Aruba Networks Wireless WAN Reviews

The main use case for this solution is in the education sector and public services.

Aruba Central seems to be a good way to go in cloud management. However, compared to Cisco Meraki, it's still very early days.

The product should improve Aruba Central.

I have been working on Aruba Networks Wireless WAN for five years.

The solution is stable.

The solution is very scalable. 

The initial setup is not difficult, but it has its limitations, with guest authentication. The deployment takes a couple of hours. It is very simple. However, it depends on how you do it. If you use the virtual controller, it is pretty easy. But it has got its limitations. If you do it by Aruba Central, it does take an awful amount of time.

With Aruba, you get what you pay for compared to the other vendors. Although Cisco is very expensive and their management is way better than Aruba Central. So, you have to consider what you are after. But price-wise, they are really good.

I can’t see Aruba helping me, but it does its job.

I would recommend this tool because it's stable, easy to deploy, and easy to manage. I would rate it nine out of ten. 

Aruba Networks Wireless WAN is very stable and reliable. In the solution, the first part is obviously its security part because security is what is concerning in any Wi-Fi situation. In the aforementioned scenario, Aruba Wi-Fi solutions are very secure. They have some Triple DES or whatever security standards are there. So, corporate people are comfortable using Aruba Wi-Fi, especially in any enterprise or SMB segment.

The price for the license could be a bit improved since it is the only area with an issue.

I have experience using Aruba Networks Wireless WAN for years. I used to supply Aruba even before HP acquired Aruba. So, I used to supply it from eight to ten years ago.

Aruba is a very stable system.

Most of the enterprise customers, big names, buy it without giving any second thoughts.

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

I'm not aware of its scalability, but I have seen that a big complex, maybe a 14 to 15-story or 20-story building, can be covered up. Many hotels are covering it up. Also, they have around 10,000 users. Aruba Wi-Fi is very good.

Though not all are my customers, I am aware that many of the big hotels, like Marriot, work using Aruba. Few of the five-star hotels in and around Bombay.

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

Though I am not aware of the customer support, I am assuming it will be as per HP standards, which is quite good.

The initial setup of the solution is simple, and the setup is as per industry standards. Hence, everybody has to follow the setup phase.

Regarding the time needed for deployment, the survey takes time, first of all. Then, you have to set up the Wi-Fi. Actually, if you talk about the installation part, installation takes time because different rooms and false ceilings are there, and so the installation of Wi-Fi takes time. Once the installation is done, the setting up of the Wi-Fi takes maybe a couple of hours. In short, the installation takes more time since it's more on the infrastructure side.

The solution is deployed on-premises.

Aruba has an annual subscription, and they have three years and five years costs. People generally take the three years' cost. It has to be taken because, basically, licenses are needed more from the security perspective, nothing else.

It is expensive, but it is also very competitive. So I wouldn't say it is very high on the price. It can compete with many, many local players as well as equivalent players.

I rate the pricing a seven or eight on a scale of one to ten, where ten is the highest and one is the cheapest.

Aruba has a very good reputation. Aruba products are very stable, and they give regular updates. Whatever Aruba has mentioned in their literature, regarding their bandwidth, etcetera, is correct. One can rely on what they write in their literature.

I would definitely recommend the solution to those planning to use it. In the Wi-Fi space, Aruba is an extremely good product.

For Aruba's software and hardware, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

I use the solution for cloud operations.

It's just a normal tool. I would really say nothing is valuable to me about its features. It's not special.

It had been working in the past few years, but after aging, it has dropped down.

The solution has bugs. It really has bugs, and you have to wait until it happens, then you realize it. The aforementioned area can be considered for improvement.

I have been using Aruba Networks Wireless WAN for five years. I am a customer of the solution.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a five, six, or seven out of ten. It's not bad.

I rate the support an eight out of ten since it is good.

Positive

Regarding the initial setup, if one is difficult and ten is easy, I rate its setup a three to five. You have to be a big technical person to deploy the solution.

I rate the solution a six or seven out of ten.

We mainly use Aruba Networks Wireless WAN for our corporate wireless access for corporate mobiles, corporate laptops, and guest wireless access. We also use the product because of its tax asset.

The most valuable feature of Aruba Networks Wireless WAN is centralized management. It has features like other solutions, but it's easier to manage. Aruba Networks Wireless WAN also has a tax asset benefit which is good.

What needs to improve in Aruba Networks Wireless WAN is the support because it takes quite a long time for the support team to resolve issues. Whenever a new version or update is released, my company sees many bugs and issues, so that is another area for improvement as well.

I have one year experience with Aruba Networks Wireless WAN.

