Aruba Wireless Reviews

We are using Aruba Wireless for land ports for customs. The inspection guides use the solution while walking around with tablets.

The most valuable feature of Aruba Wireless is the controller. It is easy to use.

We have an issue with the integration of Aruba Wireless with our LDAP servers.

I have been using Aruba Wireless for approximately six years.

I rate the stability of Aruba Wireless a ten out of ten.

Aruba Wireless is a scalable solution.

We have approximately 200 users using this solution.

I rate the scalability of Aruba Wireless a nine out of ten.

The support is good. However, they sometimes take some time to respond.

I rate the support from Aruba Wireless a seven out of ten.

Neutral

I have previously used Cisco and Huawei solutions. The major difference with Huawei is it provides one single platform for the management of all of your features.

The initial setup of Aruba Wireless is of a medium level of difficulty. However, it is not simple to configure. It took approximately one month to deploy.

We installed the devices everywhere on-premise and had the field engineer from Aruba Wireless first power up all the access points. We then tried to integrate it with the LDAP, but they found some problems. They had to change it with another system for it to work.

I rate the initial setup of Aruba Wireless a five out of ten.

Two of our engineers had help from the two Aruba Wireless engineers for the implementation of Aruba Wireless.

Aruba Wireless is the best for the price. Aruba Wireless is the least expensive, the second is Huawei, and the most expensive is Cisco. 

For every device, you need to get a license which is charged separately to add to the control for Aruba Wireless.

I rate the price of Aruba Wireless a nine out of ten.

There is no maintenance required for the solution.

I recommend others who want to use Aruba Wireless should first determine the integration of which server they want. There can be some issues with devices that they connect to the switches.

I rate Aruba Wireless a nine out of ten.

We're upgrading from version 9 to version 10, but I'm satisfied with the new proposed upgrade.

The solution is deployed on-premises.

Aruba Wireless is reliable, and the signal strength is pretty good. The controller has good features.

I want to have a virtual controller, so I would like to see integration with other vendors of the LAN network. We need security features to recognize the traffic source and to apply Zero Trust security.

I have used this solution for nine years.

The stability is excellent. I would rate it as nine out of ten.

I would rate the scalability as eight out of ten.

We have multiple canvases and sites, so it's easy to scale up and across the same controller within the same enterprise network. When we add new access points, there is a limitation in the virtual appliance, but it's not that bad.

Technical support in Aruba is very good. It's better than other solutions' support.

I would rate technical support as eight out of ten.

Deployment was done through a third party.

The price is reasonable. I would rate the cost as 8 out of 10.

I would rate the solution as nine out of ten. 

We made an evaluation between Aruba and other vendors, and we've seen the Gartner Magic Quadrant report for Aruba. Aruba has employed a lot of experience and vision in their product, which is why it's better than others.

My advice is to have a professional survey with the best used tools for the survey and an excellent design. I think that's the most important. The sizing and dimensioning have to be done well from the beginning.

I administered Aruba Wireless systems at two organizations. The first was a private college with around 12,000 endpoints campus wide, which included over 500 Aruba access points of various models and generations configured through the Aruba 7220 Mobility Controller. The second was a private high school with around 5000 endpoints and 130 Aruba access points, models 125 and 134, and configured through an Aruba 3600 Mobility Controller.

I have been maintaining Aruba Wireless systems at these two different organization for around 4 years in total.

A reliable wireless connection is imperative in a modern school setting. Our organization is forced to resort to inefficient methods without wireless internet. Aruba provides an easy to manage solution for my team.

The most valuable features have been the following:

• Reliability: Stable platform from controller to AP.
• Responsive support: When support is needed, the Aruba engineers are normally quick to respond to problems.
• Ease of Deployment: APs are very easy to configure to the network once they contact the controller.

Aruba has been an excellent solution. However, I am aiding in transitioning my organization to a different wireless solution due to the cost. We need to expand our network and the cost of new APs and an upgraded controller have proved to be prohibitive compared to similar solutions on the market.

Aruba is an excellent option for campus wireless. It can be more labor intensive initially than other options, such as Cisco Meraki, however it provides a reliable wireless platform that can be easily maintained by a small network team.

The primary use is for facilitating client communication.

Its graphical user interface is designed to be user-friendly, making work more efficient.

There has been a recent decrease in the level of support. When issues arise, we often require additional support, and this aspect should be enhanced.

I have been using it for more than three years.

