One of the most popular comparisons on IT Central Station is Aruba Wireless vs Ubiquiti WLAN.
One user says about Aruba Wireless, " [It has] easy deployment of APs, MacCaching, and aesthetically pleasing GUI for configuration."
Another user says about Ubiquiti WLAN, "[It is] best for SOHO businesses."
In your opinion, which is better and why?
I'd have to say Aruba over Ubiquiti - Ubiquiti, to me, is more of a poor persons' Wi-Fi system and not really reliably suited for the serious commercial market. Here in the Bahamas we have Aruba for our local university campus and are now deploying the same for the local cable company. It is simply a night and day comparison in my opinion.
Also, Aruba has many more features and is well suited for malls, hotels and any location interested in a user friendly and communicative system.
Aruba is an enterprise WLAN solution, Ubiquiti is a home use solution although at my house, Aruba rules!
Aruba has a perfect enterprise solution with secure authentication, visibility & management and high customer experience.
I would go for the Aruba every time. Well made and has great support for techies. Easy to install and scale up. I have 92 access points and often have over 1900 devices connected at anyone time and it just works! I love how they tunnel the data across the wired network to the controller so our data is nice and safe.
Personally I like the Aruba. They can scale from small biz to large, controller based or stand alone. The hardware itself feels better/heavier than the Ubi which are light peices of plastic. Ive had terrible luck with Ubi stand alone APs in terms of range. If you decide on the controller based or IAP models they deploy with ease.
As my previous Post, it depends on the purpose or the type or network. For an enterprise network Aruba is rock solid, easy of configuration, Resilience Software with security functionality built in. Aruba radios are more sophisticated and powerful than Ubiquiti. If the requirement is a Soho network, with just a few Ads. Ubiquiti could be a good option.
Both Products provide good wifi coverage, Aruba I would use for Large Installations ie 200+ AP's while Unifi is great for smaller installation, however with Unifi it does have some restrictions when using multiple VLANS. TCO Unifi wins easy.. Aruba can get expense. IF your looking for just 6-12 access points for a small office look also at TPLINK.. they have been in the WIFI business longer and there products are also underrated in the business and enterprise space..
I have used Aruba the last 5 years now and just find tech support, access to support ,install, updates , and hardware to be simple and easy, granted applications do take some learning and configuring I have tried Meru, Aerohive and Cisco and Aruba has been in my experience best for business or education, the only knock id give it is every once and awhile updates can cause some weird reactions but in my experience this is common, so we resolved it by running test on a site at a time.
All I install is Ubiquiti I have no experience with Aruba, that being said I have 25 individual installs with largest having a IP count of 27 (a motel). One install is a Golf Country Club with 8 APs that on tournament days can have over 300 clients with no issues. So yes do recommend them to my Bosses (Clients)
Aruba is Leader in Gartner Quadrant, Aruba is the best solution for medium o great Enterprises. Its a professional solution.