of day-to-day issues.

Initial costs for purchasing the system? It's on par with other vendors, but is a little bit cheaper than the equivalent of what we were getting out there, so I feel that we got really good value.

Make sure you buy the system that suits your network. They have a very broad pallet, so you can buy one that's overkill and buy one that's underkill. Make sure you spec and follow the guides appropriately. Also, you have to have a very good concept of how fast you're going to grow and how much you're going to grow because if you don't have a really good idea of what your growth curve is going to look like, you can easily buy something that doesn't fit perfectly.

Proper planning for scaling, and knowing what your growth curve is going to be is key. Work with the SE's on figuring out the plan is very important. Aruba has a very broad product line on scalability, so that can hurt you and help you at the same time. It is very nice to have.

There are a couple of valuable features of Aruba Wireless for us. First is ClearPass, which is an authentication product, and second is AirWave, which is a reporting function.

AirWave allows us to do different reporting on WiFi utilization at our different campuses so I can break down different areas of the college and find out how many users are using the network at any given time. I can find out the utilization of different access points, which allows me to do capacity management.

It needs the ability to perform mobility device management. They should have some kind of mobility device management built into the product.

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.

We're very happy with the Aruba. We've been using them for about the past five years.

We've had no issues with deployment.

For the most part, stability is excellent.

All you need to do is buy licenses for the access points that you have on those campuses.

9/10. The customer service we get from our sales rep is excellent.

Technical support is always going to take more time. If there's any kind of issue it needs to be replicated, it needs to be taken away and examined certainly more than customer service.

We were using another vendor to provide WiFi capabilities. Although it didn't have any limitations, Aruba integrated better with our existing equipment.

It's very easily set up.

I don't know what the ROI is on this. It's difficult to value the experience that the students have and the staff have, so to put an actual number on that is going to be very difficult.

We looked at other vendors before deciding on Aruba.

Make sure you're fully aware of all the products around WiFi and capitalize on any ones that are out there that would help your specific environment.

• Firewall
• Virtual controller
• Compatibility with controller-based and controller-less solutions

It supports different classes of services for different types of users, has easy management, is easy to use, etc.

The RF needs to be improved.

We started using it one month ago.

There have been no issues with the deployment.

8/10

There have been no scalability issues.

8/10

I'd rate technical support 9 out of 10.

We switched for its new and advanced features, as well the lifetime warranty.

It's just plug-and-play.

We implemented it with support of vendor and I would rate them as 9/10.

The IAP licence that we use is free.

• Cisco
• Eugenius
• Ubiquity

It is a very stable and scalable solution.

Four years ago, our network was incapable of handling our anticipated throughput. We knew we had issues in our network, so we made sure our switches and infrastructure were OpenFlow-enabled. We originally planned for three devices per student, but now we're seeing four or five and sometimes more with wearable devices. Now, with Aruba Wireless, we're SDN-enabled with networking thrust re-route or pick-ups at the switch edges.

Aruba Wireless allows us to integrate our network with different HP technologies. We want to have a single vendor with a rapid-enough life-cycle. HP isn't held back by the workload or lowest common denominator, or by the fact that we have locations in Australia, Vietnam, and other places on that side of the globe. We can use Aruba Wireless everywhere and manage it effectively. It is doing everything we need it to do and it's giving me the flexibility to go where I want to go.

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.

We've had no issues with deployment.

We had lots of issues on the network routers until about 12 months ago, having to do with the architecture. We had too much load at the core by allowing too many wireless users.

We run two-and-a-half gigabytes through the wireless system. We're looking for even greater throughput, and I think it'll scale to accommodate this.

Technical support has been good. We have a support contract with HP and access to the right people when we need them. However, HP's presence in Australia is a little light.

Definitely look at SDN to take some costs out of your network. If you can, go with HP ConvergedSystem because it's the simplest, fastest way to virtualize your networks.

For us, the most valuable feature is the ability to access our office's network. Once you are authorized to gain access, it's a solution that makes doing so a seamless process. Connecting to wifi at our office is something we should be taking for granted.

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.

They deploy without issues.

Stability is really good and something we're very happy about. We just install it and they last until they die, which is a really long time.

They can go from short range to long range, and there are many new features for connecting additional users.

We chose HP because of the price. It's a good solution and best-suited for us.

The initial setup was very straightforward.

We used a vendor team for implementation.

We always evaluate other options when considering IT solutions. We looked at Cisco and Juniper, but HP/Aruba is better.

The most valuable features of these wireless controllers for us are the advanced security and management features. They're excellent and provide our users with protection over-the-air.

They've improved our clients' organizations by providing the flexibility to choose different models depending on, for example, the number of APs they want to deploy and other criteria. 

They're also easily upgradeable to higher versions and the licenses can be transferred easily.

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.

They deploy well without issues.

It's a very stable product. Right now, we have several deployments and we'll know whether there are problems with these controllers.

