Aruba Wireless Reviews

We are part of a conglomerate on the island. We provide this solution to all our different divisions, including the shopping malls. We are the technology division of the group. So, we've been assisting the group in their implementation across sectors.

I like the analytics feature.

The price could be better. In the next release, I would like to have more analytics features.

We have been using Aruba Wireless for the past five years.

Aruba Wireless is a stable solution.

Scalability depends on the model.

Our in-house team did the implementation.

The price could be better. Competitors offer more features for a similar cost.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Aruba Wireless a six.

I rated Aruba Wireless six because the analytics part seems to depend on third-party software applications and because of their pricing.

This solution has been deployed for an enterprise environment with 105 Apps and controllers in HA for a government entity handling the user capacity of 1500 people.

Multiple SSIDs have been broadcasted with independent VLANs and user policy has been implemented.

The controllers are in HA. Both indoor and outdoor APs have been used in the environment.

The solution has been differentiated for Guests, Employees, and an unrestricted group. The APs have been deployed across 10 multistory buildings in high interference zones.

Aruba Wireless has succeeded in facilitating the implementation of a centralized wireless network to the client, covering multiple buildings expanding across the area of 58000 square meters.

There are no blind spots and users enjoy uninterrupted Wi-Fi. This has given the users complete mobility and the Quality of Service with the necessary security imposed.

It has met the customer expectations and is ready to scale for growing business demand. It has offered visibility into the network and enhanced the troubleshooting experience.

It is easy to implement and manage through a web GUI.

The adding of APs simply involves configuring a network port on the appropriate VLAN and plugging in the AP. The controller pushes the config out to the new AP.

The Airwave is the best feature for a single management point for all APs in the environment. 

It offers many reporting features as well as visual RF maps displaying heatmaps of the AP signals and client positioning. 

The addition of the APs on the existing swarm is plug and play to the desired VLAN.

The Help option within the GUI needs to be improved. It would be perfect to have it more descriptive about the functions and features it has.

The online documentation resources could be made more readily available for troubleshooting than to be engaged with the support through email and calls.

During the shipments, the firmware versions on the shipped outdoor APs, indoor APs, and controllers could be matched so that adaptation for the APs is easy.

They should add more features available on Aruba Airwave to the GUI.

We have been suing Aruba Wireless for two years.

Stability is guaranteed.

This is a very scalable product. 

Technical support is excellent. They are more willing to help and be there for the customer.

We did not switch products. Rather, our choice is based on customer requirements. It's the best-recommended product listed by Gartner on this segment.

The initial setup is absolutely straightforward.

Our in-house team is responsible for deployment.

The access points are more cost-effective over some other providers, both in cost per AP and the option of a controller-less environment. 

It's comparatively priced; it's a bit expensive compared to competitors but worth the investment because of the performance, stability, and ease of deployment.

We had been working with vendors like Cisco and Ruckus.

I am a system integrator and Aruba Wireless is one of the network infrastructure products that I have experience with. We have customers using versions all the way from AP-100 to AP-535.

We have these devices in many industries, with a focus on educational institutions.

The most valuable feature is the client match. This feature continually monitors the client and provides automatic load-balancing, as well as other advanced features.

Improvements to the GUI, such as being able to search in the Mobility Master, would be nice. It is hard to find and provision APs when you have a substantial install base.

I have been using Aruba Wireless since 2007.

The stability has been great.

We haven't had any trouble with scalability. 75% of our clients are using Aruba Wireless.

I have a lot of experience with wireless networking products from Aruba and Juniper. I also have some experience with Ruckus.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward and the deployment is quick. With our experience, it is pretty easy to do.

We integrate Aruba Wireless and other devices for our customers.

My advice for anybody who is considering Aruba Wireless is to try it. If you try it then you're going to like it.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

Four years ago, our network was incapable of handling our anticipated throughput. We knew we had issues in our network, so we made sure our switches and infrastructure were OpenFlow-enabled. We originally planned for three devices per student, but now we're seeing four or five and sometimes more with wearable devices. Now, with Aruba Wireless, we're SDN-enabled with networking thrust re-route or pick-ups at the switch edges.

