Cisco Wireless WAN Reviews

We just deliver wireless coverage, general and specific, for auditoriums and stuff like that.

The most valuable aspect of the solution is its fast transition.

It’s a stable solution.

The product is scalable.

The implementations are easy.

There’s an easy onboarding process for non-native users.

When you have a question related to support, getting direct or faster access to someone technical would be ideal.

The pricing is a bit high.

I’ve used the solution for about 15 years.

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

The product can scale quite well.

Perhaps we made the right decision as we knew beforehand how much we needed to use through bandwidth, number of users, and number of VPs. We did our homework. We knew which product type/model we had to buy and deploy. That ensures that scaling is easy.

We might have 2,000 to 3,000 users on the solution, depending on the day. They are mostly students.

We likely will expand usage. We're running the next wave of installing extra eight pieces for delivering more coverage, and in a way also more bandwidth or throughput.

Technical support should be faster and more accessible.

I've also used, for example, Aruba.

The initial setup is very straightforward. It’s not difficult to set up.

I’d rate the solution a two out of five in terms of ease of use with one being the easiest and five being difficult.

The first setup was done in-house. And over the years we had some external consultancy, however, the main setup was done in-house.

The licensing costs are a bit on the high side.

I’d rate the solution a 3.5 out of five in terms of how expensive it is, with five being the most expensive. The licensing of Cisco is pretty high, especially in comparison to other options, such as Aruba.

I’d advise those considering the solution to go onto the internet and find as much documentation about the solution as you can.

I’d rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We primarily used the solution for wireless connectivity. We used it for daily work. We use our own laptops, and the solution allows us to connect to the network at work.

Cisco does not work well in China. We've moved over to Aruba. 

The solution was deployed school-wide. We used everything Cisco, not just wireless. It works great with other Cisco tools. 

The solution is not well received in China. It gave us headaches as it doesn't work well in the company. 

It is difficult to get support from Cisco. 

The cost is fairly high for licensing. 

Scalability could be better.

Stability is hit or miss if you have other Cisco integrations. 

Cisco Firewall cannot recognize some applications and that makes dealing with policies difficult. Even when we whitelist, it does not work well.

My company started using Cisco in 2011. We upgraded in 2015 and realized that the solution does not provide good service in China, and we have since moved away from it and toward Aruba.

The stability is hard to qualify. It is around seven out of ten in terms of reliability. Without other Cisco integrations, it is stable. If there are more Cisco integrations, like Cisco SE, stability becomes more difficult.

I'd rate the scalability seven out of ten. It is not extremely scalable. 

We have around 500 users and around 800 or 900 devices. Some users have many devices. 

Technical support was not helpful or responsive. At the beginning stage, they were very good; however, over time, they grew worse and worse. When I worked with Cisco Firewall before, we tried to get help for a whole year, and nobody could help us, so we gave up.

Neutral

We've recently moved from Cisco to Aruba. I've noticed a few differences between the two, and I'm trying to educate myself on both solutions. Aruba made a late delivery, so we just finished setting it up last month.

We use Aruba for everything and Palo Alto for Firewalls. 

The initial setup depends on the environment. The Cisco Wireless part is easy, however, when deploying other Cisco applications, we had a lot of trouble, and it made the network more complicated. 

I'd rate the ease of setup seven out of ten. 

I cannot recall how long the deployment took. It was deployed a long time ago.

Cisco is expensive. We renew the licensing yearly. I cannot recall how much we paid for this product specifically.

I'd rate the solution six out of ten. I would not recommend the solution. We had a lot of issues with it.

We use Cisco Wireless WAN for the network in our office. The solution is deployed on-premises.

There are currently 20 people who use this solution in my organization. They're technical staff and salespeople. 

I use Cisco because of its reliability.

The price could be improved. It can be complicated to configure the solution.

In the next release, it could be more user-friendly.

I have used this solution for 10 years.

It's very stable. I would rate the stability as nine out of ten.

It's scalable. I would rate the scalability as eight out of ten.

We previously used Linksys. We switched to Cisco because of its sustainability and expandability.

Normal installation isn't complex. Installation takes a couple of hours.

One person is needed for maintenance.

Implementation was done in-house.

The total cost of the solution was about $6,000.

I would rate this solution as eight out of ten. I wouldn't give it 10 out of 10 because the price is high and the solution can be complicated.

I would recommend it to those who are interested in using it. 

There's a lot of advice and information on the internet. Some of it may be incorrect, so you just have to try it and see.

We are using the solution for the long-term to connect our desktops and laptops. For the firewalls, however, we connect the rack network with fiber and other cables. 

It offers good connectivity.

The initial setup is straightforward. 

We find the product to be stable.

It can scale. 

