We performed a comparison between Fortinet FortiWLM and Huawei Wireless based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Wireless LAN solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The simplicity is great."
"It provides private network access, helping us protect our company’s devices."
"The solution is stable."
"The solution is pretty generic and easy to use."
"You can easily monitor, manage, and cover all your IT equipment."
"With Mist, every Wednesday they roll out new features."
"The most valuable feature of Juniper Mist is the Virtual Network Assistant, powered by artificial intelligence."
"The most useful feature of Juniper Wireless AP is the reporting Marvis."
"If you do have a FortiGate Firewall somewhere in the network, you can connect the wireless controller to that... You get 100 percent visibility from a single point... You can see everything that's connected to the FortiGate, whether it's a switch or a wireless AP or a wireless controller or any other Fortinet product."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to connect and broadcast to different networks without using a VLAN or a layer two switch, which allows you to easily create guest networks."
"This is the only product on the market currently that supports as many access points for wifi users."
"The firewall integration is very important for the security of the connection."
"The most valuable features of this solution are its speed, reliability, and integration with the firewall."
"Fortinet FortiWLM is good for tracking assets, monitoring, and overall management."
"The most valuable features are central management and the many other features available."
"Having the single pane of glass, by using the Fortinet Security Fabric, allows us to tighten security, and more easily and quickly create additional VLANs to help protect data. Rules in the firewall mean we can protect data and systems so that, should anything go wrong, any security issue is held to an individual device."
"From an implementation perspective, it's easy. I rate it a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one is a difficult setup, and ten is an easy setup."
"Huawei Wireless's most valuable feature is smart antenna, a combination of informative capabilities and advanced technology."
"I think it's a good technology. I like that it transparently connects with LDAP. The technology has a lot of capacity for WiFi six. It provides notifications, and there are many ways to connect with fiber. There is an electrical tool, and you can put an SFP transceiver. There are also many ways to implement antennas."
"The best feature of Huawei Wireless is the quick and fast setup."
"I am impressed with the tool's seamless integration."
"The solution has high performance and we are using Wi-Fi 6 that we have found to be the best coverage."
"We've found the solution to be quite stable."
"It is easy to set up."
"The pricing is very high in the Indian market."
"Juniper Mist Wireless Access Points’ support services need improvement."
"If you want to do more specific stuff, it's a bit limited."
"Improving third-party integration is key for Juniper Mist's next release."
"Juniper Wireless Access Points (AP Series) could improve if the MIST platform had a built-in master key. This would be an advantage."
"I need a bit more time with it before criticizing the features."
"Juniper Wireless AP can improve by continually improving its reporting and integration with other systems."
"They should include SD-WAN features to it."
"One of the main features that I see as lacking in any of the Fortinet products is the reporting. If you want to have proper, end-to-end reporting, you must purchase the FortiAnalyzer... If Fortinet could offer some better, built-in reporting, that would be a point of improvement."
"There is very little publicly available information about Virtual Cell and Single Channel Architecture. Promotion of the overall technology is limited as well. Being more vocal about a product that has many advantages would go a long way to eliminating a lot of the confusion and negative perception about Virtual Cell and Single Channel Architecture."
"Technical support is very poor. We are not satisfied with the technical support because there is not any direct person from Fortinet for any troubleshooting, which we expected."
"The interface could certainly do with some improvement. We have other customers with WiFi networks, and they always use Ubiquiti. With Ubiquiti, it's a much better user interface, and it is much easier to configure."
"Cost is something that could be improved, but you have to pay for what you get."
"The pricing model can be improved to encourage use by small business and individuals and the hardware could stand to be redesigned."
"The guest management features need to be improved by adding automation."
"In the next release, they could improve by adding a controller-less server, or architecture that is provided in other solutions, such as Aruba. This would be a great benefit for customers."
"The demo program is an area for improvement in Huawei Wireless as it's hard to use. As a partner, you can use the solution for free, for thirty days, for example. On paper, everything looks fine, but you have to get permission and explain why you want to download the software, even if it's just for demo purposes. I don't get why I have to do this as a partner and still give an explanation that this would be for a demo setup. Downloading the solution isn't a click-and-install process that should go smoothly and efficiently. You have to get a lot of approvals and explain a lot, and in the end, you find out that you received the approval for one piece of software. It looks like you need additional software to use the software. My company asked for approval and received the approval three days later, but you need to install another software to use some of the features. In the past, most features were separate. Because Huawei wants a single pane of glass where all features should work with the Huawei equipment, Huawei decided to combine everything into the iMaster NCE Campus, which incorporates every other cloud solution. However, you still have to ask for approval for every piece of software, and without clear information on the features, the type of software, and the software files required, it's not so good from my point of view."
"The technical support needs to be improved. They also need to produce some more technical guides."
"While I am fine with the current licensing price, I would appreciate it to be more cost-effective."
"The solution needs to include a captive portal."
"Technical support could be better."
