Cisco Wireless Reviews

I work for a manufacturing company.

We can support clients over wireless networks. We get free and easy roaming.

The product’s interface must be improved.

I have been using the solution for the last ten years.

The tool is stable.

The tool is easily scalable. Smaller companies would not be able to afford the solution. They should choose products like Aruba and Meraki. I don't recommend Cisco for smaller companies.

Support is excellent. Cisco's support team is the best in the industry. I rate support a seven or eight out of ten.

Neutral

The initial setup is easy. The deployment doesn’t take much time. We can deploy the tool in three to four hours if the configuration is ready.

The solution is very costly.

Cisco has collaborated with Meraki. Meraki products are much more economical than Cisco Wireless. Meraki’s interface is better. It’s a plug-and-play solution.

I would advise people not to choose Cisco Wireless. They should choose Meraki Wireless. It is also a Cisco product. It is much better and easier to operate. Overall, I rate the solution a seven or eight out of ten.

The most valuable feature of the solution is the coverage it provides. My company bought six to eight pieces of the tool, considering the coverage it offers.

With Cisco Wireless, users need the solution to offer good coverage and receive good support from Cisco Meraki.

Even though the tool offers a cloud-based central management option, the product needs to work on improving the security part a bit since it is an area of concern.

I have been using Cisco Wireless since April 2023. My company is a customer of the tool.

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

There are some instances where the connectors in the tool don't allow users to browse the internet.

It is a very scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Around 2000 people in my company use the product.

The support offered for the solution is good. I rate the support a seven out of ten. Sometimes, users have to talk to support to get updates.

Neutral

To handle the setup phase of the tool, one just needs to be tech-savvy. The setup and implementation are easy for anyone who has dealt with such processes in the past for any business.

I rate the product's initial setup phase an eight on a one to ten scales, where one is difficult, and ten is easy.

If I consider the access points, the solution is deployed on-premises.

The solution deployment phase doesn't even take an hour.

I rate the product price an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price.

The tool is available on the cloud to manage and optimize our company's network performance. Through a cloud-based, the tool allows you to access your access points. You can choose to change or optimize your network from a central location to all the sites that your organization has, which is a good feature for me.

I have integrated Cisco Wireless with other network management tools, like Cisco DNA Center, in my previous job but not at my current workplace.

The integration capabilities of the product are good. I would rate the tool's integration capabilities an eight out of ten.

I recommend the product to those who plan to use it.

I rate the tool a seven and a half out of ten.

When we transitioned to using Cisco Wireless for our network access, it significantly improved our reliability and coverage. Previously, we had sporadic access points and inconsistent configurations, leading to security issues and disruptions. We implemented a policy-based infrastructure, securing our Wi-Fi network and ensuring connectivity to our ERP and email systems.

The most valuable features for network security with Cisco Wireless were the policy enforcement capabilities. Once the approved policy was implemented, it ensured secure access and control over the network, which was crucial for maintaining security standards.       

The deployment of Cisco Wireless is centralized, offering native security features at the access points. Regarding price, it might be considered expensive, but if the features and ease of use are proven effective, it's worth it.

I have been using Cisco Wireless since the least 10 years.

The stability of Cisco Wireless was excellent, with no complaints about downtime.

Regarding scalability, our organization, being a public sector entity, didn't face scalability issues as we were already optimized. There were no plans for expansion or increasing device numbers.

We never had to contact tech support for Cisco Wireless as we didn't encounter any issues requiring assistance. Maintenance services weren't utilized, so I can't comment on their impact. 

Deploying Cisco Wireless was straightforward for us as it was managed by the IT department. We didn't encounter any major issues during deployment. The process involved assessing placement for access points across the campus to ensure seamless coverage. Deployment could be done on-premises if needed.

One piece of advice I'd give is to understand the deployment process thoroughly before starting. It's important to have a solid infrastructure design in place before implementing Cisco Wireless. Regarding cost, while it may seem expensive initially, if the features align with your needs, it's worth considering. 

We primarily use the solution for our handheld devices. We have about 30 most likely that are medical hand-held devices. We do have a lot of wireless devices out there, including carts. We've got Vocera Badges that we use.

The support offered by Cisco is excellent. They are very responsive and knowledgeable.

The functionality of the solution is very good.

The most difficult part of the solution is us juggling everything. There are eight access points that we have to deal with. They have a tendency to age out. After five years, they go off sale. Then, five years after that, that they're out of support. Usually, when you get a new access point, we have to get to a certain version to get everything to work. However, on top of that, the ones we had 10 years ago are no longer functioning. They make it a complicated battle to try to keep your equipment at proper revisions, all at the time. They kind of force you to upgrade now. 