The 7000 is highly scalable. You can start with a lower controller model, and as a client's requirement increases, you can always migrate to a newer model. They'll still have all the licenses that they previously purchased.

The initial setup for the 7000 is straightforward for us. We're trained and certified engineers. But for someone who isn't, it's very complex.

We've done several migrations from competitive products, but Aruba is better because of the technology and the price. They also integrate well with other Aruba applications, such as ClearPass.

The most useful feature of Aruba Wireless, as with all Aruba products generally, is the software and controls. Wireless has many APs and client management software. They're able to push clients based on profile matching to different nearby APs. For example, if there are 75 APs in one area, such as a lobby entrance, you can have an AP next door with one client on Aruba software, and the APs will be able to push a set number of clients.

In our hospital lobby, we have on average 700 clients trying to connect at the same time. Using the software, we've been able to make sure that everyone's able to connect.

Our entire switching and LAN infrastructure is based on HP along with Cisco. We have about 10,000 access points, but Aruba provides our the client solution. So far, two smaller controllers are able to handle our entire guest infrastructure, which is something around 15,000 concurrent users on the wireless network.

We've had it for about three years now.

It deploys well for us.

The stability is only decent. You shove in an extra controller and it works generally, but you have to be careful to properly configure it.

The licensing works during peak hours but not during non-peak hours. We're expecting in the near future around 15,000 handheld devices as well as 9,000 BYOD, probably next year.

We've had no problems with technical support. We know the Aruba technicians in Denmark.

We evaluated Cisco APs. Aruba's APs are nice and the management solutions are pretty good. Cisco and Aruba play nicely together.

The most valuable feature for us is the support they provide us. We're putting together a budget for upgrading to another Aruba kit, but we always know that the support will be there.

It's a reliable product and it just works. We haven't had to really do anything with it. We don't have much budgeted for WiFi because we only have a couple of small offices, but the product is light, very effective, and incredibly reliable for both our employees and guests. I think it'll drive our BYOD policy for more guests who come into our office.

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.

We use Aruba in our manufacturing facilities for the handheld wireless scanners in warehouse production environments.

We've had no issues with deployment.

It's been stable. We started out with a small warehouse and then we went into the next warehouse then to the productions areas and other spaces.

We use it the most in our largest manufacturing site with several big warehouses. It scaled just find in this environment.

I wasn't involved in the setup about four years ago.

We looked at HP/Aruba and Cisco.

The most valuable feature for us is High Density as it allows us to provide coverage for lots of our students both in the same classroom and across campus.

It really drives our WiFi function because 95% of the network connections are from student BYOD. It provides location awareness and uses HP's software, which is great.

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.

We've used it for over 15 years now. It's been a long journey.

We've had no issues with deployment.

I find that its stability is better than most of the other products we've used over the years.

We don't have any notable issues with scalability right now. From time to time, we've noticed that with 5,500 APs, we do have some issues, but they're not anything we wouldn't expect.

We've used Meru and Cisco, but Aruba's proven to be the best.

Consider all the software and add-ons for it because they can increase the value of it for something more than WiFi. Put everything together to maximize the benefit for your company.

Move valuable to us are the central management feature and the solution's performance. They're also easy to deploy in all our global locations.

We have about 40 offices around the world, and in every office we had a different wireless vendor. Our goal, then, was to have one standard solution for all our offices. Now, for example, when our sales team goes from Singapore to China to Belgium, they can just come into the local office and are automatically connected.

The AP's didn't automatically connect to our central office upon deployment.

We've had some deployment issues, such as the AP's didn't connect to our central office automatically.

It's a stable solution.

It's very scalable. If one of our offices wants extra AP's, we can just ship them and they just need to plug them them. That's it.

Sometime technical support goes directly through Aruba, and other times it goes through a third party.

We were using several different vendors, including Cisco and some old HP's, and we wanted to standardized in all our offices. So, we switched to Aruba and now have central management.

Initial setup was very straightforward. You just plug it in with a few settings.

We didn't look at other solutions as HP is the company standard.

You may need additional tools like ClearPass, for example, from Aruba.

For me, its security features are the most valuable, helping us to reduce a lot of complications. For example, there are security code issues we have to address when enterprise users bring their own iPads, iPhones, notebooks, or any mobile device, and they want to access our network. They may need to access our network resources, but there can be complications because they are our enterprise users or guests with unique user names, passwords, etc. Aruba is able to address those complications by providing the security for that network access. 

I work as an IT infrastructure manager. WiFi is in our scope of responsibilities, so we prepare the implementation projects for the general areas and for our enterprise users. 

We asked for tenders from Aruba, Cisco, and Meru Networks. At the end of the day we decided, or rather I decided, on Aruba because of its security features. We performed a lot of tests to reduce the number of certificates needed, the access point requirements, IPS features, spectrum analyses, etc. After that, we decided that Aruba would be best for us. 

We have been using it for two years and we are very, very satisfied with the features because there are no security problems. We continued using Aruba, not just with that project, but for different projects in other companies.