If there is a controller in place, I would rate its stability abilities at around eight out of ten, as it tends to be quite stable. However, if it's a controller-less setup, using clusters of access points only, I would rate it lower, around six to seven out of ten. The stability tends to vary, especially when there's no central controller, which can make the configuration and management more challenging.

There are around two to three thousand users who rely on wireless connections for their daily work. It demonstrates excellent scalability, and I would rate it around nine out of ten.

I have noticed a decline in performance over the past two years, and I've been working with it for almost four years. The initial two years were quite satisfactory, but the performance has deteriorated since then. I would rate it six out of ten.

Neutral

I have experience using Cisco, HP Comware, Commvault, Palo Alto, and Fortinet.

The initial setup process for these access points tends to be time-consuming. While other products can start up in as little as ten to fifteen minutes, these access points take longer to get going. They are relatively stable once configured. We've noticed that they can remain stable for a year or even longer initially.

When it comes to installing access points, especially the IAPs, I've encountered some issues. These access points don't always remain stable, particularly during reboots or configuration changes. Even when I've configured ten access points, there's no guarantee that they will consistently come back online and perform as expected after a reboot or network interruption. This is a concern I'd like to highlight, and I believe the team should work on improving the stability of these access points.

It offers a lower cost compared to other products, which is a significant advantage. I would rate it eight out of ten.

I would recommend it due to its affordability, which stands out compared to other products. In terms of overall performance and management, I would rate it an eight out of ten.

Our company has a conference center and we use the solution for all our conferencing needs. 

The solution has been helpful in improving the way our company functions. 

The solution is easy to configure on-premise. We always got complaints about support for our prior solution so handling configuration in-house is easier. 

Configuration could be made easier with more bandwidth than they offer at the moment. 

I have been using the solution for three years. 

The solution's stability is good. 

The solution is very flexible and scalable. We have about 10,000 users and are at about 50% of maximum capacity. 

We used to contract with outside, local vendors for technical support, but found them picky about their ability to respond. We now handle support on-premise. 

Neutral

Our company uses a few solutions for our conferencing needs including this solution and Ruckus Wireless. We added Aruba because we expanded and needed two solutions. 

The initial setup was easy compared to other solutions. We have two staff members who maintain the solution. 

We hired a third party for setup and it took about four months. I rate the setup experience an eight out of ten.

We have received a good return on investment. I would rate our ROI a six out of ten. 

Licensing for the solution is based on number of users. There was also an initial setup fee, but I don't have those details. 

Our company looked at a few other options, but chose Aruba based on recommendations from other large businesses that compare in size/scope to ours.

I rate this solution an eight out of ten. 

The use case is basically for wireless authentication. We are also using Aruba clear path policy manager and we are providing our customers with free WiFi. We have our retail customers, where we give them free WiFi.

Their technological improvements and innovations are always great. They are up to market level. They’re always upgrading to whatever the latest technology is.

They are a bit of a monopoly solution.

It offers an easy initial setup.

The solution is pretty stable.

There are so many features. Even we are also not using the complete functionalities and features of Aruba. We need to explore more.

There are some issues we occasionally have. However, they are easily remedied.

Recently, HP acquired Aruba. There have been some changes in the licensing form. Platforms are changing. These kinds of things are slowly happening. However, it is not a problem.

The issue is that the delivery timelines have increased. That is not only for Aruba, even for all the partners; it is increased. That is something which they need to improve. The hardware takes too long to be delivered.

I’ve been using the solution for seven years.

The solution is pretty stable. There are some issues; however, it’s all pretty fixable. For the most part, it doesn’t crash or freeze. It’s reliable.

We have about 4,500 people on the solution. Everyone at all levels of the company uses it.

The solution is scalable. We started pretty small and we were able to grow as required. The number of people and the number of retail stores increase yearly.

We pay our partners for technical support. They handle everything.

We used to use Ruckus.

With Ruckus, we were in on the initial stage. We were facing a lot of issues depending on the management. With Aruba, we did a POC, and we were satisfied with that. That's why we moved to them.

The solution is simple to set up.

The configuration and everything it is pretty straightforward. We are using Aruba’s central console to manage the wireless. There are no complications, actually.

On the initial level, it took two months to complete the complete projects and everything.

In terms of maintenance, we are paying our partner for an AMC annual maintenance contract. We are paying yearly, and they are just maintaining our network. They're managing everything. We have around 20 people working on their team to support us.

We have a partner who is working on this with us, and they are the ones implementing the solution. They're managing our infrastructure also.

We are not calculating any kind of ROI as it's an infrastructure solution and therefore, we cannot calculate any kind of ROI here. It's used for the basic infrastructure.

