Cisco Wireless Reviews

I use the solution in my company to cover complex spaces. The tool can be useful to connect some devices to the ethernet.

For end users, the tool must be easy to connect and use. Technical stability is important for my company, and I haven't seen any problems with the product.

The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it can be integrated into other solutions in a particular environment, including where there are wired and wireless connections.

The coverage provided by the solution is an area of concern in some cases, making it an area where improvements are required.

From an improvement perspective, the product could be made cheaper.

I have been using Cisco Wireless for a few years. I don't remember the version of the solution.

It is a stable solution.

It is a scalable solution.

A few hundred people use the product in my company.

My company will probably increase the number of users for the tool.

Apart from Cisco Wireless, I have used some other solutions in my company only for testing purposes.

There are no major problems in the area of the product's initial setup phase.

The solution is deployed on the cloud.

The solution can be deployed in a week.

Around ten people in my company take care of the product's deployment and maintenance.

The product's deployment phase was done with the help of my company's in-house personnel.

The product is expensive.

My company has no problems with the performance offered by the product.

Cisco offers the best solutions in the market.

To those who plan to use the solution in the future, I would say that it is a tool that needs to be completely integrated into an infrastructure.

I rate the overall product a nine out of ten.

Our environment has many devices constantly moving within our environment—approximately 3,000 devices daily, many of which change locations every 45 minutes. Therefore, the tool's seamless handoff is valuable for us. It's one of the reasons we have stayed with the product. 

We maintain a strict security profile through a layered design approach. We implement a layered approach rather than relying solely on one device or package for security. 

There are areas for improvement with Cisco Wireless, as well as with wireless technology in general. For instance, while Wi-Fi 6 offers significant advancements, some unresolved issues and quirks have delayed our migration to this standard. 

I have been working with the product for 25 years. 

I rate the tool's stability a nine out of ten. 

Our environment typically involves serving approximately 5,300 users daily, with an average of over 3,000 devices connected at any given time. The tool is scalable. I rate it a ten out of ten. 

One main difference between Cisco Wireless and other wireless products, such as HPE, is their management platforms. HPE's management platform is often perceived as more intuitive than Cisco Wireless's. However, it's important to note that we don't utilize either vendor's management platform. Instead, we manage our wireless infrastructure directly from the access points. Each AP within our clusters functions as a management AP. 

I rate the tool's deployment a nine out of ten. It can be completed in half a day. We have two resources involved in the deployment process. We generally aim to maintain our access points for around five years, with occasional replacements needed due to disruptions or failures. However, we haven't encountered significant maintenance issues with Cisco Wireless.

Given our government-mandated budget constraints, the design and deployment of our wireless infrastructure with Cisco Wireless have provided significant flexibility in reallocating funds within our organization. 

We opt for a one-time purchasing fee model in our setup. Since we don't utilize a management platform or WLAN controller, there are no recurring costs. The access points we typically use, which support Cisco's wireless masters, are priced at around $250 each. Occasionally, we purchase them in packs of five or as part of extended packs at a prorated cost.

I rate the overall product a nine out of ten. I recommend Cisco Wireless. The way we designed and deployed it, considering cost is always a significant factor for us, has proven to be more than affordable. With the extensive deployment of access points throughout our infrastructure, Cisco Wireless aligns well with our budget. Moreover, it is compatible with 2.4 and 5 gigahertz and Wi-Fi 6, which perfectly meets our requirements.

We primarily use the solution for wireless connectivity.

You don't have to meddle around with licenses, considering they're onboard with the access points. That took a load off when creating a build of material for a new wireless deployment. 

We didn't exactly dig deep into these yet. However, they're fairly easy to deploy. We have been using the virtual machines, the 1900 CL virtual controller. 

They're pretty stable, pretty good.

The solution is scalable. 

I like the new troubleshooting mechanism. With a couple of clicks, you can get a PCAP file, pick up the traffic from a client, and analyze it in Wireshark notepad.