Aruba Networks Wireless WAN is a stable solution, but whenever there's an update, many bugs and open issues arise, but as a product, it's stable.

Aruba Networks Wireless WAN has some scalability issues with the on-premises model. My team may have to explore its cloud model.

The technical support for Aruba Networks Wireless WAN needs improvement because it takes longer for the team to resolve bugs and issues.

It's been a long time since Aruba Networks Wireless WAN was set up in my company, so I can't remember if there was any complication involved, but the deployment model was straightforward, and there wasn't that much complication. Even a new addition to Aruba Networks Wireless WAN was straightforward. Deployment took no longer than two hours.

I'm not sure about the licensing cost or pricing for Aruba Networks Wireless WAN.

Aruba Networks Wireless WAN has been in the company when I joined, so I'm unaware of other solutions evaluated it.

More than ten thousand people, particularly enterprise users, use Aruba Networks Wireless WAN.

Two to three people handle the deployment and maintenance of Aruba Networks Wireless WAN.

What I'd say to others looking into implementing Aruba Networks Wireless WAN is that it has scalability issues and its support needs improvement. It has many open bugs that could stop you from moving forward.

I'm rating Aruba Networks Wireless WAN seven out of ten.

My company has a partnership with Aruba, but it's not a reseller.

We use it for wireless access in our sales offices. It is a wireless access network.

It works well. It is reliable. 

We just upgraded it to 6G. The main reason why we chose Aruba is that we are an Aruba partner and we get significant discounts on Aruba.

The initial setup is straightforward and simple. 

It is scalable. 

It's providing us with the coverage that we need. The speed is good. Basically, you set it up and forget it, which is good.

We're not very sophisticated with it. We just use the wireless and it just does what we need it to.

It works. We don't look at it any deeper than that and don't find any features ar missing. 

We had one problem with one of our remote sites. We opened up a ticket and it turned out there was a problem with one of the end users' desktop. It needed to be patched and support was very good about it. They told us about it and we did it and it worked. It was nothing to do with the product itself, really. 

We've used the solution for ten years or so. 

The stability, in general, is good. We have problems from time to time; however, for those cases, most of the time, it's related to users. They might have patches that need to be installed or things like that.

It's generally reliable and there are no bugs or glitches. 

It meets our needs. We find it to be scalable. 

We have maybe 20 to 30 people using the solution at this time. 

We do not have plans to increase usage as we don't have any other locations for anything.

Tech support is efficient. If we have a problem, we open up a ticket and they help.

The solution is easy to set up. It is straightforward and simple. It's not overly complex. 

We have one person on staff that can deploy and maintain the product. They are a network admin. 

I wasn't involved in the process of looking into ROI, if that was even considered.

The pricing is good for us. As a partner, we get discounts. 

I don't have any information in regards to the exact costs we pay. 

We are resellers of Aruba. We don't do a lot with the wireless. We consume it. We don't sell it.

The solution works well and it does what we need it to do. 

It's a good product. Cloud management works very well. I would recommend cloud management to others any day.

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten. 

There is a clustering feature, so the APs immediately switch back to the next available controller. The users will not notice any impact and will feel connected to the network. They will not notice any disconnection.

The AirMatch feature is also very useful. If the radio channels and the power being utilized in the RF environment are filled up, it will update all of those channels and power transmission.

They have to work on their Aruba Central cloud platform. There are still some glitches such as not showing proper user details.

When we removed the AP from the Aruba Central cloud, it showed up as being connected to Aruba Central. They need to fix these issues.

I would like to see artificial intelligence and machine learning in the next release. Other vendors already have artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities in their cloud platform-based wireless solutions.

I've been working with this solution for the last six years.

It is a stable solution.

Aruba Networks Wireless WAN's technical support was very good in 2017 and 2018. Now, the calls go here and there, and we don't get an immediate response.

The initial setup was very easy. It's not that complex.

Compared to Cisco, Aruba Networks Wireless WAN's user interface is very nice.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate this solution at nine.

We're basically using the solution to replace our StarVPN connectivity. Prior to this, we had a bunch of VPNs that were creating our WAN that would link back to our central office. It simplified our network. That's what we used it for. We installed one in every office to create the WAN between offices. In the potential next phase, we were looking to then possibly decrease our internet connectivity to each site, however, we didn't do that quite yet.

The two most valuable features for us were the fact that we were able to simplify and recreate our WAN with a similar security presence and also the ability to run a single WiFi SSID across the entire company with authentication.

It worked as delivered, and therefore, there's nothing to really add. If you were asking me what they could do better, unfortunately, I quite honestly can't think of anything right now. It doesn't mean that if I was in the middle of using it, there isn't something that would be annoying to me. However, right now, it’s absolutely fine.

