Cisco Wireless Reviews

Survey/design and deploy Cisco Wireless (3500/3600/3700) in hospitals/universities.  The object was 100% coverage with RTLS support.

The challenges are RF propagation control and saturation with RRM. Another is future-proofing capacity. In the 3700 series, ATF was the limiting factor in Cisco’s solution.

Compared to other solutions, captive guest network is one of the best isolation and tunneling. All other features of RF are average.

• The ability to disable RRM or set hybrid RRM. This provides a more granular design of RF in the environment.
• CLI controller/RF debugging.

• RRM
• ATF
• Ortho-Polarization
• AP concurrent client processing

No issues with stability.

Performance issues.

I would rate tech support 7.5 out of 10 on the RF side. Overall, it’s what you would expect for Cisco.

Switched to Cisco because of upper-level decision.

Pretty straightforward if you understand RF and what the options mean on the WLC.

Expensive.

Aruba, Aerohive, Ruckus, UBNT, Mikrotik.

I’ve been working with Cisco Wireless since 2008. Although CPI and controllers have come a long way, the AP is the limiting factor. There are a lot of assumptions in the controller algorithm.

Don’t just conduct a passive survey. Set up three APs and do an active survey with RRM enabled among three.

Cisco’s wireless solution is a seven out of 10, in my experience, compared to other solutions. It has limitations on the polarization processing.

Mobility device support. It can provide support for real-time applications, such as VoIP and Video Conferencing over wireless infrastructure.

For industrial IT (sensors, programmed logical controllers, trains, ports, mines) and IT for offices, we can support real-time information, reducing risk for people, speeding up time to market and giving real-time access to information and communications.

This is a good product but some basic configurations were missed such as:

• The bind configuration between a physical port and an IP address
• Health check for authentication/authorization server.

Three years.

No.

No.

Seven out of 10. They are slow to answer.

Yes. We switched due to company decisions.

Complex. The solution works for beginners with basic implementations.

It is an expensive solution.

Yes, Aerohive and Aruba.

A couple of features stood out: the most important feature was the ease of installation. Coming from another network vendor background I was surprised at how easy the controller was to configure. The ability to build policies based on device and application type is very powerful. The controller has a built in best practice analysis engine that will not only give your setup a best practice score, but also automatically change settings to increase the score. The controller automatically implements advanced Cisco wireless features like Cisco clean air, coverage hole detection, client load balancing and band steering amongst other things.

Business systems reach was significantly increased through extensive wireless coverage throughout the entire company head office building (5 stories). The technology also enabled the client business to safely provide internet access to guests, through the Cisco lobby administrator portal, which the receptionist manages without intervention from the IT department.

Rack mount brackets must be automatically included in the cost. Aesthetically the 2504 chassis has room for improvement. Product is not the cheapest on the market, can be more competitively priced.

This solution has been running for a year. We have dual Cisco 2504 wireless controllers for high availability (software version 8.1.102.0). Managing 40x 1702 Cisco wireless access points.

The issue we encountered was enabling radius authentication for the employee wireless network. Most of the issue was Windows server related though.

The two controllers running side by side was extensively tested by die client: during production the primary controller was unplugged and within a few seconds the access points registered to the secondary controller. The client even went as far as unplugging various access points to test if the coverage hole detection worked, and was not disappointed. There was never a need to restart the controllers or any of the access points.

The project was sufficiently scoped from the beginning which prevented any scalability problems.

Good.

Good, provided there is a maintenance contract in place.

The previous solution consisted of a wireless controller and 15 access points. There was a lot of labour hours that had to be wasted on fine tuning the wireless settings, the wireless network just did not meet the clients expectations. The issues were escalated to the distributor and the vendor directly, which made resources available on site but still took days to get stable.

Very straightforward. The new software version introduced a wizard which guides you through most of the initial configurations in a few simple steps.

Working as a solutions architect for an IT service provider I did the scoping and implementation for the client.

The pricing on the Cisco devices can seem high, but compare apples with apples and it will become clear that Cisco is not that expensive. The controllers need to have licenses for the access points that it manages, so plan ahead and have enough licenses ready for the amount of access points in the environment.

• HP MSM 720 wireless controller.
• Aruba instant access points with built in controllers

The underlying wired infrastructure is important, make sure it has enough capacity so avoid causing bottlenecks on the wireless network. If possible keep the network on a specific vendor for ease of management and support.

Security features

We can deploy a simple guest captive portal to allow guests to connect to the internet.

More languages on the captive portal.

I've been using Cisco WLAN Controller 2106 for about one year.

I had to reboot the controller a couple of times to force correct EAP key exchange.