"There was one time I had a problem with their centralized licensing. I called the Indian call center, but the response was not that good. One guy attended this call and he told me, "Definitely, I am forwarding your call to the next level. I'll let you know." After that, it took between 10 to 15 hours before I got a call back. By then, we had already resolved the issue. Therefore, they could improve the local support; there should be at very good Tier 1 and 2 support in India. They should be both proactive and reactive."
"Improving the visibility, control offered, and cloud management would all be very helpful. Also how you can monetize the information you get from Wi-Fi controllers should be improved."
"Huawei Wireless can improve the signal, sometimes it becomes weak."
More Juniper Mist Wireless Access Points Pricing and Cost Advice →
Fortinet FortiWLM is ranked 16th in Wireless LAN with 22 reviews while Huawei Wireless is ranked 9th in Wireless LAN with 33 reviews. Fortinet FortiWLM is rated 8.2, while Huawei Wireless is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiWLM writes "Impressive manufacturing quality, highly durable, and very easy to deploy". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Huawei Wireless writes "Customizable and has many unique features, such as encryption, spatial streams, and smart antennas". Fortinet FortiWLM is most compared with Aruba Wireless, Ruckus Wireless, Cisco Wireless, Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN and Aruba Instant On Access Points, whereas Huawei Wireless is most compared with D-Link Wireless, Aruba Wireless, Cisco Wireless, Ubiquiti WLAN and Mist AI and Cloud. See our Fortinet FortiWLM vs. Huawei Wireless report.
See our list of best Wireless LAN vendors.
We monitor all Wireless LAN reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
All are good selections, and this question is difficult to answer without knowing your throughput requirements, as each vendor has multiple models within there series.
Personally I recommend looking at Arista Networks’ cognitive Wifi, where controllers are a thing of the past.
Ruckus virtual smart zone will be your best bet allowing up to 300k connected devices and 30k access points. furthermore, Ruckus has time and again proven best in speed, throughput in high density environments by independent studies. I have over a decade of working with this product and none of the other competitors can beat the layer 1 connectivity of Ruckus WiFi
Hi,
Every one of the mentioned solutions is good but you need to check the needs which are security since the firms you are working with need protection and tracking of data. For this reason, I recommend:
- if you have FortiGate installed then go for Fortinet Wireless since they can be integrated with the Fortigate without buying a controller and they work perfectly together and you will get the advantage of applying rules to the client himself whether mobile or computer, easily managed & monitored, more visibility over your network and incident notifications.
If the above doesn't apply then you can go with the best one that fits your budget and security needs which for me doesn't fall on the mentioned solution but to go with ARUBA Instant Access Wireless Solution and the reasons are as such:
- Cisco is too much expensive and you got to pay smart support with some complexity in configuration and you need to buy a controller
- Ruckus is good but when you want to have the security you need to buy a controller with licenses and it won't give you the security needed since it is just a wireless solution
- Huawei is not a stable company since it had many ups and downs and they can reach with you to have all the solutions nearly free so that you install their brand.
Whereas Aruba you don't need a controller in the Instant access points and you will get the minimum security with radius integration and what is important a lifetime warranty on the access points.
In addition, if the number of access points increased and you want more detailed management and more advanced configurations, you can buy a controller either on-premises or on-cloud with Aruba.
The above information is based on my experience with all the solutions and their POC.
If you need any more details and consultancy, kindly feel free to contact me.
Regards.
Hi Imad,
Thanks for your input. Do you have any POC data for Cisco and Aruba?
Thanks in advance
Boa tarde
As soluções cada solução que você indicou tem pormenores que podem impactar tanto no funcionamento quanto em caso de disaster recovery.
Fortinet: Possui bons access points, aliado às funcionalidades de segurança do próprio UTM, porém será mais um serviço para o appliance gerenciar, e dependendo do que está rodando nele, corre-se o risco de degradar a performance da funcionalidade principal "segurança", por que tambem está gerenciando uma rede wireless, além do fato se houver alguma pane no appliance Fortinet, tanto os itens de segurança quanto a rede wireless irão ficar indisponível. Dê a Cézar o que é de Cézar, deixe a fortinet focada em segurança, que é o que ela faz de melhor.
Ruckus: Excelentes Access points, confiáveis e com alta performance, possui no mínimo 4 opções de gerência, sendo, controlerless Unleashed, appliance virtual, appliance hardware e cloud, ambas as opções não trará prejuizo à performance da rede wireless, porque não há tunelamento de dados para elas, além de possuir várias funções de segurança inerentes à rede wireless. licenças são perpétuas.
Cisco: Excelente access points, porém solução muito cara para aquisição e renovação.
Huawei: Pelo que conheço, tem bons access points, e controladoras virtuais e appliance físico, mas conheço poucas redes com esta solução.
É lógico que uma tem um recurso extra a mais do que a outra, mas considero mera perfumaria, pois o básico para uma rede wireless segura todas atendem.
Eu já atendi a mais de 40 universidades federais no Brasil, todas com Ruckus, e não há reclamação da solução.
Como recomendação pessoal, vá de Ruckus.
Hi,
It is all dependent on the size of the controllers in question. Though I would suggest getting a cloud base technology so you are limited by any controller and have much better redundancy. Take a look at Arista Cognitive Wireless