Apple is definitely causing a lot of issues by turning on more security features on its equipment. It is causing more problems on the business side. One is what they call a randomized Mac address that Apple has put out. As far as I know, Cisco doesn't have a fix for that. In other words, it's there to protect the end-user when they're on a guest network or they use randomized Mac addresses. We were trying to implement an employee group that would track the individual via the Mac. Now that it's rotating, we don't have a way to configure that.

I need to figure out how to handle security features that product lines have that offer a non-standard type of security feature that is being turned on constantly by different vendors. iPad also gives us isses. They have it set up so that you don't see the Mac address and the wireless at all. You can't even track your device anymore. I just discovered that last week.

We've been using the solution for about 15 years at this point It's been a good long while.

The solution is pretty solid in terms of stability. Out of a rating of ten, I would give them a nine. It's reliable and doesn't crash or freeze. It's not buggy at all.

I would describe the solution as scalable. If a company needs to grow it out they can do so pretty easily.

We're big fans of technical support. It's one of the solution's big selling features. We've very satisfied with the level of support they provide us.

I also have experience with Aruba. I'd say that Cisco is a bit more complicated to set up.

That said, we went to Cisco from day one - even before they had wireless controllers. Cisco is our go-to solution.

The initial setup is probably a little bit more complex than Aruba from what I've seen so far. It's not simple per se.

I don't handle the pricing. I don't have it in front of me. I'm not sure what the monthly costs are for our organization.

We're just a customer.

The solution is fairly up-to-date, however, we aren't using the most recent version of the solution right now.

Overall, I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. We've used it for years and it's worked quite well for us with very little issues to speak of.

We use the solution for switching and routing. We also have access to resources around the local area network.

The product is compatible with a lot of mobile devices. It is easy to manage and administer.

The security must be improved. The vulnerabilities are easily exploitable. Security features must be added.

I have been using the solution for 13 years.

The tool is very stable. I rate the stability a nine out of ten.

The tool is easy to scale. I rate the scalability an eight out of ten. We have 2000 users in a single location. A user can have four to five devices.

We were using another solution, but it was incompatible with the Identity Services Engine we deployed. So, we switched to Cisco Wireless.

I rate the ease of setup a seven out of ten. The time taken for deployment depends on the number of access points we want to connect. It takes a week to deploy the tool for 1500 to 2000 devices.

The product is expensive. I rate the pricing a ten out of ten. We are dependent on the dollar. There is a global economic issue.

I recommend people use the solution even if it means that they have to start small. Initially, the investment can be expensive, but the product is robust and enduring. We can use it for a very long time. Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.

Our primary use case is for a guest portal type of scenario where different types of users can connect. We use SAML authentication for that. We are customers of Cisco via a third-party vendor and I'm a network specialist.

It's valuable to us that creating policies is simple. We use Cisco ISE and it works well with the product. 

I've found that the media stream and Mojo settings are not sufficiently supported. The other issue we have is that when the access point goes down, we don't get any indication of the reason. This has to be fine-tuned so that a trigger is sent to the Cisco Server or any third-party server, and we get the alerts. I'd really like to see bug-free software.

I've been using this solution for over a year. 

Stability could be improved but it's not bad. 

The solution is easy to scale and if you have the latest wireless controller, you can really extend the coverage and extend the APs.

Technical support is awesome, we're very satisfied. 

I know that Aruba is better than Cisco, they really need to improve things. 

We carried out the implementation ourselves and it was quite straightforward. It took around six to eight months to implement the entire solution, install access points, configure and fine-tune. There's no specific maintenance required, it's mostly the operational aspect, upgrading software, and hardware support. We currently have around 6,000 users. 

Cisco is a bit pricey compared to other vendors like Ruckus which have pretty decent pricing. If a customer asks me for a cost-effective solution, I may go with Huawei but if it's in the enterprise dev environment, then I'd go with Cisco, Aruba, or Ruckus as a third choice.

I rate this solution eight out of 10. 

One of the main advantages of Cisco Wireless is its DNAT compatibility. When we have dynamic segmentation, or the DNAT enabled on the LAN, Cisco Access Point integrates with the DNAT architecture. Aruba Switches cannot integrate with the Cisco DNAT architecture. However, if we have an all-Aruba framework in offices where we have implemented this with the complete dynamic segmentation using Aruba Dynamic Segmentation, only Aruba AP works.