I had to reboot the controller a couple of times to force correct EAP key exchange.

Since it's a very small controller, I was already prepared for a small deployment.

Not used at all.

Not used at all.

No previous solution used.

A bit complex. There's no logical order to setup what you need, but with some reading, it's totally feasible.

I implement it myself. I work for a Cisco partner.

Plan the network first and decide if this box is big enough for your deployment.

From a technical perspective, the ease of centralized management and provisioning. Also the possibility of a single breakout point to the LAN which helps confine user traffic without additional setup.

Before 2008 all hosts were connected to the wired infrastructure. Introducing a wireless infrastructure is probably the biggest single improvement in the network area we have had over the last few years. For example, employees can access their documents during a meeting, suppliers can give a presentation, and visitors can access the internet, etc. without going through the process of wiring and reconfiguring switches.

The monitoring system has room for improvement. All the pieces of data are collected but it is not always easy or possible to present it the way you like it.

For about six years with the initial single controller setup. We moved to a dual controller setup in active/standby mode two years ago.

Cisco WLC 5508 with Cisco Wireless Control System and 2600/3600 series access points

We did not have any issues with the deployment of the single controller setup. Later on, with the deployment of the second controller, we have had some minor issues which were swiftly resolved by the supplier team with some help from the vendor.

No issues so far.

The product is scaled for 500 APs. At this moment we have little under 450 APs connected without any scalability issues.

8/10 for both the vendor and supplier.

9/10 for both the vendor and supplier.

No, the Cisco WLC is our first wireless solution.

Initial setup was straightforward. Then again, initially we started with only the very basic capabilities of the Cisco WLC.

Both implementations were performed by a supplier team with support from an in-house team for integration into the local network. I would rate the expertise of the supplier team a solid 8/10.

We are a non-profit organisation. ROI was not the main drive to buy this product as manageability and reliability were.

We are bound to a supplier and therefore can choose from a limited number of vendors. We use Cisco for our wired equipment, it is then reasonably to first have a look a Cisco‘s wireless solution.

The Cisco WLC has many features. Plan carefully which to use before you start to implement.

Scalability

• Multiple SSID's
• Ability to offer WI-FI to guest in a secure environment

None.

Two years. (WLC 5508)

Older WAP's can be an issue as the firmware makes them problematic. Requires upgrading the WLC firmware to see units properly.

None.

None.

8 out of 10.

8 out of 10.

Several. Cisco is more scalable and actually less costly over time.

Fairly straightforward - need to understand the Cisco way of breaking things out but otherwise no issues.

We implemented it in-house.

Approximately $20,000 with no additional costs.

• Meraki
• SonicWALL

Understand your need. Let the need drive the purchase not the other way around.

• Certificate based authentication
• ACL for Guest

Right now more than 90% of our employees connect on wireless only. That minimizes a huge CapEx on LAN infrastructure. Users can connect from any of the offices of banglalink. Roaming is the biggest advantage we have got so far. For security purposes, certificate based authentication ensures that only banglalink employees can connect to those SSID.

• Reporting
• Active Passive Failover on Controller

More than four years.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

Good.

Good.

We previously used an Aruba solution and we switched because Cisco had a flexible deployment model, it is easy to operate, and has a stable OS.

Initial setup was, of course challenging. However, with the vendor, we worked hard on troubleshooting issues. For example, redundancy during controller failover was very challenging as the AP was taking long time to join with controller.

We implemented it in-house.

I think we got our ROI within a year.

We have two controllers in our 55 offices with more than 175 APs. It costs us around 100k. Currently we don't buy any support from OEM or a vendor, and we keep all necessary APs in stock. For the controller it costs us around 3k yearly.

We compared it to Aruba which was our existing solution.

Fantastic product for an indoor wireless solution. Smooth seamless AP handover, excellent Tech support, integration with other peripherals (AD, Cert server, SIEM etc.) and stable hardware. These are the reasons you should choose this product.

Central controlling of all APs.

It has enabled the organization to become cable-free.

Training support for clients is needed.

3 years -

Cisco Wlan Controller 5508

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

Excellent.

Middle.

No other solution was used.

Pretty Straightforward.

A vendor(Xiamen WisDom Net), They have 3 CCIE engineers in routing and switches but not in Wi-Fi, They quickly improvee their Wi-Fi skills and even I improved a lot.

High.

We invited 6 vendors that offered Cisco, Juniper, Aerohive brand Wi-Fi solutions to evaluate and compare products.

See my website article:

http://aweisoft.net/Knowledge/Cisco/OptimizeWiFi/OptimizeWiFi.aspx