The security is quite good.

We cannot use wireless for the servers due to potential performance issues. They must be connected via fiber.

The solution is a little bit expensive. 

We'd like it if they could improve the integration capabilities. More specifically, if it can be integrated with other applications or any other devices like CCTV cameras that are also running on wireless, that would be ideal. 

We've been using the solution for ten to 15 years. 

The solution has been stable and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze. 

We can scale the solution. It's not difficult to do so. 

We are a global company and have between 50,000 and 90,000 users. 

There are plans to increase usage in the future.

I've never used technical support services. I don't know how helpful or responsive they are.

It's a solution that is easy to set up. It's not overly complex to implement. 

I'm not sure exactly how long it took to deploy the solution.

We have a dedicated team of 600 IT engineers. They can handle deployment and maintenance. 

I'm not sure of the exact pricing. We have 20 to 30 different premises in India. I'm not sure if they are all using Cisco like us or not. Therefore, I'm not sure what the full cost is to the company.

It could be a bit cheaper. 

We pay a license fee on a yearly basis. 

I'm not sure which version of Cisco we are using. 

I'd recommend Cisco to other users and companies. I would rate it an eight out of ten. We're mostly happy with its capabilities. 

The solution is primarily used for wireless connectivity.

The solution is stable and reliable.

It scales well. 

We found the initial setup to be straightforward. 

The support has proven itself to be helpful. 

We would like to have the lead times improved. Right now, when you create a design and want to provide it to the customer, they are very late to cosign everything.

The solution is pretty expensive. We'd like to see lower pricing in the future. 

I've used the solution for a while. I'm not sure how long I've used it. 

The solution is stable. We find it to be reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

We can scale the solution as needed. It's not a problem.

We have more than 1,000 users on the solution.

We've contacted support, yet not necessarily for technical issues. We have used them for other things, and they were rather helpful. 

Positive

the initial setup is quite simple and straightforward. I'd rate the experience a four out of five in terms of ease of implementation. It's not difficult. 

The cost of the licensing depends on the access point.

On the low end, the solution costs probably around $1200 to $1300 for five years. It's an expensive product.

I'd rate the product a three out of five in terms of affordability.

We are Cisco partners.

I'd advise new users to check the documentation and go over it pretty thoroughly at the outset. It's important to read everything before you start. If you miss something, it may cause you to troubleshoot and spend more time than you need to figure things out. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for WiFi and for switching switches. It offers a wireless controller device and access points and switches.

It’s stable.

All the hardware, the signal, the communication between access points or switches, et cetera, is good. The devices are all of good quality.

The switches, in particular, are great. I don't remember the model, however, there is a line of Catalyst switches from Cisco - the industrial switches with 24 ports or 48 ports and a POA feature with a fiber optic port - that are great.

The quality of service is excellent.

The only disadvantage of Cisco is maybe the cost. It’s more expensive than other brands, like, for example, HP. You do have to pay for licensing yearly, which is not the case with some others. We’d like to just have a one-time payment option.

The interface could be better. When I connect to the wireless controller, the graphic or the user interface is complicated. It’s hard to understand all the models of the interface. They should work to make it easier.

I’ve used the solution for two months in this current company. I’ve used it for four or five years.

It's very stable. The resolution is very stable. Cisco is working well. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. 

It’s a scalable product.

In the future, the goal is to migrate to a new Cisco access point version. We are working on this. We have the requirement for a wireless controller, maybe, and an update only on the firmware version.

Maybe 400 people use the solution.

I work in the other companies with Cisco and other brands as well as Aruba and HP.

It’s an easy product to set up. It's not difficult at all. 

You do need to pay for licensing on a yearly basis. It’s a bit expensive. However, I don’t know the exact costs.

I’m a customer.

We use the latest version of the solution.

The solution is a market leader. It works great.

I’d rate it nine out of ten.

I'm a solution architect and consultant in my company (a Cisco partner and system integrator) and our standard use case for Cisco Wireless LAN is providing WiFi coverage throughout our client organizations' buildings. These organizations include banks, airports, and universities. We also use other networking products from Cisco, including Cisco Meraki for cloud-based wireless networking in smaller environments.

I have seen that many people are using a lot of the features directly available on the wireless controller. Recently, the most valuable and in-demand feature that users are enjoying is WiFi 6 support on the access points. The other good thing about Cisco Wireless LAN is how easily it provides clean access to the WiFi network.

The coverage area on some of the low-end access points isn't the best. The high-end ones are fine, but we've had bad experiences on the other ones. Compared to some of the non-Cisco access points we use, the low-end access points from Cisco have shown to give only very minimal coverage.

