Aruba Wireless Reviews

We deployed Aruba Wireless in our corporate head office, where we have a lot of business users. We use the product both as corporate WiFi and guest platform.

What I like best about Aruba Wireless is that it doesn't need a controller.

The product also has a GUI that's easy to navigate.

I also like that Aruba Wireless shows statistics that give you a lot of insight.

Aruba Wireless is a good product, but it still has some issues, especially at the beginning, where there's inconsistent syncing between the cloud and the APs. Sometimes, there's also a little lag when accessing the query.

I started using Aruba Wireless two years ago.

Aruba Wireless is a stable product.

I find Aruba Wireless scalable.

We've contacted Aruba Wireless support many times, but there weren't proper resolutions. Cases remain open for a few days, and then they'll automatically resolve. Then, sometimes, those cases will reappear.

Aruba support would be a four on a scale of one to five.

My company has a particular office on Cisco APs, then replaced completely with Aruba Wireless, one of the most extensive Aruba deployments in the company.

My company is still planning to switch from Cisco Wireless to Aruba Wireless in other offices. However, concerning Cisco Wireless, the product is pretty stable and solid. It has been running for years, but eighty percent of the environment is on Cisco Wireless, which Aruba Wireless will eventually replace.

Deploying Aruba Wireless is pretty straightforward.

It took several days to complete the deployment because the office was enormous and the number of APs deployed was quite significant.

It took one to two months to pre-stage, install, and make Aruba Wireless stable.

My company pre-staged the equipment and the APs, and then initially, the deployment team had a few issues during the Aruba Wireless installation.

A third-party team deployed the product for my company.

As Aruba Wireless doesn't require a controller, my company saved some money, so there's ROI from the product.

I don't know the exact costs associated with Aruba Wireless, but I have a rough idea, and it's not too cheap, though it's less costly than Cisco Wireless. Pricing for Aruba Wireless is moderate. It's a three out of five.

I have experience with both Cisco Wireless and Aruba Wireless.

My company uses Aruba Wireless IAP-245.

It's a centrally-managed cloud product.

Daily, the number of Aruba Wireless users varies. If there's a meeting, then many high-profile users will come. At least two or three times a week, there will be many product users, for example, IT engineers, designers, finance people, and people from other teams.

My advice for anyone looking into implementing Aruba Wireless is that it depends on the use cases. You get all the features available in Cisco Wireless at a lesser price, but in terms of support and stability, Cisco is ahead of Aruba. However, Aruba Wireless is a good option when considering the price and if you're a mid-sized organization.

Aruba Wireless gets a seven out of ten from me.

I work for an international service integrating company and we provide resources that are distributed internationally. We use Wireless for our branch and remote locations, and it's mainly for the internet. We are service integrators and deploy this solution as well as provide support to multiple customers. I am the director of technology and we are currently customers of Aruba. 

Reasonably priced and great for small to medium size organizations. One positive is that they're not constantly providing upgrades and that reduces exposure to complications.

I haven't yet seen a cloud-based wireless controller in Aruba and I'm waiting for that as well as a heat map analysis which is also lacking. I'd like to see application visibility in the next release on the inbound and outbound traffic flow. 

The solution is working well and we haven't had any issues with stability. Traffic flow is starting to increase now that workers are returning to the office, and we're likely to move to Wi-Fi 6 or Wi-Fi 7 in the near future.

Getting a response from technical support is really tough and is a pain point for us. It doesn't flow like in Cisco Tech.

Neutral

The initial setup is pretty easy, certainly not as complicated as Cisco. There aren't many upgrades or major bugs so it's more stable than Cisco. Deployment time depends on the size of the project. A small site will take about two weeks, a larger project might take three or four weeks. We have nine engineers supporting Aruba.

I'm unaware of the cost but I know it's cheaper than Cisco and that is why Aruba generally wins when a contract goes to tender or in the procurement phase.

A key factor is to ensure the solution suits your requirements. If a smaller organization is looking for an on-prem solution, then Aruba would fit in. For larger deployments, it would be better to go with Cisco. If you're an organization with 400 different sites, Cisco is the way to go. Aruba has proven itself for smaller to midsize deployments.

