Aruba Wireless Reviews

We purchased Aruba Wireless for our new office that we were opening in Austin, TX. I needed a solution which was simple to administer, easy to implement, cost effective, and tied into our existing Active Directory environment.

As we have acquired a few companies, having the ability to have multiple RADIUS connections has helped us.

• Having it work with our Active Directory domain. 
• Having a RADIUS authentication was a bonus.

My biggest issue is the logging. It is hard to read when troubleshooting issues.

I would buy it again.

Doctors offices, car dealerships, and small business. It is used to provide internal, guest access.

We originally were using SonicPoint and had tons of connectivity issues. We switched to Aruba to fix all the issues with all my clients.

I like the IAP line and being able to have a true mesh without the need of a controller. The features included in them are also very nice with a built-in website for ToS for guest access.

The price point is pretty high compared to Ubiquiti and other equipment.

None, which is why this product turned into my go to solution.

The largest implementation that I was able to do was about 15 APs, with no issues.

I have never had to use technical support. The product is very simple to use.

I used SonicPoint. The connection stability was very poor. Though, the firewalls worked well.

The initial setup is straightforward. Configure one IAP and all the rest self-configure to that one.

Price is fairly expensive, however it is worth it. If the “master” fails, another AP can take over the role.

We evaluated Ubiquiti, Hive, Netgear, Cisco, and Meraki.

Grab a couple and test them out. The features that these things have available and the ease of setup are fantastic.

We are using Aruba Instant in four remote branch offices. We chose this solution at the time because of its controllerless feature and easy setup.

It provided an easy WiFi solution for our branch offices to deploy. We could usually have them up and running from out-of-the-box in about 10 minutes.

The controllerless feature. It will randomly pick one of the APs to be the designated master. If that access point fails, the role is moved to another AP. This saves a lot on management and infrastructure costs.

There is plenty of room for improvement. Reliability of a flawless upgrade after the 4.x releases is rare. There is a lot of manual intervention required lately due to random bugs. If you have a mix of APs using different firmware, it takes nothing short but an act of god to upgrade successfully. 

The product’s performance got worse with newer releases as well. It seems like they are adding more frivolous features and sacrificing stability and speed. The latest design of their APs removes the console port and requires purchasing an expensive proprietary cable just to access the console.

Occasionally, it needed to be rebooted. I used to have issues with DHCP. It is extremely buggy and difficult to upgrade with different firmware versions/models.

I do not know what the maximum number of APs in a cluster can be (for the Instant series), but I never seemed to hit a limit. At one site, we had 12 clustered together.

It seemed to be good when we needed it. This was before HPE purchased them. I have not had a need to contact support since then.

The other way around, we have switched away from Aruba to Ruckus. Aruba’s poor performance and random upgrade issues caused too much time consuming maintenance and troubleshooting. Ruckus Unleashed has been flawless; performance almost doubled, and it is far easier to configure.

The initial setup was very simple. There were some settings which were confusing and unlabeled when trying to use the online help with the newer firmware.

Trial different solutions and compare pricing to how well they perform, their stability, how easy it is to maintain, etc.

At the time when we first started using them, we did not evaluate other options. They seemed to be only ones back then who could cluster APs without requiring a separate controller.

Perform a site survey and get a model that supports the latest AC technology.

At first, the product was a solid 10. As time went on, and newer firmware was released, the product has dropped significantly to maybe a four or five rating out of 10 due to various bugs and design issues. We no longer use Aruba for any new sites and are slowly phasing them out from our locations with a different controllerless product that has drastically increased reliability and performance.

We currently have 500 access points deployed and operated by two controllers. Recently, all of the AP-125 models were replaced as part of a three year site wide upgrade, using AP-205H, AP-215, AP-225, and AP-325 models. 

Our wireless overhaul has reduced the number of wireless related help desk tickets by nearly 90%.

I work in a concrete fortress built 70 years ago. It obviously was not designed with wireless internet in mind. The software available allows me to make very specific changes to individual access points when throttling power/settings, which are critical to good working wireless signals. 