The integration, pricing, and configuration could always be improved upon.

I’ve used the solution for two years.

It's quite stable. It didn't come down yet. We didn't have any issues for the past year or so. We did execute a couple of updates. Those were clean and it worked just fine. It’s reliable. The performance is good.

It worked for the scale that we asked it to. That said, we installed it and we didn't grow it. The whole company, about 175 people, use the product.

The technical support was great. We’ve been satisfied with their service.

I’ve also dealt with Cisco and found Aruba more affordable with better support.

It was straightforward to set up. It worked as advertised. I didn't do the actual deployment myself. However, my deployment team was able to roll it out earlier than projected. Prior to making the selection, I had estimated more time than it took for us to deploy. In that sense, it was fantastic. The deployment was very quick.

We've got five people supporting all of our networking and hardware requirements. We don't have any one person dedicated to it.

I’m not sure of the exact pricing of the product.

This solution is more than worth considering. I've used Aruba in different organizations. It historically has, to me, been an easier install than Cisco wireless solutions have been. It consistently gives similar services at a lower price point. I have found that their pre-sales teams and support have been better than similarly situated Cisco WiFi and WAN products.

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

Aruba Networks Wireless WAN is deployed for communication, and we have about 13 sites controlled in a centralized location. We have next-step security authentication, and it supports end-user secure connectivity. The combination and mechanism of multiple servers are used to authenticate the user to connect to the network securely.

Our whole company uses this network, providing wireless connectivity on all sides. So this solution impacts our day-to-day tasks.

The most valuable feature is security, which is important to the company and end user. In addition, the solution's strong security mechanism and user-friendly web console are great. The software and hardware are excellent, and we can efficiently deploy and manage these devices.

Regarding additional features, the solution currently has a Windows update problem. As a result, the solution requires daily Windows updates and installations as well as launches of new patches. It also requires updates to the iOS firmware to support the day-to-day patches submitted by Windows.

Because we work out of Pakistan, we sometimes have to deploy this solution in areas with a lot of dust. So, it would be great if Aruba improves the environmental hardware materials to mitigate troubleshooting and decrease the amount of dust it accumulates.

We have been using this solution for seven years and recently deployed the latest version. It is deployed on a local network.

It is a stable solution.

The solution is scalable. We have a lot of users, most of whom are IT specialists. For example, we have four people required for maintenance in the IT department and two junior network engineers continuously controlling the solution.

The technical support for this product regarding the vendor is great. Our principal or local vendor is available to facilitate any issues that arise.

Before using Aruba Networks Wireless WAN, we had been working on Cisco and Awale, which are somewhat competitors of this solution. We also deployed Awale, which works fine, but Aruba Networks Wireless WAN is widely used in our company.

The initial setup was straightforward, and it took about two days to deploy. We used a third party to deploy the network and performed day-to-day tasks easily. There was no issue with installation, and deployment on a large scale was painless.

Regarding licensing costs, our procurement and finance departments are directly involved, and we evaluate the functionality of this product. Based on the market comparison, Aruba Networks Wireless WAN is cheaper than Cisco, and the web experience is great. As a result, its functionality and performance are practical.

If we were not using Aruba Networks Wireless WAN, we would use Cisco. Cisco and Aruba have the same solution and provide a controller-based network and ISE. The functionality of both devices is the same, and the key difference is the vendor and branding. The dependability and scalability of both products are good too.

I rate this solution an eight out of ten. 

We have vertical markets and there's almost no real use case since it's all industry. Aruba is not really designed to be used in private households. We do have a few private customers. However, they have a very high demand on security. If they have a high demand on the performance, we definitely reach with Aruba however, the majority of our customers are industry related.

For one customer, what happened was they used to be on a different network on NPLS. That was very expensive and software-defined wide-area networking is a huge cost saving and much easier to be managed.

The solution can save money and can be easily implemented, depending on the environment.

It’s very stable and reliable.

There aren’t really any large improvements necessary. There are smaller improvements we request, however, they are communicated directly. We are not an end-customer. We use our direct channels.

The initial setup is complex.

I’ve been using Aruba since 2005.

The solution is very, very stable. It’s not buggy. It’s not glitchy. It doesn’t crash or freeze. It’s very reliable. The performance is great.

It is scalable in its limits. It's scalable. The main purpose is for bigger organizations - for public, schools, universities, or bigger industries. You could scale it down also to household usage or to high-demand private usage. You can do a lot with it.

We have implemented it twice on a university campus and there we have maybe 2,000 to 3000 users. We have industry users. I would say it could be anything between 3,000 and 10,000 users.