We pay a yearly licensing fee.

I’m not sure of the exact cost. We are negotiating our pricing and can do so on a global level. When we were comparing it to others, we found it to be reasonably priced.

We’re end-users and work with Aruba partners.

This is an in-house solution and we use the latest version.

I’d rate the solution nine out of ten.

For new users, Aruba can be a good solution. The hardware portfolio is great. They have instant access points for small-scale businesses to medium size and even large businesses. They have all kinds of portfolios in their hardware catalog. Even for COVID times, they also introduce access points for the work from home. These kinds of things are there already in their portfolio. When we are plugging in their stack, we can leverage Aruba Central, Aruba Wireless, Aruba Switches, et cetera. It's easy to manage. Everything is managed under a central console.

We primarily use the product for wireless connectivity in terms of securing wireless access.

Wi-Fi 6 is the most beneficial aspect of the solution. Apart from that, the WPA3 introduction in terms of security is one of the key features.

The solution is stable.

It's a scalable product.

Technical support is helpful.

The pricing is pretty good.

The scope of improvement would go along with the technology's adoption into the market. Even though Wi-Fi 6 has been introduced, everyone is quite skeptical in the market in terms of the adoption part, as the platform network should be that strong to cater to that kind of bandwidth. While it may be great in the future, currently, the existing versions are incompatible with some of the networks which customers own.

They could improve the seamless roaming, which is already there, however, needs some tweaking.

I've used the solution for quite a long time. I've been deploying this product to multiple customers and it's been almost five years.

The solution is stable. For example, even some military organizations are using Aruba Wireless and RF features. It is quite reliable for an enterprise to work with.

Aruba works with small to large companies. Data is open for all three. They have different kinds of solutions for individual stakeholders in terms of small, medium, and large. They have a different product portfolio offering for small. They have something else for mid-size enterprises and larger enterprises as well. Everyone can be catered to.

It is quite easy to scale, even if a small-scale business is starting with a standalone deployment. They too can scale up to 50 or 60 access points on a mid-scale deployment eventually. The group pattern in terms of the wireless controller has limits to the physical hardware appliances if you already own one. That said, the cloud adoption part is one of the aspects which gives you quite a bit of scalability and you need not worry about your scalability and your future growth.

Technical support is quite brilliant and they offer good support as well as product replacement. Any Aruba product that is wireless includes a limited lifetime warranty wherein the delivery scope is not bound to an SLA. They will give a replacement if you purchase support or not. That is the best part of Aruba.

Positive

I also use Cisco.

There are no differences in the technology. There are some user experience differences. Integration would be a part of that. There are many integrations possible in the Cisco portfolio in terms of their own product line. If the entire portfolio is of Cisco, then the integration is quite easy and Cisco has the same kind of offerings. The SLA might differ and some of the user experiences might differ. However, in terms of the portfolio, Cisco stands out as they have an enterprise-class and a different portfolio altogether to cater to the cloud-based market. They have an entire offering called Meraki. They do focus on the enterprise with Cisco. Companies that are small or medium scale work more with Meraki.

The standalone deployments are straightforward whereas the introduction of wireless controllers and security parameters can be complex. That depends on the architecture to which you are applying. Even though direct integration with any of the radio servers or any of the triple-A authentication servers like Mac is very straightforward, it could be complex depending upon the environment.

A standalone deployment would not take more than 15 minutes. It is quite simple. You might need some pre-planning before that. If you planned enough in advance, then it would take you 15 minutes or 20 minutes at a maximum to deploy. If there's a wireless controller deployment, it would take a maximum of two hours to three hours. Not more than that.

Maintenance as such is not required. It's just the regular maintenance that you do in terms of software upgrades or firmware upgrades, in terms of when vulnerabilities are found. 

Aruba is quite competitive in pricing. In some cases, on a case-to-case basis, Cisco also gives better discounts in terms of price. 

You may have to pay for additional support if you require services bound to some actual replacement time. They will charge you some amount for RMS support, not for technical support. Eventually, the technical support is built into the cost.

I used to work with an organization that had a business relationship with Aruba, however, recently I've moved on.

I typically work with the latest version of the solution.

It can be deployed on-premises as well as in the cloud.

I would recommend new users utilize each and every feature of the wireless capabilities which are being offered for security. There is quite a bit of integration possible.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

We run a number of guest wireless networks with captive portals with layer 3 networks. We run .1x for corporate SSIDs or wireless networks for additional certificate-based and/or WPA2 security.