The solution does what it's meant to and I'm happy with it. I rate this solution eight out of 10. 

Aruba Wireless could improve the interface, it does not have a smart web interface. Other solutions have smart web interfaces, such as Cisco Meraki.

I have been using Aruba Wireless for approximately six years.

Aruba Wireless is stable.

Aruba Wireless is scalable for the needs of my customers. Some of my customers have approximately 1,500 users using the solution and it works well.

The price of Aruba Wireless is reasonable.

I rate Aruba Wireless a seven out of ten.

It's very adaptable from the access point line. We've found that ClearPass products have met our performance marks to the letter. They sold us on foundations stats and provided us with everything we asked for. They didn't come up short and were dead on the money.

It's provided our students with such reliable service that they just expect it to be there and take it for granted. They come to school, blackboard their work, get on YouTube, chat with friends, etc., and then go home, not realizing that they used the college network. We've been able to give them the best experience possible, and their feedback has been amazing. If there are ever any hiccups, the complaints and tickets pile up very quickly.

Our users, for the most part, haven't noticed hiccups because of the HA capability and the speed at which the controllers can authenticate. In fact, the last couple updates have boosted the quality and redundancy. Students have been able to watch YouTube videos without any noticeable rendering issues during hiccups.

We have a few IAP's and that's sort of like the standalone home router stuff. They're lacking in functionality, and though they are designed for standalone small deployments, they don't give you the good standalone fun stuff that you expect on a smaller scale router, like good DLNA. I wish they were a little bit more progressive on their IAP line.

Before HP bought Aruba, the release dates for codes were very predictable and quick. Code release were always visibly available. But since HP's acquisition, normal and quarterly release dates have been delayed, probably because of continued integration between the two companies. One specific issues is that we want to deploy their latest and greatest AP, but they don't have a GA code version available yet. We're still waiting.

I know that's a very specific complaint, but it actually has impacted us because we keep a flush on the older access points on hand just in the event code gets delayed by a few weeks. It's now been delayed by a month to two and I have to buy older access points. I can't deploy the latest and greatest.

I'm hoping things get smoothed out when they start getting their product lines and their flow of products and code deployments get fixed. I've been a little disappointed in that.

Also, I've found some of their onboarding stuff to be overkill and not worth the price. Their base stuff that's included in ClearPass is absolutely amazing, but the fringe things are superfluous and overcharged. The core stuff, though, is exactly what you pay for.

We're essentially an Aruba shop. We have uniform wireless AP's ranging from AP 125's, which are slowly going to be de-commissioned on our next product cycle, all the way up to AP 325's in our fleet. We have three 7240 controllers, and one 7210 controller as our test platform box that we use for benchmarking and a few other projects. They're basically fully-licensed and we are basically all-wireless. We do not have any HP switching gear in-house or Aruba switching gear. All of this is controllers and access points for the hardware side. For the software side, we have AirWave, which monitors our entire wireless fleet in controllers, and ClearPass. We have three ClearPass appliances -- one is a hardware box and another is a VM box. Both of them are 25K units and one 5K unit appliance, as well as hardware.

We've been using them for about 10 years I would say, maybe nine years.

It deploys extremely quickly.

The controller is a rock solid 10 out of 10, the access points are 9.5 out of 10, ClearPass is 10 out of 10, and AirWave is 9 out of 10.

It scales incredibly well. We did have some scalability issues with the system a long time ago, but they fixed that rather quickly. We also changed product lines at around that time. We were outgrowing the product a little bit too quickly, but since we've moved to the new controllers, it's been rock solid.

Technical support is very good, but it's dependent on the engineer you get. Sometimes you'll get a fantastic engineer and your problem is solved right away. Sometimes you might have to jump through a few more hoops. Sometimes you get the Cisco experience where you must follow the bouncing ball and complete all the 10 questions. You know how your product works, you don't need to complete 10 questions. You have a problem and want an engineer who can solve this really quickly.

