Aruba Networks Wireless WAN Reviews

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've built out a new office and we use Aruba as our wireless system. Regular workers at our company use it. 

We built the office for about 500 seats. In the end, it should be able to seat roughly 500 people. If each person has at least three devices, that's close to 1500 devices on the network. That's the capacity that we're planning to use.

I'm coming from a Meraki environment, which was also cloud-based. I feel that Aruba allows for more flexibility when it comes to configuration and deployment. Aruba gives you the same feeling as using a controller on-prem, whereas Meraki seems to be hiding a lot of the configuration behind the scenes and forces you to actually call them and ask them to enable certain features. So far, using Aruba Central is more like using an actual controller based on the amount of configuration you can do.

Meraki just came out with profiles, but as far as I know, they don't have profiles for how your device connects to the actual physical LAN. They might have that now, or maybe with some of their devices that have multiple interfaces, but with Aruba, I could actually set up different interfaces on the actual access points depending on how they're connected to my network. This is an example of the granularity of the configurations that they allow you to configure.

Because it gives me more ability as an engineer to design the network, I'm hoping that it's going to be a little bit more predictable based on the fact that I have more features that I can change or set.

It's hard to say to be honest. I just started working through all of the different features they have. It's just up and running right now; we haven't finished really fully-configuring it. So far, I like the way that it integrates with the ClearPass security system on-site. It's just an authentication engine. Also, the web GUI for the wireless controller of Aruba Central provides us with a lot of different options. We can do a lot more with it than we could with Meraki. 

Not too long ago, Aruba was purchased by Hewlett-Packard. They must be still going through the integration because their websites are not really integrated together well, so it makes it hard to find documentation. I'm assuming it's going to get better, but right now, the integration between the support that you are getting from Hewlett-Packard, which is the parent company, and Aruba, they're not meshing together. That's one problem that I found. 

Aruba Central, because it's cloud-based (you're going to have this all the time with cloud-based solutions), there's going to be some sort of a lag between what you're seeing on the screen and what you're experiencing on-site.

With Aruba, you have more ability to see what's going on, but because you have more ability to see what's going on, it exacerbates the physical distance and the time-distance between what you're seeing in the cloud, and what you're seeing on-site. For example, they have a lot of tools for dynamic channel and power-out allocation. When you're dealing with something on-site, what you're seeing is more real-time. Maybe as I get used to working with Aruba, I'll be able to get in sync with what's happening in real-time, and with what I'm actually seeing on the product and the cloud.

This is a new deployment so I've only been using it for roughly six to eight weeks.

The stability and the scalability are both good.

The customer support is pretty good. 

The initial setup is as straightforward as you want it to be. To get it mostly set up didn't take that long, but to get it the way that you want it to be can take a little longer. For me, because I'm new to this service (not wireless infrastructure, but Aruba in general), the initial setup is pretty quick, but to get it fine-tuned, it takes a long time.

We have done most of the implementation, in-house. We have a sales rep that we call upon, but we're just using general support, that's about it.

As we're still currently in the process of deployment, I can't say exactly how long it takes. As this whole office is brand new, we hired people to run the cables and actually mount them. We didn't actually do the physical install of all these APs.

Two employees (including myself) handle all maintenance-related issues with this solution.

Overall, I think Aruba Central will produce a good return on our investment.

I don't know much about the licensing, but you license the APs to be able to use or to be configured in Aruba Central. I don't know how much it costs but I believe it's on a yearly- basis.

We evaluated Cisco Meraki again, and we also looked at Ruckus — in reality, we just read some of their documentation. We settled with Aruba because it seemed like it had more security features.

I only have experience with the controller-less environment, which is Aruba Central. When I do searches on Google, most of the information regarding that is for a controller-based or controller-less. I think Aruba Central is a newer way of deploying this solution, so because of that, there seems to be less information for it.

I would probably recommend talking to your representatives in order to get as much information about Aruba Central as you can before investing in it. If you can use a controller, it could be better or easier to find out information and learn how to configure it. 

