Aruba Instant vs. Aruba Wireless
As of February 2019, Aruba Instant is ranked 11th in Wireless LAN with 1 review vs Aruba Wireless which is ranked 1st in Wireless LAN with 33 reviews. The top reviewer of Aruba Instant writes "Provides a built-in firewall, local radius, and application visibility and control". The top reviewer of Aruba Wireless writes "Some of the implementations or features do work as advertised. Urgent areas of improvement would be customer support, better tuned default settings, and documentation". Aruba Instant is most compared with Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN. Aruba Wireless is most compared with Cisco Wireless, Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN and Ruckus Wireless.
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Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros | |
Has many advanced features: Built-in firewall, local radius, application visibility and control, not locked into support agreements. | It has an aesthetically pleasing GUI for configuration. It helps the user to have a better vision of what is happening in their network. I have found the Access Point (AP) group profile feature extremely useful. It makes deployments look easy. It has helped in making deployments easier. It delivers constantly, there is no break in the internet using these devices. It also automatically gets connected when the internet comes back. Failure is very low. The performance and the application monitor. You can select the applications you want to use and block on your network With the central management system, I'm able to access each device. I can configure one device and then it provisions all the other devices with the same configuration, rather than my having to configure them one by one. With Aruba Wireless Controller, all our access points are connected to one controller. Through that controller, we can actually handle each access point; we can disconnect or connect that access point, and then we can tell, or see, or allow how many users are, or should be, connected through that access point. |
Cons | |
Although built-in troubleshooting tools are available, they are not at all intuitive to use. Aruba Instant lacks decent documentation to use for troubleshooting wireless issues (fortunately there aren’t many). The Central cloud management (optional) is far behind the competition in features, ease of use, and dependability. I have tried Aruba Central a few times over the years and, in my option, it is not where it needs to be for serious consideration in production environments. | The urgent areas of improvement would be customer support, better tuned default settings, and documentation. They should provide usage guides and solutions to frequent problems. They should simplify the configuration flow. Additional detailed reporting for client traffic would be a great addition. What I would like to have with these kinds of devices is the most enhanced security. For example, if I could apply security from wireless devices, that would be great. I would also like more enhanced reports on user adoption, who is getting what bandwidth. I would like to be able to customize Captive Portals. The management system would be better if it were more polished, if it had a better interface like, for example, Meraki If you want a centralized management system that is able to manage all your networking devices such as the wireless, the switch, the routers, and the firewall, then Aruba may not be the one, because Aruba doesn't do firewalls. |
Pricing and Cost Advice | |
Avoid the Central cloud license if you can. | Get multiple bids/quotes, and talk to the representatives about the limitations of the product; pretty standard. It's not expensive. That is the reason we switched to Aruba. Pricing is competitive. Licensing is needed to maintain access to the latest firmware, which wasn't made clear originally when we started with Arbua (or things changed, I'm not sure which). I would just say, make sure you budget for it. A recent change is that ClearPass licensing is superb. It counts user-based instead of device-based, for BYOD on-boarding. AP signal strength and price. I know this is a competitive market, but APs should not cost so much if they do not cover a large area. The system was very good, but we needed to upgrade in order to adapt for our needs, and doing so with Aruba would have been more expensive. Besides paying for the APs, you need to pay a license each year for their use. Therefore, watch out for that and do the best you can to keep costs down. 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. |
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Ranking  | |
Views 171 Comparisons 116 Reviews 1 Followers 42 Avg. Rating 8.0 | Views 57,201 Comparisons 31,994 Reviews 30 Followers 1,348 Avg. Rating 8.5 |
Top Comparisons | |
 Compared 100% of the time. | Compared 36% of the time. Compared 31% of the time.  Compared 15% of the time. |
Also Known As | |
| Aruba WLAN, HP WLAN, HP Wireless | |
Learn | |
| Aruba Networks | Aruba Networks |
Overview | |
Aruba Instant delivers the only controllerless Wi-Fi solution that is easy to set-up, and loaded with security and smarts needed to accelerate your business without breaking your budget. | Aruba deliver superb Wireless performance and multi-user MIMO aware ClientMatch to boost network efficiency and support the growing device density and app demands on your network. |
Offer | |
Learn more about Aruba Instant | Learn more about Aruba Wireless |
Sample Customers | |
| Purdue University, Orlando Magic, Brussels Airport Company, Molecaten Holiday Parks | Consulate Health Care, Los Angeles Unified School District, Science Applications International Corp (SAIC), San Diego State University, KFC, ACTS Retirement-Life Communities |
Top Industries | |
No Data Available | University32% K 12 Educational Company Or School11% Comms Service Provider8% Healthcare Company8% Comms Service Provider17% University15% K 12 Educational Company Or School14% Retailer9% |
Company Size | |
No Data Available | Small Business31% Midsize Enterprise24% Large Enterprise45% Small Business24% Midsize Enterprise30% Large Enterprise47% |
Find out what your peers are saying about Aruba Networks, Cisco, Aerohive and others in Wireless LAN. Updated: January 2019.
316,268 professionals have used our research since 2012.
See also Aruba Instant Reviews, Aruba Wireless Reviews, and our list of Best Wireless LAN Companies.
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