Aruba has a lot of features that work particularly well. One of the things that Aruba is trying to do in most of its product ranges to make sure that all of their products now have a fully functioning northbound set of APIs. That basically means that you can plug it into any kind of system that you have for some operational pieces. For example, if you want to have Tufin, but more in line with things like change management. We're a ServiceNow shop, so we use that for change management and orchestration.

The ability to use the APIs that are available in the Aruba Wi-Fi controller means that you can get information from the system very easily by using APIs, or you can push changes to it. So, if you want to lock administrators there and restrict the type of functions that people can do, you don't have to give them access to the systems anymore. 

This functionality has been useful for us because we have recently outsourced a lot of our lower operational tasks to an outside vendor. With that, obviously, other people need to access systems, but we don't always want to give them direct access to the system. So, we can provide them with APIs to be able to perform basic tasks without giving them access to our dashboard services.

Aruba is an industry leader. The hardware is on par, and its performance is also on par with anybody else. The Aruba brand really only focuses on wireless, so they're not competing their R&D for switching data center products and cloud security. They're really focused on that and their underlying key pieces. 

They provide a role-based authentication that is native to the controller. A lot of other systems don't do that. They won't provide you the ability to basically have everybody join the network, regardless of whether or not they share the same network space, the SSID, or the wireless LAN. You can segment it down to a specific user role based on any kind of attributes that you like. That's their differentiator. If you need per user, per device, or per port segmentation, you can get that with Aruba. There isn't another vendor who does it.

Currently, the stability of the code is the basic underlying problem for us. They had an 8.6 release that came out two weeks ago, but we had to migrate twice because the code wasn't stable. We can't get things to work the same way. Version 8 was a big change for them. They made a change so that it is forced to be a managed hierarchical system. It means that you make changes at the top, and it pushes them downstream. There are a lot of problems with the 8.6 version code. I ran into four bugs in one week and was informed that we should just move onto the next one because all of those fixes have taken place. The feedback loop for fixes is not always really relayed back to you.

I don't have a lot of strong things to say about version 8.6. When we had version 6, the controller was pretty much rock solid. We had no problems. We made a heavy investment to migrate a lot of stuff to take advantage of things like WPA3, Wi-Fi 6, and all that kind of stuff, and we haven't been able to turn those features on because we are not confident that they are going to work just yet. So, right now, we're still very much stumbling through the version 8.6 code and just trying to make sure that it is safe before we turn on some of those features. 

In terms of the marketplace, they are one of the top three leaders. In some respects, one of the things that they focus on is wireless. Therefore, there are some things that should be beyond reproach, as far as I'm concerned. In terms of the stability of the code, there are always going to be bugs, but the core stability of the code needs to be there. When it is not stable, that's a real problem for me because you lose a lot of confidence in the products.

I have been working with Aruba Wireless for about four years now.

It is pretty good. There are a lot fewer people in the office, obviously, because of COVID. Under normal situations, we were probably about 2,000 users a day. Between 40% to 50% of that would be corporate users with mobile devices, such as iPhones, as well as laptop users accessing corporate resources and the corporate LAN. We also have guest users.

They are really moving towards making it cloud-based and less attractive for you to use on-premises. There are still a number of limitations with the cloud. One of the reasons we don't use cloud controllers is that they're not able to support more than 250 access points per tenant instance. For example, you have two sites. One has 200 APs, and one has 300 APs. You could put one site in the cloud so that you wouldn't need to have on-premises wireless controllers. You could manage it all from the cloud instance, and you would have zero hardware and all that kind of stuff. 

However, you wouldn't be able to deploy the second site in the cloud because you can't put more than 250 APs. So, now you have got to go back to doing it the old-fashioned way, which is to have on-premises controllers or two management suites. You don't want to do that because the way this new code works is that it is hierarchical, meaning that you build your configuration centrally, and then you push it down to your access points or your local controllers. So, if you've got one management session in the cloud and one management session on-premises, you would have to manage them at two places.

I do understand that you can configure that local hardware. So, for the site that has 300 APs and a local controller, you could plug that controller into the cloud, but it is still for two different models. So, the companies that just want to have a very simplified setup or want to make it less complicated, they can just say that we're going to go cloud or just stay on-premises, but now you have to have a combination of both, or you just stay with on-premises. There are still some basic limitations preventing us from doing wireless deployments where controllers are based in the cloud.

I use them a lot. Sometimes, I use them every day. They are pretty good. There is a problem in getting hold of people. That may be just because of COVID, but it is very much dependent on when you call and the type of issue that you have.