For other projects, we ask for tenders, and if HP wins, Aruba will also win because we will not buy separate WiFi solutions. We will buy solutions under the local area network site. We combine the solutions because we believe that if you are using wired and wireless networks, the one utilizing UNIX systems should be the deciding factor. At the same time we want a program with NOC solutions, BYOD, MDM, and ATM location services. We want all that to work together in our program designs.

Sometimes there's some small problems, but this is the nature of technology.

We've not had any issues with deployment.

In our two years of use, there haven't been any big problems.

We've had some scalability issues because of the way we're scaling our hardware base. For example, we started with 64 access points although our controller supports only 6 core access points. We've scaled incrementally, though, as we then went to 128 and then to 200, whereas our competitors start high.

Out of the box, we had 1000 access points licensed, but that amount depends on your own license. If you buy 120, you can support 120. There's no change to the control site up to 1000 licenses. Compared to Cisco in this regard, Arube is not as flexible.

The initial setup was not complex. There's a CLI, much like Cisco. Aruba's certification is also very similar to Cisco's, which is not very difficult.

I implemented it myself.

We were coming from a first-generation wireless network, and now I can use RF optimization for controllers. This is a major advancement for us and we're much happier for having it.

We can now see how many devices and how many users are on our network and where the usage hotspots are. Previously, we didn't have any data of this type, which now allows us to better plan our network.

I'd like more specific details of each user.

We just put it into production and in the coming weeks we will receive our new access points.

Deploying it is no problem.

We've had some issues with stability for Mac and iOS users where we've had to disconnect. There may be configuration issues, but I'm not sure.

We're planning for 300 access points, and right now we only have six. We have older HP products, but once we get our new access points, we should be able to scale without problems.

Technical support is very, very good. They've supported us with everything that we need.

The initial setup was straightforward. We have some prior experiences with various types of access-point networks, so it was not an issue.

Make sure you plan ahead of time.

The most valuable features for me are:

• Built-in firewall
• Security
• Authentication
• Remote access
• Stability

Providing wireless to our clinicians and providers allows them to be mobile within the facility and still maintain connectivity to valuable information, like our Electronic Health Record. The remote access through RAPS is a feature that simplifies access for our providers at home, and provides continuity of security. In addition we provide guest wireless to our patients and families which improves satisfaction.

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.

We've used it for two years. We're using a 3400 controller with AP105 Access Points. The software version is 6.3.1.9_44832.

There were no issues with deployment.

This product has been very stable.

No. We have added Access Points and Remote Access Points as needed. We also expanded to a redundant controller which allows High Availability.

Service has been good - 8/10.

8/10

We switched to Aruba because of the advanced security. In healthcare we have HIPAA compliance to achieve and maintain. Security is a priority.

Setting up the controller is complex. The SSIDs, Authentication methodology, Access, is all quite complex to set up. Not for a novice.

We used a vendor team to implement. We used a third party consulting firm to assist with setting up the redundant controller. Both were very good.

This product is considered infrastructure. It is a cost of doing business. It allows our business to be more flexible and mobile. But there is no direct ROI.

Aruba has made changes to their licensing to make it more cost effective. Work with a partner that is familiar with all of the features in this product so that you get the licensing you need. Not all features are available with basic licensing. You need to determine the feature set you want, and then look at pricing for that feature set.

HP and Cisco. HP was not secure enough. We had HP in house already. We looked at Cisco but did not do a demo or work with a partner. We do not have any Cisco in house. From my own research, Cisco was too expensive and did not have a solution that was a single appliance that could do all of the things that Aruba can do. Their solution required firewalls, controllers, and routers to accomplish the same thing. This may no longer be the case.

Get a good partner. Not just the local IT shop that has wireless experience. Not all wireless vendors are created equal. To get the real bang for the buck, you need an expert to help you decide what you want and to implement it.

Integrated firewall, integrated WIDS/WIPS on the controllers and the ability to tunnel LAN traffic from the switches through the controllers to set consistent 802.1x and access controls that are consistent across both wired and wireless LANs.

It improves security by helping us to centralize access controls and dot1x and set common policy across both wired and wireless LANs without having to install additional components.

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.

I've been using it for five years.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

It's excellent.

It's excellent.

Default settings are sufficient to get a functioning wireless network up and running fairly easily. Complexity increases add vLANs, security policy, dot1x, redundancy, etc.

At my previous employer we had a relatively large wireless installation so we worked with a vendor team. The network at my current employer is small enough that I could handle it myself.

Licensing has improved. In the past all redundant controllers required licenses for all the access points. They've not implemented a centralized licensing model so that you only need to license your access points once.

We evaluated Cisco. Cisco's solution, at the time, required additional components to provide the same functionality. For example you'd need external firewalls, IDS/IPS, and authentication servers. Aruba controllers had all this built in. I haven't looked at Cisco's current offerings, so this may not still be the case.

I'd recommend you do the training.