The ARM functionality does not always seem to perform how I would like. In some cases, I have had to manually assign channels to avoid channel confusion. Overall, it is a small task to worry about. 

HPE Aruba technical support is a nine out of 10. 

Quality of the product and the OS interface are a nine out 10.

We have made a full 32-site school transition from Mary to Aruba wireless.

Reliability, stability, and best use of our network.

The Aruba 335-AP.

There were stability issues, but only on initial deployment.

Very few scalability issues, mostly user error.

Great support.

We used Meru. We switched to Aruba for the newer technologies they presented.

It was pretty straightforward.

Licencing can be surprising and needs improvement. Look into all features, what you need versus what you want, and know that nothing comes without some kind of license.

Meru, Cisco, Aerohive. 

It's a great product, easy to use, easy monitoring, and great tech support. Plan out placement as thoroughly as possible.

• Different roles assigned to corporate and guest users.
• Corporate users authenticated via 802.1X against ClearPass with machine authentication. 
• Guest users authenticated via captive portal; ClearPass guest self-registration process.

• Better failover. 
• Aruba Mobility Controllers configured in master standby mode. 
• Centralized licensing. 

• HA: Apps failover without reboot. 
• ARM: Auto adjusts the power and channel. 
• Rouge Detection: Helps in identifying threats.
• Role assignment: Each user is assigned a different role based on the radius attributes returned by ClearPass.
• Firewall rules can be applied per role.
• AppRF: Helps to find out which applications are used by the clients.
• Denies inter-user traffic: It easily blocks traffic between users.

MAC authentication against an external Radius server while using 802.1X. This feature will help the L2 devices to authenticate via external Radius servers.

As L2 devices cannot do 802.1x. This feature is available in Cisco WLC, named for its MAC Filtering. 

We use wireless for all testing (on Apple, Chrome, and even tablets). We moved our school over to having a managed wireless network. This was my first time doing something like this and my colleague nor myself had any issues with the software or hardware. 

We have a large investment in Aruba Networks WiFi technology. We have recently deployed a mix of Aruba 225 and Aruba 335 units to provide complete and full coverage over multiple floors. We like the automatic hand-off of a connection to the access point with the strongest connection. We have had no issues deploying the access points, and look forward to years of service from these products, which is a strength that we are seeing. 

It has great equipment for wireless AP needs. We purchased 1000 units for each floor of our schools. They have a ton of useful business-related features and security features, but the biggest selling point was the ability to create two different SSIDs to control public versus private wireless networks. 

AirWave (monitoring tool)

If there is a network issue, there are so many ways to access the monitoring application. Also there are maps and labels to tell you exactly where an issue may be. The TAC Service is very responsive and persistent.

There is so much licensing, you literally pay for every solution, add-on, or cool feature. Compared to others, we were in the middle with pricing, but as you start to invest more into features it will get very pricey.

Stability and its ability to handle more devices has been an improvement for our organization.

Installation is relatively easy.

Configuration was not all that complicated, but there were some forums online that helped us just in case. They shed light on the deep config options.

We only had a summer to deploy.

We will be buying the ClearPass solution, which will be pricey. However, in the trial version, it has even more tools to manage a busy network.

We are the one of the official distributors of this product in Middle East.

ClientMatch technology and Air Monitor features of Aruba Wireless are special and classy.

• Point-to-point deployment products
• More varieties in Outdoor Access Points

Very Rarely.

Scalability has been one of the best features in which we can make our customers happy.

I would rate technical support as 10 out of 10.

We use a previous solution, but we switched due to stability and the possible integration with different products.

Basic initial setup is very easy when it comes to a new user on-premise.

Pricing support has always been cost-effective. Licensing is a one time purchase (only the cloud license has to be renewed, which is worth trying out).

It is always in comparison with Cisco Meraki and Ruckus, but Aruba is outstanding, especially when it comes to the hospitality sectors.

Try it out. You will enjoy the hard-core concept put behind Aruba Wireless.