Aruba Networks Wireless WAN Reviews

Our clients are mostly K-12 education, community colleges, and local governments.

Aruba Wireless WAN is reliable, cost-effective, and easy to troubleshoot. Aruba is a leading solution provider on Gartner's Magic Quadrant in the wireless realm.

In a meshed environment, the handoff between access points is sometimes not smooth when users are mobile. For example, a connection is occasionally interrupted when a user takes their laptop from the gym to the cafeteria. 

Sometimes there's not a seamless handoff. Services are interrupted,  so you need to wait until you're found again and reconnect to the wireless. I call that a meshed network. This issue isn't unique to Aruba. It's a problem with Meraki or any of the other wireless vendors.

It could be several things. You might have too many users in a given location could create bandwidth issues, so it disconnects somebody quicker to allow someone else. There could also be physical barriers like steel-reinforced walls between different areas, so your signal is interrupted as you travel around a corner.

I have used Aruba for more than 12 years. 

Once Aruba Wireless is set up and configured correctly, you just walk away. That's what we like about it. We have some devices that are six or seven years old, which is rare in the wireless world because everything changes so quickly, but in some banks and municipalities, it just keeps working. 

Aruba has a product lineup that scales depending on the density and bandwidth you need. They have different models that scale for different capacities. You can get a low-end, less-expensive model for small businesses, or you can scale to high density, like exam rooms, computer labs, plants, and manufacturing floors where there are lots of machines that require a strong Wi-Fi signal. Aruba has a deep product lineup. 

We switched to Aruba when Hewlett-Packard Enterprise bought Aruba. We previously used Cisco, Meraki, and Hewlett-Packard. Aruba had a broader offering than some of the other solutions.  For instance, if you used Cisco, there was a missing middle area in terms of capacity where you had to jump from a low-end to a higher end with nothing in between. Meraki started on the low end, and they didn't have much on the high end. We found Aruba fit the entire range. 

Setting up Aruba stuff is straightforward. I can't say it installs itself, but it's effortless and only requires a couple of people. 

Aruba costs around $100 annually per access point, but that varies. It could be $125 or $85 depending on the buying plan. For instance, education will get a bigger discount than commercial.

With some vendors, the access point is not manageable anymore if you don't maintain the license. It's more or less a doorstop because you can't configure and control it. You can't troubleshoot it unless you maintain the license. That's not true with Aruba.

I rate Aruba Networks Wireless LAN 10 out of 10 for the reasons I stated earlier. It's reliable, scalable, and low-maintenance. Planning is crucial. We insist on a walkthrough site survey with wireless survey equipment to first check the building where we will be implementing the wireless solution.

I've deployed in multiple healthcare environments and significant infrastructure in higher education. We have a variety of corporate environments, and they range anywhere from two APs to 2000 APs.

The solution has full integration with their NAC, and their ClearPass service. Specifically, with the wireless LAN, they have a layer 7 firewall at every AP. They have extensive firewall capabilities in the controller.

They have a capability called multi-zone, where you can terminate one AP to multiple controllers, and that's a unique thing for Aruba.

They offer per-user tunneling to a variety of endpoints.

The product needs some simplification of the configuration for their security tools or for SD-WAN, specifically. We call it SD-WAN. They need automation wizards and things like that, including macros.

There’s a bit of complexity in the initial setup.

I’ve used the solution for eight or nine years.

The solution’s stability is rock solid. It’s reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. The performance is good.

The solution is quite scalable. I know of an installation that has 55,000 APs. It’s extremely stable, and they had no problem going to that size.

Their tech support is excellent. Their tech is up there with any of the other major manufacturers.

We actually represent a variety. We have several in our portfolio of products, and Aruba and Cisco are the top two. Cisco and Meraki being the top of the Cisco brands.

Compared to those, Aruba has a more customer-friendly focus for its business model, not only on the support function but also on the acquisition and operation side. Where I mentioned the complexity before, Meraki has simplified its installation. That's something that if Aruba could accomplish what Meraki did with their simple installation plan, they would be top-notch in every area.

The initial setup is complex and not that intuitive.

We have a higher-end installation where there are a couple of thousand users, endpoints, and so on. With several thousand endpoints, a couple of thousand users, there are only two people on staff supporting it. It’s low-maintenance.

As a service model that's fully supported, that can be $30 a month with no capital outlay at all.

Extra costs depend on the model and the deployment. There are standard maintenance requirements for license maintenance and so on, for supportability. However, there are other models. For the smaller installations, anything of 128 APs or less, typically there are no additional costs. The licensing is incorporated as part of the base and a limited lifetime warranty covers the repair and replacement of the APs. We typically don't sell maintenance on those. They are just spare units, and the customers love them.

We are partners and resellers.

The solution is a mix of on-premises and cloud deployments.

I’d rate the solution a ten out of ten.