I like the new way the wireless is getting built right now, so you have groups with policies that you simply apply to an access point, or you apply a group with all kinds of features like RF policies, and SSIDs to a certain access point and the back point, that access point gets those features up and running immediately or directly after a reboot.

I would like to see centralized management, something like what Aruba offers. The current issue with Cisco is I don't have centralized management. For example, we're building wireless controllers that are basically standalone, and something like a centralized, single management pane would be nice. Something like Cisco Prime, or rather, an improved version of that would be very, very good.

The initial setup can be difficult for beginners. 

It is a pricey product.

I've been using Cisco since 2012 and the new OS since 2021.

The solution is stable and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze.

It is scalable and easily expands. 

We have been coving entire countries with a single deployment. We have a huge number of devices - likely tens of thousands. There's a swarm of incoming IoT devices, plus everyone who has a corporate phone is basically connected to the wireless.

I haven't contacted technical support. Considering we don't have a subscription, we're on our own. Cisco support is unlike Aruba, where it's free as far as I can tell. 

I also use Aruba. I've been working with Aruba for the past two years, sporadically now and then.

The initial setup is not something a beginner can deal with; it's not Cisco Meraki. Cisco Meraki is easy to deploy, yet limited in abilities. 

With this solution, you need to have some knowledge about wireless. The new Cisco IOx is an improvement over the IOS. The command line interface is good, and you can use it to deploy. 

I'd rate the ease of setup a three out of five.

Cisco is on the expensive side. 

I'd rate the product a three out of five in terms of affordability of the product.

They could improve their lead times. The wait time for their equipment is very long now and the pricing is very steep for Cisco.

I'm a customer. I'm an engineer in a midsize enterprise that employs 40,000 people. It's a global company spread throughout the world. Scalability and wireless is something that we are looking for right now.

This product is great for someone who is looking to improve their connectivity. Of course, new users should check whether or not this is suited for the company. There are some cheaper, smaller solutions that they could use - even Cisco's Meraki. 

The solution we are using is big due to the fact that we have 300 or 400 access points per country, so we are using 80% of its features. We are tweaking everything from RF policies, and we're using advanced-style SSIDs like 802.1X authentication via radius, on the external radius server. We are using simple pressure key authentication. We are also using captive portal authentication with Cisco ISE. And we are also currently trying to implement a more advanced form of pressure key ossification, a segmented policy-based pressure key based on Cisco ISE, which is going to be used for the IoT devices. We get a lot out of Cisco.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

There were some issues during the initial installation. You need to be very careful of the images for some reason. For example, the GUI can trick you. That's my beef with them. Sometimes not everything gets displayed correctly in the graphical user interface. One example would be I would load an image and upgrade the cluster, the virtual virus control cluster, and it would go through everything. And then after the reboot, I would see it basically didn't do anything. It didn't upgrade it. Therefore, I have to stop using the  GUI and revert to CLI. That's my concern, especially during the configuration part.

Of course, for somebody who's new to the product, the GUI is the way to go since you have everything nicely presented in the graphical user interface they really did upgrade from the previous version. They've done a good job of making the user interface somewhat friendlier and better composed than the previous versions. Yet, that's small considering that sometimes they don't display the real situation and that can be sometimes very confusing. 

In our warehouse, we use a wireless solution for every job we have there. For example, we have dispatch trucks or picking. They call it picking when you choose the products and go to the warehouse site of our clients. All of that operation is wireless.

They use a Vocollect solution for warehouse sites. If we don't have wireless, they don't have Vocollect and without it, they don't know how to offer dispatch for the trucks.

For plants, we have solutions for tablets. The tablets manage all of our equipment, our principal machines. That's why we need the wireless option that Cisco provides.

We use the solution for connectivity for our employees.

The deep knowledge of Cisco is its most valuable aspect. The Wireless Cisco solution has been in development for many years. That gives users trust in the solution. 

