Cisco Wireless Reviews

Survey/design and deploy Cisco Wireless (3500/3600/3700) in hospitals/universities.  The object was 100% coverage with RTLS support.

The challenges are RF propagation control and saturation with RRM. Another is future-proofing capacity. In the 3700 series, ATF was the limiting factor in Cisco’s solution.

Compared to other solutions, captive guest network is one of the best isolation and tunneling. All other features of RF are average.

• The ability to disable RRM or set hybrid RRM. This provides a more granular design of RF in the environment.
• CLI controller/RF debugging.

• RRM
• ATF
• Ortho-Polarization
• AP concurrent client processing

No issues with stability.

Performance issues.

I would rate tech support 7.5 out of 10 on the RF side. Overall, it’s what you would expect for Cisco.

Switched to Cisco because of upper-level decision.

Pretty straightforward if you understand RF and what the options mean on the WLC.

Expensive.

Aruba, Aerohive, Ruckus, UBNT, Mikrotik.

I’ve been working with Cisco Wireless since 2008. Although CPI and controllers have come a long way, the AP is the limiting factor. There are a lot of assumptions in the controller algorithm.

Don’t just conduct a passive survey. Set up three APs and do an active survey with RRM enabled among three.

Cisco’s wireless solution is a seven out of 10, in my experience, compared to other solutions. It has limitations on the polarization processing.

We use Cisco Wireless for wireless connection.

The most valuable feature of the solution is reliability.

The solution could be cheaper and have a better web interface.

I have been using Cisco Wireless for ten years.

I rate the solution ten out of ten for stability.

I rate the solution a nine out of ten for scalability.

The solution’s technical support is average.

The solution’s initial setup is complex, and an average user will not be able to do it. You need to know the command line to deploy Cisco Wireless.

Users have to pay a yearly licensing fee for Cisco Wireless.

The solution can be deployed both on-premises and on the cloud. You need to be very technical to deploy and maintain the solution. I would recommend the solution to other users.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

It is an extremely stable and scalable solution. Their documentation and support are also very good.

There is no technology without room for improvement. The main setback with Cisco solutions, not only with Cisco Wireless, is having to update the OS manually. We are now migrating to Miraki, so we've been able to work that out. 

There is also a small gap in the space of compatibility.

We've been deploying Cisco Wireless in our environment for over 20 years.

It is extremely stable.

It is extremely scalable.

Their support is very good, and their documentation is also very good.

We have only been working with Cisco Wireless. We are a partner and reseller.

Its implementation is not complex. I have trained experts working with me, so it is not at all complex.

Its price is a bit high. It is more expensive than its competitors, but when I look at the return on investment, it is worth it.

If budget is an issue, then you can go for a cheaper option. If you're not planning for a big environment, you don't necessarily need to invest in Cisco because of the price.

I would rate it an eight out of 10. Overall, I am very satisfied with this solution.

We as a system integrators provide wireless solution for big enterprise and PSU's. This solution primarily focuses on giving secured wireless access to employees and internet access to guests. 

We have seen that Our organization and many other organization for whom we have provided wireless solution have improved using this product because it helps enhance user experience. We use video communication a lot, like Skype, lync, etc and earlier we used to get a lot of jitters and faced lot of issues during voice or video calls. Presently the technology as moved to 802.11ac wave 2 which gives more bandwidth to the end users connecting to the 5ghz band.

From a technical point of view, I think the major difference in feature set has been the granular application visibility and control that an wireless administrator has over the wireless network. The other valuable point would the ease with which one can give secured access to anyone coming with a laptop, mobile , tabs etc..

I think the technology is already at a level where it's good enough. In some ways, it's better than wired. But there is always a backlash when it comes to lack of accessibility. It's not the solution itself, as much as how it's deployed.

The product could be improved with interference reduction. Because wireless frequency interferes with microwave or Bluetooth technologies, which are hindrances to a genuine wireless connection. A lot of users still use legacy wireless adapters and they do not experience the speed that they could get using the latest technologies. The number of devices on the market makes wireless communications complex. If the problem of interference could be reduced it would further improve utility and ease of system design.

The latest version of this technology is stable. It is stable but, the devices that are accessing the network are very dynamic. It is not as much the solution that is unstable as that the devices accessing it are constantly changing.

The scalability of the solution is excellent. Wireless used to be a non-critical part of the network earlier and it started with speeds as low as 11 Mbps. Now you're seeing the speeds of five gigabits with Wifi 6. Wireless is an innovative technology, and it has been changing. Scaling is something we need to do very frequently to meet the demands for higher speeds, higher bandwidth, and higher coverages. 

You need wireless expertise during the design phase, but I think a typical network engineer with fundamental knowledge can take care of day to day operations quiet easily. Once it is deployed and implemented, the operational costs are very low.

We get help from Cisco support whenever it is required. The level of service is excellent.

We definitely tried many solutions before going mainly with Cisco Wireless, including Ruckus and Aruba.