I am currently wondering how Cisco is going to handle the connections between 5G and the WiFi 6. These new technologies have similar features and I would expect, in the future, that there will be some integration between them.

The stability is fine. Cisco Wireless solutions are generally more stable than others, there is no doubt about that in my mind. Even our customers have experienced the same thing. The only problem is the different models. The range of models of Cisco access points is very limited compared to other vendors. And there are some challenges on the antenna configuration.

It is scalable. Right now, it has only one series of controllers for all the numbers of access points, so in terms of scaling, we can always increase the controllers even if we have thousands of access points.

The tech support for Cisco Wireless is fine. It's not usually myself that deals with them, but rather our technical deployment and support engineers. If they can't resolve any issues on their own, they simply raise a technical ticket with Cisco support.

We are also selling Cisco Meraki products along with the standard Cisco portfolio. I don't have a lot of experience with Meraki, because we mainly recommend those products to small and medium environments, especially if the customer doesn't have a lot of networking staff and they simply want to bring WiFi services up quickly. 

It is easy to set up the access points. Regarding how many people are needed for deployments, it really depends on the size of the project. We will have different scenarios ranging from only 10 to 15 access points, all the way up to 1,000 access points. All of this requires staff to physically mount the access points, and then we'll have the cabling technicians who connect all the cabling.

After that, once they all connect back to the controller, all the integrations will be done on the controller. So the wireless engineer requirement is very minimal compared to how many people are needed for the physical installation. If you've got a two-person team, they should be able to install 10 to 20 access points per day.

If you have a two-person team doing the physical access point installations, they should be able to set up 10 to 20 access points per day. 

For the Cisco Wireless implementation, the most important advice I would like to give is regarding the planning of the access points. The planning is very important because if you do not do proper planning based on the requirements, then the project might well turn out to be a big mess. That's because once you install an access point in one location, it's very hard to move around. Keep this in mind from the beginning. 

I would rate Cisco Wireless LAN an eight out of ten. I won't say it's the best there is, but it is definitely a leading solution.

I use the solution for wireless and mobile users, data sharing and file and print servers. We use the solution for conducting nearly all our services. 

Our most valuable feature involves the 802.11ac, which operates at a very high level and has updated technology. That's why we use the product, whose features we find to be very reliable.

We found the initial setup to be a bit complex due to the CLI commands. It's a little bit difficult and requires us to move and to convert. Certain CLI commands we are forced to undertake.

The solution should also enable Bluetooth Low Energy devices, which serve the purpose of maintaining and managing one's tracking system. 

The new product, 802.11ax BLE, enables features for tracking devices. It can be used for antivirus protection or in the event of any risk. It is a new technology and allows one to see where things are moving. The 802.11ax incorporates the features of the Cisco 9115ax model. The feature is very good. 

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

The current product, 2800, we have been using in excess of two years.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable. Meetings can be scaled with ease.

We do have plans to increase the usage of Cisco Wireless WAN. 20 is the upper limit for the number of access points that we plan to purchase for deployment in our company. 

Customer and technical support are very good. 

In the past we used D-Link Access Point and it was not very good. However, it is very good when we convert this new technology in respect of the Cisco 2800 Series. With the 2800 model there have been no issues save for the one involving compliance testing of the Cambium product for the POC. After two or three months it ceased to work properly. It is not a good product. We tested the Cambium product, as well.

The CLI command complicated things a bit and required of us to move and convert and to undertake certain CLI commands. 

We deployed with the assistance of a consultant. Our experience with them was very good. 

The local vendors helped us to deploy all our infrastructure and it is good that they did so. They are very friendly and their personnel is very knowledgeable.

The pricing is good. It is neither on the high nor low side. I consider it to be moderate. While other vendors provide the same, I find this model to be reasonably priced.

The solution is good and very easy to deploy, manage and configure. We have encountered no issues in this regard. 

We now plan to convert the 802.11ac to 802.11.ax. We intend to purchase a new access point to meet the technology challenges. We are now planning to move all access points to a new access point involving 802.11.ax technology.

The number of users making use of the solution depends on the employee count. I would say that perhaps 200 users are connected daily with the access point that we have. For the moment we have a very small area. In every department we have in excess of 100 to 150 users connected to one access point. This works fine. But, depending on the user size and the type of Wireless Card the user may possess, certain users experience some difficulties due to the Wireless Card's age and its lack of compatibility. As such, it is the user size which would account for certain issues, not the product size.

My advice to others is that the product and its performance are very good and scalable. Cisco is very good and the product is nice to deploy and to work with. One can use it with freedom from any latency. Overall, the product is very good and established and the company has been working for some time to make improvements to it. This and the reputation involved are why I use the product. 

I rate Cisco Wireless WAN as a ten out of ten.