Aruba Wireless allows us to integrate our network with different HP technologies. We want to have a single vendor with a rapid-enough life-cycle. HP isn't held back by the workload or lowest common denominator, or by the fact that we have locations in Australia, Vietnam, and other places on that side of the globe. We can use Aruba Wireless everywhere and manage it effectively. It is doing everything we need it to do and it's giving me the flexibility to go where I want to go.

It could always be improved to be a better risk-related investment. We need to maximum our investment and to have it work to its fullest potential for us. I'd like to see it get to the point where SDN works well with HP Net Protector.

We've had no issues with deployment.

We had lots of issues on the network routers until about 12 months ago, having to do with the architecture. We had too much load at the core by allowing too many wireless users.

We run two-and-a-half gigabytes through the wireless system. We're looking for even greater throughput, and I think it'll scale to accommodate this.

Technical support has been good. We have a support contract with HP and access to the right people when we need them. However, HP's presence in Australia is a little light.

Definitely look at SDN to take some costs out of your network. If you can, go with HP ConvergedSystem because it's the simplest, fastest way to virtualize your networks.

I'm using Aruba Wireless for enterprise deployment that's more centralized.

What I like most about Aruba Wireless is its stability, functionality, and performance.

What needs improvement in Aruba Wireless is its access point, in particular, it should have more flexibility. Aruba Wireless has Campus AP, Instant AP, and Unified AP, but it would be better if the product has a generic access point that you can manage over the cloud, on-premise, etc.

Another area for improvement in Aruba Wireless is scalability.

In terms of what additional features I'd like to see in the product, I'm unsure if it's already on the roadmap, but if possible, it would be good to have an SD-WAN functionality on the AP in Aruba Wireless.

I have years of experience with Aruba Wireless.

Aruba Wireless has great stability, especially because it's from Aruba, a brand known for its stability and performance.

In general, the scalability of Aruba Wireless needs some improvement. The product needs to be more flexible in terms of scalability.

I would rate the technical support for Aruba Wireless as five out of five. It's quite impressive, though it's not perfect.

I compared Aruba Wireless with other solutions, and I found it to be a complete product. It's ahead of the competition, so I chose to work with it.

The initial setup for Aruba Wireless is straightforward. There's nothing complex about it.

The price of Aruba Wireless is higher than other products, but you'll get stability, performance, and functionality out of it.

On a scale of one to five, I'm rating the price of Aruba Wireless a three.

I'm working with Aruba Wireless.

My company has a partnership with Aruba.

My company is a technology provider, so it's not an enterprise user of Aruba Wireless.

I have experience with both the on-premise and cloud versions of the product.

I would recommend Aruba Wireless for enterprise customers. The product applies to multiple verticals.

Overall, my rating for Aruba Wireless is eight out of ten, and it's a product that I would recommend to others.

I have worked with versions 2.207 and 3.303 and 305. Because I am the service provider for my customers, I've worked with Ruckus, Aruba, Cisco, and UniFi. Most of my customers ask for new wireless solutions. Last week I installed 37 access points. My customers are very satisfied.

Configuring the main controller is very easy; with Aruba, it's just plug-and-play. The roaming features are great too.

Most of the access points don't include the chargers. If you want to increase your coverage, then you need to have a charger. When our customers ask about access points, we always recommend Aruba; however, when we tell them that they need to buy the chargers separately, they become upset, saying: "We already bought Aruba access points, the chargers should come with it".

This is my main concern. In the last five years, I've installed nearly 300 Aruba access points and most of my customers have complained about the chargers. If this problem was addressed, I wouldn't have any other complaints.

I have been using this solution for five years.

I have not experienced any bugs, software, or hardware issues with Aruba.

This solution is both very stable and scalable. I want to mention something about Aruba's compatibility between various model types. If you already have version 207 installed and you want to switch to version 3.3, it's not compatible; you can't add it to your network. You need to create a standalone network for this access point only.

I only spoke with Aruba's technical support one time. With Aruba, you don't need a lot of support. It is very easy to use. 

The initial setup is very easy. You just need to configure the main device. If you have a standalone or virtual appliance, you can just configure it and install the rest without connecting to the main device.

Deployment time varies, but usually, it's very fast. Most of our customers need 10 access points on-site. For me, this only takes roughly 15 minutes to install.