There are many engineers that know how to operate Cisco. If I choose another vendor or another solution, I have to be very careful about how much knowledge is actually there in the market. For example, if I have a problem, how easy is it to find someone, an expert, in order to do a solution for a problem? That's why we choose Cisco. There's deep knowledge there that doesn't exist elsewhere. Also, Cisco has commercial representatives in our country, in our city. It's easy to communicate with Cisco directly. With others, it's not that easy.

The integration is great. For all Cisco environments, the integration is easy. W have a lot of Cisco products. The integration between them all is simple. That's why the other company we work for or we as a team choose Cisco as a vendor.

The initial setup is easy.

We've found the solution to be scalable.

The price needs improvement. The bad thing about Cisco is about price. Nowadays it's all about delays in equipment as well. Any hardware is delayed. 

There's a delay in equipment that comes to Columbia, to our country, and that lasts almost six months. I have a project in which we have to wait for six months, seven months in order to get the equipment. That is the bad aspect nowadays.

The company I work for has been using Cisco for 20 to 25 years.

My company has so many brands and so many plants and factories. We are a multi-Latina company. We have brands in Chile, Argentina, Ecuador, Colombia, Dominican Republic, et cetera. Our inventory of Cisco equipment is almost 300 to 500 devices. There are many series there. The new branch has 91 or 92 Wireless, however, they also have old series such as the 12,000 series. It's old, too old, however, this year we are planning to fix that.

It's so scalable. For example, if I update the series, I don't have to change all my environment. I only have to change the parts that I need.

We have 5,000 employees on the product. All of them use wireless. For example, we use wireless for daily operations of the factory. 

We do plan to increase usage. This year we are planning to open a new warehouse. They are going to need a Cisco solution. Even at this moment, we have the design, or we are checking the design. We maybe will buy the solution in next month or two. That is the roadmap.

Technical support is very helpful. It's easy to reach them. We are satisfied with the level of service. 

We just have Cisco solutions. We don't have any other vendors in our network.

The initial setup is simple.

The knowledge is easy to locate. You need to click or look for a special website. You have so much information on the cloud and so much information, documents, et cetera. That's why developing a project with Cisco is easy.

If I have a big project it could take maybe four to five months, however, that's for a big project.

For deployment, maybe for a big project, we have ten people. For the operations, for support solutions, my team is comprised of five people. That's five engineers that make up my personal team.

I contract a partner to help with implementation. If I have a big project, I contract the design. 

As the first step, we contract the design. For the design, sometimes Cisco gives us the special engineers. However, in other cases, we contract the design. That design comes with a WiFi heat design. They have visual material.

The other step is to contract the solution with a partner. We send to the market an RFP, a request in order to have the best price in the market and the best partner in the market. The other step is to implement or to develop the project.

The licensing is expensive. The cost of licenses is expensive, as are other solutions. When we have a project, we have to clarify to our financial staff why we chose Cisco, as there are other, cheaper solutions. The cost of equipment is expensive.

For example, for new brand equipment, Cisco Wireless equipment, it costs $1,500 for one piece of equipment. That includes licenses, installation, and equipment. 

We looked at Meraki, however, we decided our organization was a bit too large for that particular solution. We prefer to have on-premises options.

I also test other solutions, for example, Aruba or Ubiquiti.

I am an end-user. I work for a manufacturing company. I manage the networking solution for that company.

At this moment, we are choosing Cisco as a continuous technology. Nowadays just we have our roadmap. Our plan for the next two months is to open a new branch office, and no more.

I'd rate this solution at a ten out of ten.

Solve WiFi problems, getting the best WiFi coverage. This was our challenge. The addition of different WLANs by division pushed us to change the configuration of our controller, DHCP and the RADIUS server with NPS.

Between 2011 and 2013, we had a lot of problems with our WiFi, especially with the AD. However, with the addition of the RADIUS, it helped. In 2014, it was made better with the configuration of five new WLANs in FlexConnect mode and our environment improved.

Our number of students increased by 35% (more than 600 students) and we used different devices (Mac OS X, Windows, Chrome OS for grade 4 through grade 12, Android, and iOS), which need a very good roaming sensitivity between access points. The separation of our WiFi for guest, staff, SP staff and two for students, and setting up one IP address for user help to have visibility on our network.