If it is a fairly standard issue, if you need assistance with a programming or configuration change, or if you need to know how to do something, you can normally get a very quick resolution. The meantime for resolution is pretty quick. It is within that call, half an hour, or one hour. You can generally speak to somebody. If it is some of the things that I have experienced or a bug, it can be very problematic. It could take days or weeks to get resolutions.

The basic stuff is really good. Anything past that, you probably need to have a dedicated support engineer on your camp if you're big enough, or you need to have resources that really know how to do the legwork beforehand.

I worked for a company that had Cisco for many years. Actually, towards the end of that, I switched them from Cisco to Ruckus. I did a POC and a pilot between Ruckus and Aruba, and Ruckus came out on top because of its simplified approach to wireless networking. I have also used Meraki, which is Cisco's cloud-only based AP solution. 

Cisco is like the other de facto. A lot of shops are all Cisco. Their hardware is probably on par with Aruba in terms of processing and handling capabilities. Features are also probably the same. It is more like a Ford-GM question. If you were brought up in a Ford household, you are probably going to buy a Ford sort of thing. I don't think there is much to them, to be honest.

The differentiator for me is that Cisco has a product, which is its network access control system, called ISE or identity services engine. That's a terrible product. It really is an awful product. It is very cumbersome, and it makes adding network access control to your wireless and wired networks very problematic. Aruba's product is called ClearPass, and it is a very flexible tool and easy tool. It is a much more reliable tool. While it doesn't have all the features that you can use with Cisco, it is a standard network application system, which means it will work with any vendor for any system. So, you can do 90% to 95% of the stuff you want, and it is a much more stable and capable system. This difference and the price are differentiators for me. 

From a purely wireless perspective, I think that Aruba is number one. Cisco is a very close number two, and then Ruckus is actually a distant third. Ruckus doesn't have all of the advanced capabilities, but what it does, it does very well. If you want a very basic entry-level wireless that is cheap for K-12 schools or a lot of environments like that, you can use Ruckus. If you need some of the advanced stuff, then you're going to have to pick one of the other solutions.

I would say it is straightforward. It is just that it is a backward way of doing it. They had a fundamental shift in the way you deploy configurations in version 6 to version 8. So, basically, you would do one way in version 6, and then they completely reversed it in version 8. When you come into the product for the first time, it is easy and fairly straightforward. It is an easy adoption process. If you have got lots of experience with the previous version of code, such as version 6, and then you move to version 8, it is very confusing.

Aruba is probably cheaper than Cisco, and yet you get all the things that you want.

I would recommend Aruba Wireless, but it depends on the size and the scope. If you are a large-scale enterprise, you are going to need to deploy something large. If you are a big university or something, you are going to have to pick one of the big three, which, in this case, is going to be Cisco, Aruba, or Juniper. Juniper's Mist is a recent addition that is hugely popular right now because of a lot of the stuff it does in the cloud. They are all cloud-based controllers, and they integrate machine learning into all of your analytics to give you data. 

I think that Aruba Wireless is a good product overall. They have some code issues with this change as most vendors do when they go through a major change. The product hardware is really good, and they have additional capabilities that Cisco doesn't have, like being able to do per-port tunneling so that you can keep isolation on. They are building features, and you could only make use of these if you extend out and use all the Aruba products like Aruba switches, Aruba ClearPass, etc. 

I've had a couple of conversations with them about the next release, which is actually pending. I don't think it is happening this year. It will happen next year. Version 10 is their next step of code, and it is geared more towards automating a lot of the setup. There are still a lot of manual tasks that you have to do. The automation piece has been something that has really garnered a lot of interest from the wireless community in terms of being able to set networks up. You can just buy access points and just throw them up, and once they're powered on, they communicate with zero-touch provisioning and all that kind of stuff. A lot of the automated processes are coming along, such as the ability to tie in cloud-based analytics to look at your reports, training, or data, like Juniper Mist is doing.

There will also be a change in the user interface. They have now brought in things like COVID tracking. It is not like they are adding features that the market wants. They will add the ability for you to be able to write things that you want to see so that you can basically do your own SDK, if you like, and more easily be able to tie that into what you're doing. I'm not sure whether they'll offer that within the version 10 code.

I would rate Aruba Wireless a seven out of ten. The negatives are the instability with the specific versions of code. These could be specific versions of code, but the newer features, such as WPA, WiFi 6, require some of the newer code. The newer code isn't really very stable yet. The high point would be that it is still an industry leader with on par hardware and performance like anybody else.