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Aruba Central a rating of eight. If they improved their documentation and the other issues I mentioned, then I would give it a rating of ten.

We provide this solution for small and medium-sized businesses.

The product gives good stability and concurrency.

The product sometimes hangs during rush hour. For example, if concurrency is 500, it might hang once every 100 times. Similarly, the product is not stackable each time. There's no special box for clustering, while other vendors have that. Clustering can virtually utilize all the switches as one switch, giving customers more scalability.

Finally, it would be better for customers if Aruba provided more license options, like 5-year licenses, for example, and at a lower price. Customers don't like to pay from time to time for service for the product.

I've been providing this product for three years.

Aruba's stability is very good. I rate it a nine out of ten.

I rate Aruba's scalability an eight out of ten.

The warranty is important for us and the replacement time is good.

Because of its GUI, the setup is straightforward. When deploying the product, we must choose the models and do some small design work. For example, if the customer needs 50 to 100 users on the network, I would tell them what Aruba can do. I would also tell them next year what changes might be there, so I give them a few extra products to see if one might be better and recommend one.

Around three to five staff members are enough to maintain the solution. I remotely maintain the product for many of my customers.

The product's price is within range since it has a lower price. It's good for small businesses. Some of our products come with a three-year license.

We usually need some sessions for HPE products. When designing it for the customer, I could guarantee their system would not be down 99% of the time. I could also give them some advantages about why I use HP instead of Cisco, Fortinet, or Juniper, and some comparisons to clarify that. But if I give the customer some time for testing, it gives them confidence that I can test and ensure that this product is good.

I rate the product an eight out of ten since the product is from HPE, and they've used telecom before, so it is competitive. Anyone can use the solution without any problems. Likewise, the price and the service are very good.

My clients use it for the employees to log in to the Internet.

Once we install it, we don't get any complaints or adverse feedback from the client. They use it. It's seamless connectivity. And in case any failure happens, there is a long warranty period. So once we've got the access point replacement also done for one of the clients, that experience also was good.

There is room for improvement in the pricing, it's quite a premium. There are a few other brands that are coming up which are offering lower pricing. So maybe Aruba could think about being a more competitive price point.

I'm a system integrator. I've been selling it to my clients who use it in their offices.

I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. 

I would rate the scalability a ten out of ten. It is very scalable. There are more than a thousand users in my client's organisation.

The initial setup is easy. If we need to deploy 10 to 15 devices, that can be set up in about half a day.

It is expensive. I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten.

I would highly recommend using the solution. Aruba is one of the best. 

Overall, I would rate the solution a ten out of ten.

Warehousing and manufacturing are the primary ones that I've been in, but we also do campuses, schools, and healthcare.

I believe their Adaptive Radio Management (ARM) in its current form provides the best automated management of transmit power and channel. It does a really good job of managing proper design and wireless environment.

It is a little bit cumbersome to configure. If you're designing a WLAN and you want to do and cover certain types of clients, you really have to know different settings and how they interact with one another. If they could automate that so that if you are designing for one type of equipment, you could, in essence, run a wizard. That would certainly save on a lot of calls to tech support.

I have been working with this solution for 10 years.

Its stability is good. I've not seen major failures.

It is absolutely scalable.

It is pretty straightforward. Setting up the environment is fairly straightforward, adding access points to the environment is fairly straightforward, and the upgrade process is relatively straightforward. It comes down to when you're doing something specific in the design for the client that you're trying to deal with. That's where it becomes a little bit more complex. You need to know where to go and look, but the standard setup is very straightforward.

That's really subject to the type of environment you're deploying. If you're doing a full controller model with 200 APs, the initial deployment could be 150 grand. Maintaining that or maintaining support for that per year could be something like 10 to 15 grand per year.

In the cloud sense, the cloud is by the number of APs. So, everything is readily available.

I would not hesitate to implement it. It is a good product. I would rate it a nine out of ten.

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. 

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 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.