Everything is online NWEA TestTaker, Google classroom and courses. This is why we need to have better WiFi coverage. 

We really have good stability. Because classes and work work well.

Everything in the cloud and the cloud printing are working find. 

Customer service is only good for money. While technical support is more flexible and they go straight as needed.

Yes, the network was horrible and everything was cascading. That's why we use cisco.

The initial setup was straightforward because we only had one WLAN SSID.

And after we went in second step by adding a radius for the certificates only.

Yes, we implemented that through with vendor team. Their level of expertise is very good.

Cisco is good but it expensive. That's why for me there is no better.

We have 10 Cisco 1552E and i ordered 10 more. 

Now, i have the release for 8.0 and 8.5 for my wlc but i stay with 7.4.100 software version.

I will stay with Cisco and see next time Insha ALLAH.

The coverage will be extended and the dead zones will be covered.

For the first configuration, we used apple access points and the HP procurve and D'Link switches.

I noticed with the 1552E access points, the local mode has more coverage than the flexconnect mode.

We have some clients with hotels who use Cisco wireless systems. Others have entertainment centers that use Cisco wireless systems. Additionally, we have retail businesses utilizing Cisco wireless systems. However, we are primarily transitioning towards TP-Link Omada systems because they do not require subscriptions, which is cost-effective for our customers.

The features include maintenance and monitoring functionalities. Additionally, knowledge-based data is available for implementation and installation scenarios. Currently, Cisco systems are highly robust but need to catch up slightly compared to Ruckus and Omada systems regarding innovation. Using alternative suppliers can be advantageous as they provide cutting-edge innovations and detailed information about roadmaps.

The security and encryption features of Cisco Wireless are robust but need to be updated compared to other providers. Cisco offers enterprise-grade encryption. Setting up a radio server based on networking filtering may require some effort to configure profiles. Once established, Cisco provides clean and straightforward possibilities for configuring functionalities like setting up a radio server system.

The solution's pricing is high. Pricing, features, and innovation are the fundamentals of choosing a provider or supplier. Despite the higher price, we migrated to other profiles like Ruckus and Omada because they offer more robust solutions. If you look at benchmarks, you'll see that Ruckus is one of the top-tier providers, with Cisco falling behind.

I have been using Cisco Wireless for 5 years.

The product’s stability is great.

The internet speed is high within environments. As you move further away from the access point, there is a decline in speed. Omada or Ruckus don’t have the speed degradation as you move away from the access point.

I rate the solution’s stability a seven out of ten.

The solution is suited for medium-sized businesses.

I rate the solution’s scalability an eight out of ten.

We sometimes need second-line agencies because the first-line agencies may not have sufficient expertise to address complex issues.

Neutral

The initial setup depends on the complexity of the infrastructure, ranging from hours to days.

I rate the initial setup a 7 out of 10, where 1 is difficult, and 10 is easy.

The product is nearly too expensive in terms of quality. It varies depending on the project’s scope and specific requirements. Prices range from around 5000 euros to 30,000 for larger, more complex implementations.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven to eight out of ten.

The performance was good. However, most of the issues were due to changes in Cisco versions.

In my last organization, which was a university, we used it for seven years. But in this current organization, we are not using it yet.

It is a stable solution. The performance was good. However, most of the issues were due to changes in Cisco versions. 

There were more than 25,000 students who were using it. It was a good experience for us because Cisco supported us in our workflow. We were facing many problems before Cisco, but after implementing it, we had great functionality. And since then, we haven't changed a single AP.

It was better than other APs in terms of wireless equipment and performance.

It is a straightforward solution. That's why we just required some technical support from a third party. At that time, when we were at the finishing side or during the landing time.

If I make a comparison with Huawei 6.0 with Cisco, Huawei is better. 

The initial setup is straightforward. 

Our in-house team deployed the solution. 

It was expensive. Considering the challenges faced in third-world countries like Pakistan or India, cheaper solutions are preferred. Huawei, for example, is much cheaper compared to Cisco.

