What needs improvement with Cisco Wireless WAN?

Cisco's complex structure was a factor that led us to consider replacing it. It is also more expensive than other alternatives. We had issues with roaming between access points, especially when moving from 2.4 GHz to 5 GHz bands.

As far as I can remember, there's open authentication in WLAN networks, but there might be an issue with the encryption process. Most likely, there's no encryption. If encryption could be added, that would be a feature I'd expect from the build.

The main issue associated with the product revolves around the licensing part and some support-related problems. The licensing area and support require improvements. In my country, the technical support offered is not good enough. The technical engineers who can support us are not that good. There is a shortage of technical people in our country. It is difficult for us to find someone who can help us.

The support of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required.

The product must be made more user-friendly.

In terms of improvement, there is always something that could be enhanced. For example, we can't change wireless channels in Cisco Meraki due to a recent standard update. We have asked for help, but no solution has been presented to us yet.

The console interface is not very user-friendly. It's a bit complex and difficult to navigate. Even some integrations can be challenging. But we can manage eventually. Therefore, for me, some areas of improvement include integration, pricing, and console. Scalability is easy, it is stable, and configuring certain things like Mac filtering is also simple. However, I feel the need to enhance the security aspect, especially for guest connectivity.

The price could be better.

The solution is not well received in China. It gave us headaches as it doesn't work well in the company. It is difficult to get support from Cisco. The cost is fairly high for licensing. Scalability could be better. Stability is hit or miss if you have other Cisco integrations. Cisco Firewall cannot recognize some applications and that makes dealing with policies difficult. Even when we whitelist, it does not work well.

There is room for improvement in terms of pricing.

Cisco Wireless WAN would be improved with the ability to monitor new usernames, product registrations, and flow traffic.

The price could be improved. It can be complicated to configure the solution. In the next release, it could be more user-friendly.

Cisco Wireless WAN could improve the wireless environment visibility. For example, the information regarding bandwidth use, conditions of the network, and application visibility.

Azure needs work. We use it as the wireless controller of Cisco. It's a bit buggy. The UI needs to be more responsive. Technical support could be more helpful. The solution is expensive.

We cannot use wireless for the servers due to potential performance issues. They must be connected via fiber. The solution is a little bit expensive. We'd like it if they could improve the integration capabilities. More specifically, if it can be integrated with other applications or any other devices like CCTV cameras that are also running on wireless, that would be ideal.

We would like to have the lead times improved. Right now, when you create a design and want to provide it to the customer, they are very late to cosign everything. The solution is pretty expensive. We'd like to see lower pricing in the future.

We would like to see additional data and security. We'd like to see them maintain integration between SD-WAN and Cisco ISE and for them to improve the security factor for the customer. It can be complex to set up. They need to build a more comprehensive solution around the WLAN controller.

The initial setup and deployment should be easier. The technical support needs to be improved.

When you have a question related to support, getting direct or faster access to someone technical would be ideal. The pricing is a bit high.

The only disadvantage of Cisco is maybe the cost. It’s more expensive than other brands, like, for example, HP. You do have to pay for licensing yearly, which is not the case with some others. We’d like to just have a one-time payment option. The interface could be better. When I connect to the wireless controller, the graphic or the user interface is complicated. It’s hard to understand all the models of the interface. They should work to make it easier.

They can provide more user-friendly control. It would be good to see an easier to manage common control line. An improved web UI could allow everything to be controlled from the website. I hope Cisco can improve the capacity to service a high density of users in a small area, as currently we have difficulties with this.

There are a number of areas for improvement in Cisco Wireless WAN, including sensitive applications which face issues on wireless stuff and difficulty troubleshooting. In the next release, Cisco should include more troubleshooting features, especially for sensitive applications like Teams and other voice and video applications. There should be easy ways to analyze the wireless network to find where the problem is.

The DNA space is a separate license cost, which should be included in the license.

We have had some problems connecting to the internet with Cisco Wireless WAN, but it is not the equipment or configuration. Additionally, the integration with access control security could improve.

The cost and support should be improved, and there should be support for the 6E standard.

The interface is a little bit difficult to understand at times. It would be good if Cisco were to make it user friendly so that everyone can easily configure it without the need to do certifications and courses to learn how to use all of the devices.

The new platform of Cisco Wireless WAN I did not like, there weren't many features available. The online platform has more options. We found ourselves needing to integrate Cisco Wireless WAN with another Cisco product, called Cisco DNA, to try and receive more assurance on the data. It's another piece of hardware that you're putting onto your network. It could have been a cloud solution. Before Cisco, we used to have Cisco Prime which used to give us more in-depth analytics, such as heat maps of someone complaining about wireless access in a specific area. You could drill down into that, but you don't receive that information from the Cisco controller. We will receive the information if we implemented the DNAC solution, but it is another solution that we're implementing from Cisco. A competitor could probably do it in a better way reducing the need for multiple solutions. Overall Cisco Wireless WAN could improve by giving more granular reporting and alerts back on issues and not having to integrate other tools onto the same platform. However, the platform is new, the interface is continually developing. Hopefully, they can improve quickly.