I used to use Ruckus. Ruckus takes a long time to configure. Cisco takes longer too. Aruba is the easiest to install. Just configure the main device, and install the rest. Nothing else is required.

I'd like to mention something else. Last week, I installed roughly 37 access points — Aruba 303 I believe. Our clients complained about the coverage. Their access points should be able to cover 50 meters, but Aruba was only covering 25 to 30 meters, max. I know Aruba, and like anything, there are advantages and disadvantages. I like Aruba for its easy installation, management and because they provide the best and most optimized connection.

The most important thing is the heat map; you need to have a good heat map and make sure it's configured correctly with Aruba. If you don't have a heat map, you may have issues.

Here in Jordan, some providers will go to a company that requires 10 access points and tell them they only need five. In reality, they just want the job and the client. Then, after everything is said and done, the client complains about the five access points not covering the whole area. 

Some preparation is required before you can get started with Aruba. The total amount of power needed for the access points needs to be calculated. I would recommend doing this yourself as some companies just want to sell their products.

Companies in Jordan were quite loyal to Cisco, but in the last five months, I have installed roughly 500 Aruba Switches. Version 1920 is very popular; it's very fast and great for network stability.

Cisco and Aruba offer the same features. My customers don't need advanced features. What's the point in spending an extra $300-400 dollars for features you won't even use?

On a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of eight. If they increased their coverage, I would give them a rating of 15, not simply ten.

Aruba was our primary wireless solution until very recently.  

In the end, when you bring on a wireless solution, you only need a wireless solution. That is the intrinsic value. We had both Aruba ClearPass and Aruba AirWaves. We had all the management features also available from Aruba. These worked well together as a class of products.   

When I compare Aruba with Juniper Mist, Juniper is the more an AI-driven management solution. It is more of a modern solution, I think. Aruba needs to be more competitive with Juniper.  

We have been using Aruba Wireless for four or five years now.  

I think Aruba is stable because it was working okay. There was no problem with downtime. The issue for us with functionality was because we have much more reflection in our building due to the height of our ceilings.  

We bought the product through a reseller. For support, we needed to go through that reseller instead of Aruba self. It is hard to judge the capabilities of Aruba support directly.  

We had Aruba and we just replaced it with Juniper Mist a few weeks ago (September 2020). The AI-driven management solutions from Juniper Mist suits our business more than the Aruba solution we used before. I think Aruba did the work we needed before, but better management is the reason why we moved over to Juniper Mist.  

Before Aruba, we worked with HP Colubris. We stopped using the HP Colubris solution because HP no longer provided it. That is what happened.  

Aruba is comparable to competing solutions when it comes to price. I am going to say that the support pricing for Juniper Mist is higher than Aruba. I think that is because Juniper is more of a cloud model than Aruba.  

You do also have a cloud solution from Aruba called Aruba Central, but I have not compared prices for that.  

The advice that I would give to someone considering Aruba as a wireless solution would be to look into the Aruba Central cloud solution that they are offering right now. I think we are at a time of brand control that needs to be managed and needs to be supported. I think that working with a cloud-based solution is a better option than on-premises solutions.  

I think what is more important than a particular tool is that you also have the depth of wireless knowledge to really be able to competently manage such environments.  

On a scale from one to ten (where one is the worst and ten is the best), I would rate this product as a seven-out-of-ten. To improve on that score they would have to make Aruba more available to cloud management. They just recently started with Aruba Central and they are not as far along as Juniper Mist is with having a mature cloud solution.  

The problem for Aruba is that Juniper Mist is a new product without a longer legacy. They can start from ground zero. Aruba needs to support the older controller-based models and that may slow them down when it comes to development.  

Aruba is moving to the cloud platform model. We are presenting solutions using Aruba Central to clients for the management of their infrastructure. The majority of the implementations we have are still currently are on-premises. Customers now are slowly implementing cloud solutions for Aruba. We have 80% on-premises and 20% migrating to the cloud version of the solution.  

With Aruba Central, we can manage controllers, EAPs (Employee Assistance Programs), switches, et cetera. Everything in one place. So we can manage anything we need to using Aruba. Aruba on-premises wireless is something we use for education. It is mostly implemented in schools and in universities. We use it to establish APs (Access Points)  around the campus to make sure there is coverage campus-wide. Then they have mobility controllers on-premises that control all the infrastructure.  