We use an annual license model. 

I recommend using Cisco.

Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

Until we switched to Ruckus about a month ago, we had used Cisco Wireless products for the past ten years at our school of about 1800 students and 250 employees, including the teachers. The teachers and students all use iPads so wireless (Wi-Fi) is a big part of our network.

We used Cisco for everything, including wired switches, wireless switches, the core switch, etc. For the wireless network we used Cisco WiSM, which is the old version of Cisco's wireless controller. Since we had used this Cisco equipment for so long and it was showing its age, we ultimately decided it was time for us to renew everything along with all the new features that are now available.

I enjoyed Cisco's Meraki MDM which we already had installed, even though at the end of the day it was too expensive for us to continue in that direction when upgrading.

Overall, Cisco was stable and worked well for all our needs until we started having more and more students and teachers using YouTube and Zoom — what with classes being isolated and everything — which put a lot of strain on our Wi-Fi network. 

The biggest reason why we could no longer continue with Cisco Wireless was because of the high cost to upgrade everything. It was disappointing that Cisco treated us as just another big company, and did not offer any leeway on their pricing given that we are an educational institute. And although the system we had in place from Cisco Wireless was good enough over the last ten years, it started to show its age when pushed to its limit during the pandemic.

Generally, and this isn't so much a question of support, it was also very difficult for us to determine exactly what the problem was when we had a problem. We didn't have enough tools for diagnosis on the system, in terms of identifying who is connected where at a certain point in time and so on. We would have liked more tools when it comes to diagnosis and traceability.

I've used Cisco Wireless for over ten years. 

The Cisco system worked well before, for many years. It was only after we started having capacity issues that we found the stability was suffering.

Along with the isolation measures, students and teachers started using Zoom and video sites like YouTube much more, which is when the wireless system started to show its limits.

After ten years of having the same system, we essentially started again from scratch when it came to upgrading. We looked into scaling up with Cisco Wireless, but unfortunately it would have been too expensive for us.

We didn't have much contact with Cisco technical support. The consultants would do the job for us, and the only time we needed them afterwards was when we had a problem with our Wi-Fi controllers. 

We had two controllers for high availability and when we realized that the second one was not working, we contacted support. Unfortunately, we didn't have SMARTnet for it, so we ordered SMARTnet to be able to exchange the device, and they said we just renewed the SMARTnet so we had a penalty of one month without the second controller.

We did not appreciate the way they handled it, because even though it wasn't a lot of money to them as a big company, it was a lot of money to us. I don't believe that was the right way for them to behave, especially with a school. We would have teachers come and tell us, "What's going on with the Wi-Fi? It doesn't work." But I couldn't really tell them, "It's a Cisco resource," and all that.

Actually, we have now switched to Ruckus only about a month ago. After evaluating the costs for upgrading the entire wireless network, we found that it would have been too expensive for us to continue with Cisco Wireless.

For deployment and maintenance we had three technicians and we also had support from our consulting company. We actually changed consulting companies twice, and we used them mainly for making updates and changing the setups.

With the most recent consulting company, we unfortunately lost contact with them and didn't have the documentation to finish the job that they had started.

The licensing system is very rigid. I work for a school and we are just treated like big companies. At some point, there's a limit to what we can do about that.

I can't remember what we paid for the equipment, though in the end we bought some extra switches from an aftermarket company. We started doing our own replacing of equipment, which we didn't really use. The SMARTnet contract was only for the core switch and the Wi-Fi controllers, and we didn't go that way for the rest of the equipment.

If we had, it would have cost something around $2000-$3000 per switch, and we have 30 of them, so it wouldn't have been affordable for us.

The best advice I can give is to always get a second opinion. When I arrived six years ago, we had way too many access points, and the density was causing a lot of interference. It was only after removing some access points that we had better Wi-Fi. When asked, the school said that they had originally added more access points because the Cisco technicians told them to.

I would rate Cisco Wireless a seven out of ten.