If it is a midsize company, they don't have planning for scaling expenditure. With the bigger companies, they plan to expand, however, then you always bump into Cisco. It’s the biggest competitor and the most popular one.

Customer service from HP is pretty good.

Positive

We didn’t really use a different solution. There wasn't much in the market in 2005. When we started, we started with wireless into the early and late nineties. By that time, you had very small island solutions. There were three coming market and a few other products that were controller-based, and almost nothing was controller based.

If you look at the competitors, they're almost all the same, they're just the different flavors and whatever you are used to it and how comfortable you feel with the product. We do WAN products with Aruba. We do WAN products with Fortinet as well. We do software-defined networking, the same as Aruba offers; however, there's not much difference between them.

We’ve also used Ruckus. We have a few customers in the carrier business, and Ruckus is primarily used in the carrier business. It's placed in the same league as Aruba.

In terms of the initial setup, it’s complex. It's not straightforward. The only straightforward item is the very instant access points; however, as soon as we’re working in a complex environment, then it takes a lot of knowledge. It takes good knowledge and could take a few days to implement.

I’d rate it a two out of five on a scale from one to five, where one is extremely difficult, and five is extremely easy.

We are a very small company. We normally use the IT department of our customers, and they are trained. They keep maintaining their own system. For smaller customers, we do the maintenance, and we also do the monitoring. We have partner companies. We swap our 24/7 services. If you offer 24-hour service, it takes about six to eight technicians to take care of the 24/7 services.

We don't monitor if the company or the customer has any ROI. It's quite difficult to answer what the ROI is, and what the return of investment is. Most customers don't even look at ROI on wireless.

The license is a one-time subscription. It's a one-time purchase, however, the update is a subscription.

It is unfortunately very expensive. The subscription, the software maintenance subscription, and even the one-off pricing are very high.

The license costs reflect the features. The more features you require, the more you have to pay.

We use different versions of Aruba.

We are Aruba partners. As a partner, of course, I will try to encourage other people to look at Aruba and implement Aruba. Some of the features are not unique however they are very highly developed, and the solution is highly sophisticated. It's the best of its breed. As a partner with different vendors, however, you have to look at the requirements, and you have to make a decision on the requirements.

I’d rate the solution a ten out of ten.

We have used Aruba Networks Wireless WAN a lot for retail, manufacturing, and deployments on educational campuses. Most of the deployments I've done are enterprise-grade across multiple sites, utilizing the ClearPass solution so that all the enterprise sites are managed at one location. The use cases can vary.

The most valuable feature of Aruba Networks Wireless WAN is centralized management capability. You don't have to have wireless LAN controllers at every location.

Aruba Networks Wireless WAN could improve the solution availability. The selection of mounting hardware for the various radios is limited and poor. Often, you have to create and manufacture your own mounting hardware in certain situations. 

The specific information available for external dB gain antennas is virtually non-existent or poor. You have to do a lot of research to find out what external antennas are going to suit your environment. Aruba Networks Wireless WAN doesn't do a good job of helping, and that's one of their downfalls.

If you're using external antennas, you want to accomplish some gain by using external antennas. There's not a lot of information specific to Aruba Networks Wireless WAN, even on the Aruba platform, that provides you with solid information and recommendations about antennas that would best suit their solution.

I have been using Aruba Networks Wireless WAN for approximately 10 years.

Aruba Networks Wireless WAN stability is good. It has a low failure rate. I don't typically do service, but the failure rates are less than or equal to their largest competitors. It's a pretty stable environment.

I have found Aruba Networks Wireless WAN to be scalable. If you use either the ClearPass or the AirWave, it's very easy to scale.

I typically don't use technical support of Aruba Networks Wireless WAN. There's been a few instances where I've had to make a call, and they were fairly responsive.

The initial installation of Aruba Networks Wireless WAN is easy. The enterprise-level deployments are straightforward. 

The maintenance of Aruba Networks Wireless WAN depends on the size of the enterprise solution that you have deployed. However, typically, it's relatively easy, because if you use ClearPass or AirWave, you can have one person monitor an entire enterprise. It's not difficult.

Different sectors have their own set of ROI indicators that they follow. For example, retail has a set of ROIs and manufacturing and another different set than retail. You can make your own algorithms to determine our ROI, I typically don't focus on that.

The price of Aruba Networks Wireless WAN depends on how you buy it. From a pricing perspective, if you choose to buy Aruba Networks Wireless WAN as an MRC, it's dependent upon the radio and the solution that you choose what your MRC is. If you choose to buy it outright, they're competitive with their competitors, and they're probably four percent or five percent lower than their largest competitor.

I rate Aruba Networks Wireless WAN an eight out of ten.