I've noticed that it's been getting better over time. It used to be bad about four years ago. Over the last two to three years, it's been getting a lot better. As long as you fill out the surveys, I tend to find that the service has been getting better and better and better. You get your resolution pretty quickly. So I'm generally quite happy with the tech calls.

I've noticed they've scaled back a little bit of their SE's. I guess that's because they're such a big company.

The initial setup tends to be both straightforward and complex. Although I haven't done an initial setup in a while, everything just clicks together very well. When I did do an initial setup, the wireless controller was up and running within a few minutes. Deploying new controllers into the cluster takes seconds. There are a lot of wizards and guides built into the controllers for setup. So it's very easy.

ClearPass is a little harder, and AirWave is medium difficulty. ClearPass is the hardest part to get going without a good amount of training.

Day-to-day costs are generally very low. We have very few problems with the system, so our maintenance costs and hours that we put into solving problems is generally very low, which makes my life really easy to work on other issues that come up. Our wireless system generally doesn't generate a lot of day-to-day issues.

Initial costs for purchasing the system? It's on par with other vendors, but is a little bit cheaper than the equivalent of what we were getting out there, so I feel that we got really good value.

Make sure you buy the system that suits your network. They have a very broad pallet, so you can buy one that's overkill and buy one that's underkill. Make sure you spec and follow the guides appropriately. Also, you have to have a very good concept of how fast you're going to grow and how much you're going to grow because if you don't have a really good idea of what your growth curve is going to look like, you can easily buy something that doesn't fit perfectly.

Proper planning for scaling, and knowing what your growth curve is going to be is key. Work with the SE's on figuring out the plan is very important. Aruba has a very broad product line on scalability, so that can hurt you and help you at the same time. It is very nice to have.

The tool's most valuable feature is Aruba Central, which offers centralized management. You can manage its switches, APs, and data access. It is easy to manage the entire switches and APs. The solution is the best in terms of security and manageability. 

Our customers ask for a security portfolio, which the tool doesn't have. 

I have been working with the product for three years. 

I rate Aruba Wireless' stability a nine out of ten. It comes with a limited lifetime warranty. 

The solution is scalable. My territory has at least 70-80 customers. 

The tool's deployment is easy. Its deployment depends on the network type and scope of work. Simple scenarios can be completed in a week. Complex networks take two to three months to complete. 

Our customers who use Aruba Wireless are very much happy. We have a pre-sales team that helps us with solution design, POCs, installation, and implementation. Our customers appreciate this kind of support. I rate it a nine out of ten. 

Aruba Wireless does not have too many distinguishing feature sets. However, tunneling is more flexible in this solution than other solutions, such as Ruckus.

Aruba Wireless could improve the dashboard. It is not straightforward or intuitive to use and could be more user-friendly. For IT employees the dashboards are fine but when it comes to the end-user it is difficult. The Mobility Controller dashboard is not meant for non-IT employees.

I have been using Aruba Wireless for approximately 12 years.

Aruba Wireless is a stable solution. The controllers have been working well for over four years, but I have replaced a few APs.

I rate the stability of Aruba Wireless an eight out of ten.

Aruba Wireless is scalable. However, you need to purchase certain models of the solution to have high limits. For example, the 7210 model has hard-coded limits that I cannot increase.

We primarily support hotels and I have completed 500 rooms. The system can handle approximately 500 to 1000 users.

When we need to escalate to a priority one case it is difficult.

I rate the support of Aruba Wireless a two out of five.

Neutral

I have used Ruckus previously and when I compare this solution to Ruckus, they are both very similar. I implement both of them.

The initial setup of Aruba Wireless is a lot easier to do than on other solutions.

The price of Aruba Wireless could improve. It is expensive. However, I am able to reduce my costs because I do not use all the features in the controller, such as the AD integration and other enterprise features.

I prefer Ruckus over Aruba Wireless.

I rate Aruba Wireless an eight out of ten.

The primary use we have for the product is for users' corporate mobile access.  

The most valuable feature is the fact that it can work with many devices. It supports everything that we need it to. Whatever features are required from an enterprise standard, it supports all of them. The main advantage is broad device support.  