The coverage area on some of the low-end access points isn't the best. The high-end ones are fine, but we've had bad experiences on the other ones. Compared to some of the non-Cisco access points we use, the low-end access points from Cisco have shown to give only very minimal coverage. I am currently wondering how Cisco is going to handle the connections between 5G and the WiFi 6. These new technologies have similar features and I would expect, in the future, that there will be some integration between them.

We found the initial setup to be a bit complex due to the CLI commands. It's a little bit difficult and requires us to move and to convert. Certain CLI commands we are forced to undertake. The solution should also enable Bluetooth Low Energy devices, which serve the purpose of maintaining and managing one's tracking system. The new product, 802.11ax BLE, enables features for tracking devices. It can be used for antivirus protection or in the event of any risk. It is a new technology and allows one to see where things are moving. The 802.11ax incorporates the features of the Cisco 9115ax model. The feature is very good.

In the future, Cisco Wireless WAN could improve its ability to expand.

The pricing of the solution could always be better. If they could work to make the costs more competitive, that would be ideal.

The prices are high and should be reduced in order to be more competitive.

The solution is very expensive, and I think the price should be more competitive, like with Aruba, Meraki, and other products. The price model is very high but the manageability is simple.

The cloud interoperability needs improvement.

With the WMM there are a few bits and pieces missing that some of the other vendors have. Cisco has a bad habit, although they'd probably see it as a good habit, of not applying extras. I want more managing features. Cisco would love you to go and buy Cisco Prime, which is very expensive, especially if you want to get reports active for the SME market. They generally don't add to existing products and are actually outpricing themselves. Cisco needs to realize that if they want to reach a global market, there are many markets within that. They need a price point that allies a smaller market and sometimes a specific country. I work in Northern Ireland and Ireland, which is very much SMB, and Cisco has priced themselves out of that market. From a management perspective, if I want to get good reports and good troubleshooting capabilities, I have to go and buy an additional product, Prime or another product that they facilitate. Aerohive products and the like have that under the hood and are a cheaper product. Cisco needs to be paralleling what the other vendors' devices are doing and giving what could be other markets the ability to use the product. For now, they've priced themselves out in some locations. In terms of additional features, they need to look at the market and need to look at whether or not it includes more management features under the hood and more layers to functional troubleshooting which other vendor devices do, that would be a big improvement. But they need to be built into the product that you buy, and you shouldn't have to go and pay thousands of pounds for an additional management platform. There should be a level of management solution purchased through the standard WLAN, Cisco's WLAN solution. There isn't enough.

The integration support technology should be improved. We have more sites to the technology itself and before we only had to connect the access points to a controller. Now we use most of the pieces of what the wireless as a concept can provide. So more integration and support will be great.

The solution has all the features we need, but it is very expensive.

The reporting feature needs improvement, especially adding information with regards to availability uptime. Currently, we have to calculate this on our own by using a performance tool and then customize the reports to display it. This information is a major concern for us because we need to know how much uptime is available to our customers.

Improvement could be made in the planning - WiFi survey and planning, and WiFi key mapping - should both be included in high-end devices. You would expect them to be included in such a product. When we bought it, 5508 was a high-end device. Some aspects could be achieved automatically by the wireless controller. For example, if there is a single access point deployed in a densely populated area, there will be many users and all those users bring down the speed. I think an option where the range of the access points is determined by the signal strength of the end-users would be good. There should be a mechanism mitigating that because when a user with a low WiFi signal connects, he basically crashes the experience for everyone else. Some automation on their part would be good. A neat feature that some of the other vendors have is that of informing, where I can tell the access point to narrow down its signal and focus it in a specific direction. That is very handy, for example, in long corridors where you don't want the access point to spread its signal everywhere but rather focus it to a narrow field of vision, so to speak. That's a feature I would like to see. Vendors like Aruba have things like tracking mobile devices. That would also be a handy feature because it allows you to pinpoint areas that have low WiFi coverage. Another feature would be a dynamically generated heat map. Let's say you can see on a heat map where the user has been and can follow his WiFi experience in terms of signal to noise ratio, signal strength and the like as well as interference by other machines detected in that path, how the access points see each other and the strength of signal they're producing. The only thing missing is the piece of software that could show you that graphically. I would like to see a centralized management where I don't need to log on to every controller and then proceed from there. Also, a centralized management for multiple wireless control deployments and, of course, features such as user tracking so I can pinpoint the user, all the way down to the wireless control access point and switch that the access point is connected to.

The worst thing about the Cisco controllers is that they only have two ports. The design of having only two physical ports is very bad.

The pricing could be improved in future releases. It's quite expensive.

We're in the phase of deploying a new system, so I can't speak to what might be lacking in the solution just yet. I'm curious to see how Wi-Fi 6 will function. You have access points supporting Wi-Fi 6, but no clients know about it really. Pricing is very high with Cisco products. It's something that many people complain about. They should work to make it more affordable.