The major reason to go with cisco has been the support system. Nobody can beat Cisco when it comes to their support infrastructure and the SLA (Service Level Agreement) that they provide. The number of engineers who are available who are Cisco certified is much greater than those certified in Aruba or Ruckus. So anybody who deploys Cisco can easily get a Cisco Certified Engineer to take care of there wireless network.

We do the entire deployment as well as the design. It takes around an average 20 days to complete the entire deployment for a 1000-user network.

Cisco support has been a major help because right from the beginning Cisco support strength and the technical licensing centers played a major part in the success of deploying in the Enterprise Network. People buy it because of this. There are other, cheaper products available with a lifetime guarantee but without any support. Cisco took care of the critical issues whenever we needed them to. 

We are system integrators and we do have our own team who design and implement wireless solution..

We have definitely received a return on our investment because the major part of any wireless solution is the quality of connectivity. When you have good connectivity, you can access the environment, go inside the network and access production resources from a mobile device sitting basically anywhere. 

Cisco licensing is usually provided for 1 year, 3 years, or 5 years. You can get a hardware SLA or hardware and software SLA for a period of 5 years. Longer terms of SLA influences  the pricing.

License pricing also depends on the features that are being used.

Though cisco is our first choice, we have evaluated other options like Aruba and Ruckus.

Whatever solution used, the design of the wireless network is the most important part of how well it works. I would plan on putting in 60% of the effort to the design and 40% to the deployment. In the designing phase, you must actually get into the network, look for interference issues, create proper wireless heat maps and place the wireless network connection points in the exact location where it is required. 

I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

Cisco Wireless products are easy to use. 

Cisco Wireless is stable.

Cisco Wireless is scalable. 

It wasn't easy to set up Cisco the first time, but it got easier once I knew what to do. We have a 12-person technical team to deploy and maintain these solutions. 

Cisco Wireless is expensive.

I rate Cisco Wireless nine out of 10.

I primarily offer my clients solutions with managed services, the standard managed services. It is used for wireless connectivity.

Our team is able to design the solution with the necessary features. It's flexible.

The solution overall is quite good.

Support is fantastic. They are helpful and responsive.

It's a very simple solution to set up.

We find the solution to be scalable.

The stability on offer is great.

The pricing of Brazil is very expensive. When you look at other options, they are much cheaper. 

I've been working with Cisco since 2000. I've had well over a decade of experience with the product so far. I've used it for a long time. 

The stability has been great. We haven't had any issues. It doesn't crash or freeze. There aren't bugs or glitches that you have to deal with. The performance is good. 

We've found the solution to be quite scalable. If a company wants to expand it, it's not a problem.

We have about 200 people using Cisco Wireless right now. 

Technical support from Cisco is excellent. We are very satisfied with their level of attention. They have always been helpful and responsive. 

I have experience with both Meraki and Cisco.

The initial setup is simple. A company shouldn't have any issues with it. It is not something that is too difficult or complex. 

We have five engineers that can handle deployment for our clients. 

We've used both consultants and resellers when it comes to setting up the solution.

If our clients need assistance, we can help them set it up.

The cost of the solution is quite high.

Clients can pay a licensing fee on a monthly basis. 

Any extra fees would depend on the individual client projects.

We're a Cisco partner. 

I used various deployment models, including cloud and on-premises as well as hybrid.

I would rate the solution at a ten out of ten. We've been quite happy with its capabilities overall.

We use it for Wi-Fi at home. We'll have all devices connected to this Wi-Fi router.

As for valuable features, it is tough, has a nice speed, and is quite reliable.

I would improve the Wi-Fi range. Sometimes, in some rooms the signal could be a bit better, a little stronger.

I've been using Cisco Wireless for a couple of years.

I have had no problems at all with stability.

The installation is very easy and straightforward. I did it myself.

It's a good device, and I would recommend it. On a scale from one to ten, I would rate it at eight.

Before Cisco bought Meraki, we used internal private clouds and offer them to all our customers about five years ago. We wanted a solution that has a centralized core in order to have control, instead of having to install controllers in each customer that you have. We were able to utilize the elements of the core and provide a solution to our customers similar to that of Cisco Meraki. Once the customer's contracts ended, we changed the solution to Aruba or Cisco Meraki.

If you think back five years ago, the radios and MIMOs worked better than the other solutions that you had. For now, the Catalyst line has more capabilities to deliver more conductivity for customers for each access point. You can integrate a lot of available solutions on the core to have more enhanced information and allowing businesses to have more control. In distribution centers and in factories it is better to use this solution than Meraki systems because you have more control over the setup and information that you can achieve on those older radios.

The main problem that traditional solutions like this one have is that you need to buy packages to deliver a similar solution as a Meraki one. If there was a package that you can buy and have all control features similar to the Meraki dashboard, such as user access control. We can sell this solution more easily if you have those packages available. I do not know if it is a sale strategy for Cisco to limit the functionality.

I have previously used and I am still using the IAP model solution from Aruba. This is a solution that can merge different features. For example, we can control the access points locally and there is a cloud platform to manage everything with Meraki that you do not have in traditional Cisco solutions like this one.

I have evaluated the Cisco Catalyst line solutions in the past.

I rate Cisco Wireless a nine out of ten.