Cisco can't block specific sites on the internet like Aruba, so we're in the process of replacing them. We have already placed lots of orders with Aruba. Aruba has the ClearPass NAT solution, and Cisco has its ISE policy engine. Cisco won't work with any other vendors. That is a significant problem with Cisco. It can't integrate with ClearPass. We already tried this in a POC for ClearPass. Aruba is becoming integrated with ISE, but Cisco will not integrate with ClearPass.

We've been using Cisco Wireless for more than 10 years.

Cisco Wireless has not been that stable. In the past, Cisco Wireless could handle only a small number of users per access point. Once the number of users per access point increases beyond 10 or 15, you start facing disconnection issues with the users, and the performance slows. This has been my experience in the past five years, but Cisco has made a lot of improvements in their access points over the past two years.

Now it's a multi-band network, so they have improved on that front. The connections are stable. The performance still degrades if the number of users per access point increases, but now it's 20 or 30 users on the same access point. So you have to plan your access point design and placement so no more than 20 users will be connected to one access point.

Cisco Wireless is scalable, but that depends on the definition of "scalable." I can deploy it at two offices and I can scale it to 200 offices. However, when you integrate the access point and the controller with the DNAT across multiple sites, you need a DNAT cluster, which is a costly solution. Every site has a controller, and a DNAT cluster is not a good option in a global framework. It's okay for a small office or a few offices. But when you're talking about 500 offices, the cost becomes enormous. We're using Cisco Wireless extensively right now because none of our offices are on the wired network, and we have roughly 25,000 users.

Technical support is okay. It takes some time to resolve a complex issue. But if it's a known issue, it gets settled within the time limit set by the SLA.

We have a mix of Cisco and Aruba. Aruba hardware is superior to Cisco's. Cisco cannot come close to matching Aruba in throughput, performance, and coverage area. Cisco's main advantage is integration with ISE because many organizations can't shift the NAT or the authentication part. It's very difficult or not advisable to do it.

The Access Point configuration is plug-and-play, but the controller configuration is complex. You need some skilled people to configure Cisco Wireless. The deployment strategy is it deploy the controllers initially and upgrade them over time. Our last upgrade was three years ago when Cisco released its latest OS. The DNAT integration is ongoing. 

We have our in-house network team, but we also get support from Cisco and Aruba. We have vendor support in addition to our own set of team members who are working on the deployment.

Cisco Wireless is complex, and it's not cost-effective.

I rate Cisco Wireless eight out of 10. They still need to improve in a lot of areas. For example, Cisco needs to raise the throughput. At the same time, they've made a lot of advancements in the past two years. The access points are performing better. It's stable. They've added a multi-gig port, which is increasing the throughput of the users. 

Cisco Wireless needs to improve pricing. I understand that Cisco products are typically more expensive than other vendors. Therefore, I believe that adjusting the pricing could potentially be beneficial. Discounts may be available depending on the customer or type of purchase, which could help offset the higher costs.

I have been working with the product since 2008. 

Before COVID, the emphasis was primarily on wireless connectivity in specific areas like conference rooms. However, with the shift to remote work and increased mobility, coverage areas needed to be expanded to accommodate users throughout the entire location. We are beginning to expand our infrastructure. 

I wouldn't give support a ten out of ten since we may get bad engineers for support.

Positive

I rate the tool's deployment an eight out of ten. The deployment time for a new project depends on various factors, such as the size of the network and the need for planning and gathering necessary information. The most time-consuming aspect is determining the placement of access points. However, configuring the wireless control is generally straightforward.

The maintenance required for Cisco Wireless depends on the specific deployment and deployment model. Generally, some level of maintenance will be necessary, such as keeping the software up to date.

I rate the tool's pricing a ten out of ten. It is expensive compared to Aruba and Juniper. 

The scenario where Cisco Wireless significantly improved network performance isn't directly about performance but adaptability. With the shift to remote work during COVID, everyone became more mobile. Now, returning to the office, there's less reliance on fixed connections. People need to be adaptable. We need mobile devices like laptops and tablets, which rely on wireless connections to enable this. Transitioning from a wired setup to a wireless one allows for greater adaptability.

Currently, we only have wireless control for managing the wireless network. We're seeking a solution to handle wireless and wider network management. The product integrates easily with the existing infrastructure, like routers and switches. 

I rate the overall product an eight out of ten. Whether to recommend Cisco Wireless to others depends on several factors. If they already have a Cisco deployment of devices, it's often easier to integrate and manage, making it a suitable choice. However, other products like Aruba might be more cost-effective. Cisco Wireless is particularly well-suited for enterprise deployments.