The area that has the most room for improvement is upgrades. What we have seen many times now is that new releases tend to have bugs. Sometimes the bugs are a little bad and cause some undesirable issues. The new code in the upgrades or something leads to conflicts. I would say testing releases before making them available is one of the areas which Aruba needs to improve most with the wireless product. More comprehensive testing is required for a better, more reliable end-user experience.  

It is not necessarily testing more often, it is just for new releases. The testing they need to do is to work more closely with different environments and take notice of where issues tend to occur. They should have some idea of what environments are experiencing issues more often by now because of which companies are reporting the issues. They can make compensations for testing in those environments.  

I do not have any new features that the product requires off the top of my head. I think that more than improving the product, there are management portfolios and other peripheral things that could be better integrated. But just doing better testing is the main improvement that they need to make.  

We have been using Aruba Wireless for between seven and eight years now.  

Aruba Wireless has been a stable solution for us. Once it was set up correctly it was fine. We had some initial hiccups. We still have issues with upgrades sometimes. Except for mostly minor issues, it has been a good solution.  

Aruba Wireless is easily scaled between a lot of devices and a lot of endpoints. When we decided to use it as our solution we had planned to use it exactly for its ability to scale. We went through a massive scaling and did not have issues with devices and endpoints.  

Right now we have 30,000 users and around 45,000 devices between those users. It does not seem that there are many limitations for scaling the product's use.  

Technical support is good. The only issue we have had with them is that we often have to be referred to their engineering response team. That situation actually happens most of the time. On the other hand, we do not need to use support very often.  

So, yes, we get support for the product and we eventually get the solution we need, but most of the time it gets referred to their engineering team to get the complete solution. Overall, the support is pretty good.  

The initial setup was a little bit complex because our environment is complex. Because of that, I would say the initial setup was complex. It may not be as complex for other companies.  

It took almost a year for deployment. But there are two sides to the setup. One is the product is good and it can be configured to do what we need. But our environment was complex because it involves some legacy devices and some really advanced new devices and technologies as well. It is good that the product is able to support both of those needs.  

We have a couple of IT specialists, one architect, and a development operations engineer for deploying the updates and maintaining the solution. In total, it is around four or five people who maintain the product. Not everyone needs to be dedicated to it full-time.  

The advice that I would give to others who are looking into implementing Aruba starts with that it is a good product. It has some really good features. But the other reality is that you might need to be prepared to face some hiccups with any upgrades and with the setup.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate the Aruba Wireless solution as a seven-point-five out of ten. Because of the upgrade issues and the persistence of those, I would rate it a seven.  

The primary use is for distributing internet bandwidth. The performance is good.

The benefit is the constant delivery of internet bandwidth. Everybody is getting internet access properly. When 40 - 50 people are sitting in a small area it is capable of delivering internet to them constantly.

It delivers constantly, there is no break in the internet using these devices. It also automatically gets connected when the internet comes back. Failure is very low.

What I would like to have with these kinds of devices is the most enhanced security. For example, if I could apply security from wireless devices, that would be great.

I would also like more enhanced reports on user adoption, who is getting what bandwidth. That is the kind of report I should be getting.

It's completely stable.

Scalability is good. Suppose there are 20 people in a room and suddenly 10 more people come into the room. It automatically scales up and provides the internet.

A situation where we have had to contact technical support has never happened in the last year. It has been really constant in the distribution of the bandwidth.

I wanted experience using more products. We were already using another product but I thought, "Okay, let's try Aruba this time and see what the feedback is like." I thought Aruba would give me better performance, after looking at the performance of the existing devices.

When selecting a vendor, the most important factor is that support has to be there. I would look for constant support from any vendor. It can't be that the product is sold and after that there is no support. There has to be constant and quick support from the vendor.

The setup is straightforward, it's not complex. Things are quite easy with Aruba.

We were looking at different products for our new premises. Aruba was known to me so I compared Aruba with Ruckus.

I would definitely recommend Aruba devices.

I rate Aruba Wireless at nine out of 10 because of the performance and stability of the product. It's not a 10 because it needs enhanced security and a more granular level of reporting. If these kinds of things were provided it could be a 10.