Another use case is for companies that have branches from the data centers. At the prime location, they have APs powered within the company and Mobility Masters in the data center. The Mobility Masters cluster-connect to the mobility controllers and then control all the APs and all the wireless infrastructure. Then we have links connecting the branches. On the branches, we have small mobility controllers that feed all the information to and from Mobility Masters. That is, the Mobility Masters connect to mobility controllers and then the mobility controllers connect to the APs.  

Portugal is a small country and our smallest companies always have EAPs. EAPs are a version of a solution from Aruba that the NAC (Network Access Control) AP has inside a virtual controller. These NAC APs control all the other APs.  

It gives us a reliable, mature solution that we can roll out to our clients.  

Wireless technologies, relatively speaking, are a new solution. The technical guys from Aruba are very good. The support is very good. It is very easy to implement the product. Another solution that Aruba has is the NAC and the ClearPass. ClearPass is a good solution for additional security of access points and it is integrated so it is very easy to deploy. It is very interactive and not so analytic as other solutions so, in my opinion. Aruba is a very good company — very good technology-wise — and they make very useful products.  

Perhaps one of the things that I think Aruba can improve on is developing their current information channels. Aruba has a lot of information available about their products and to find the information you need is not always so easy. It is more complicated than it should be. I think that they are great and do have a lot of information available — probably all the information that any user really needs to do things themselves. They are doing things well and trying to do things in the right way. They should just improve more on the organization and searchability of the information to make it easier to find what you are looking for.  

I am with the sales service for Arrow, Portugal which is a solutions company. My role is to help the partners in designing solutions. I am working with Aruba products as a partner and reseller for three years now.  

Aruba Wireless is stable. Very stable. Because Aruba has already been around for more than 10 years or so, it is a mature product and a very stable product. If there is a problem, the support team is very good with working through the problems. When a client wants a new version, we have confidence in Aruba that everything has already tested and we have access to stable versions of the release. We have access to all the information for the versions whether they are the old ones or the new ones.  

My impressions about the scalability and the product is that it is highly scalable. You can start with a low quantity of access points — as low as one installation — and then scale it to thousands if you have to. You can do the upgrades in the mobility controllers to allow the growth of the infrastructure. Because of the way it is created, it is highly scalable and highly reliable.  

Of course, we have plans to scale our own usage of the product. Because we work as a value-added distributor of Aruba in Portugal, we have to meet the needs of our client base which is growing all the time. We have plans to increase the implementation of the product in our market to meet those demands. It is partly because we are working with a superior product like Aruba that we are growing in our market.  

The Aruba technical support team is very good. They are very skilled people and can help you with the support you need when it comes to their products. They are very good at turning around a response within 24 hours. It is fast and helpful.  

In my experience the initial setup of the Aruba EAP solution is straightforward. We can call on all the APs and then you have everything connected. Now they also have a Soho gateway solution that it is integrated. It is very easy to turn on this solution. I can install the Soho add-on instantly for the Aruba solution. I think that they are doing very well to keep the customer in mind when building and testing their products for ease of setup and use.  

Our deployment did not take a very long time. Even initially. For clients, the deployment takes more or less time than ours. It depends on the size of the implementation. If you have to do only 10 APs in a small deployment, it can take only two or three days to complete the whole thing. If you have a bigger implementation, it depends on the size of the project. It could take weeks for the deployment if it is a very large one.  

We did not have to use an integrator, reseller, or consultant for our deployment. We could do that ourselves. But we do work with all the integrators in Portugal because we help them to sell the solution so that they can implement it for the clients. We help them sell the product and then they do the deployments.  

The advice I would give to a customer that wants to implement this product is that they must have good support from a product partner. Try to find a certified partner to do the job of planning and implementation. This should be a certified HP partner to do the job as Aruba is an HP company. Choose the right partner, the right technical guy, and the right company to implement the solution for you. It will make sure you have the solution deployed in the way you need it to be done to fit your needs and expectations. That is the most important thing that I can think of.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate this product as a nine-and-a-half.