We have vertical markets and there's almost no real use case since it's all industry. Aruba is not really designed to be used in private households. We do have a few private customers. However, they have a very high demand on security. If they have a high demand on the performance, we definitely reach with Aruba however, the majority of our customers are industry related.

For one customer, what happened was they used to be on a different network on NPLS. That was very expensive and software-defined wide-area networking is a huge cost saving and much easier to be managed.

The solution can save money and can be easily implemented, depending on the environment.

It’s very stable and reliable.

There aren’t really any large improvements necessary. There are smaller improvements we request, however, they are communicated directly. We are not an end-customer. We use our direct channels.

The initial setup is complex.

I’ve been using Aruba since 2005.

The solution is very, very stable. It’s not buggy. It’s not glitchy. It doesn’t crash or freeze. It’s very reliable. The performance is great.

It is scalable in its limits. It's scalable. The main purpose is for bigger organizations - for public, schools, universities, or bigger industries. You could scale it down also to household usage or to high-demand private usage. You can do a lot with it.

We have implemented it twice on a university campus and there we have maybe 2,000 to 3000 users. We have industry users. I would say it could be anything between 3,000 and 10,000 users.

If it is a midsize company, they don't have planning for scaling expenditure. With the bigger companies, they plan to expand, however, then you always bump into Cisco. It’s the biggest competitor and the most popular one.

Customer service from HP is pretty good.

Positive

We didn’t really use a different solution. There wasn't much in the market in 2005. When we started, we started with wireless into the early and late nineties. By that time, you had very small island solutions. There were three coming market and a few other products that were controller-based, and almost nothing was controller based.

If you look at the competitors, they're almost all the same, they're just the different flavors and whatever you are used to it and how comfortable you feel with the product. We do WAN products with Aruba. We do WAN products with Fortinet as well. We do software-defined networking, the same as Aruba offers; however, there's not much difference between them.

We’ve also used Ruckus. We have a few customers in the carrier business, and Ruckus is primarily used in the carrier business. It's placed in the same league as Aruba.

In terms of the initial setup, it’s complex. It's not straightforward. The only straightforward item is the very instant access points; however, as soon as we’re working in a complex environment, then it takes a lot of knowledge. It takes good knowledge and could take a few days to implement.

I’d rate it a two out of five on a scale from one to five, where one is extremely difficult, and five is extremely easy.

We are a very small company. We normally use the IT department of our customers, and they are trained. They keep maintaining their own system. For smaller customers, we do the maintenance, and we also do the monitoring. We have partner companies. We swap our 24/7 services. If you offer 24-hour service, it takes about six to eight technicians to take care of the 24/7 services.

We don't monitor if the company or the customer has any ROI. It's quite difficult to answer what the ROI is, and what the return of investment is. Most customers don't even look at ROI on wireless.

The license is a one-time subscription. It's a one-time purchase, however, the update is a subscription.

It is unfortunately very expensive. The subscription, the software maintenance subscription, and even the one-off pricing are very high.

The license costs reflect the features. The more features you require, the more you have to pay.

We use different versions of Aruba.

We are Aruba partners. As a partner, of course, I will try to encourage other people to look at Aruba and implement Aruba. Some of the features are not unique however they are very highly developed, and the solution is highly sophisticated. It's the best of its breed. As a partner with different vendors, however, you have to look at the requirements, and you have to make a decision on the requirements.

I’d rate the solution a ten out of ten.

The main use case for this solution is in the education sector and public services.

Aruba Central seems to be a good way to go in cloud management. However, compared to Cisco Meraki, it's still very early days.

The product should improve Aruba Central.

I have been working on Aruba Networks Wireless WAN for five years.

The solution is stable.

The solution is very scalable. 

The initial setup is not difficult, but it has its limitations, with guest authentication. The deployment takes a couple of hours. It is very simple. However, it depends on how you do it. If you use the virtual controller, it is pretty easy. But it has got its limitations. If you do it by Aruba Central, it does take an awful amount of time.

With Aruba, you get what you pay for compared to the other vendors. Although Cisco is very expensive and their management is way better than Aruba Central. So, you have to consider what you are after. But price-wise, they are really good.

I can’t see Aruba helping me, but it does its job.

I would recommend this tool because it's stable, easy to deploy, and easy to manage. I would rate it nine out of ten. 

Aruba Networks Wireless WAN benefited my company because it increased mobility significantly. After all, users don't need to search for LAN cables in the conference rooms.

Adoption was also relatively fast in terms of user onboarding.

What I like most about Aruba Networks Wireless WAN is seamless integration from an endpoint perspective, for example, the core domain joined machine.

I also find the onboarding process for Aruba Networks Wireless WAN fantastic.

Another valuable feature of the product is authentication, as Aruba Networks Wireless WAN supports certificate-based authentication. It has remarkable security features, particularly in its machine and user authentication levels.

Device integration has room for improvement in Aruba Networks Wireless WAN. However, there has been a development where the access point can be deployed through cloud-based controllers. It can connect via the internet and doesn't require MPS connectivity, but that can be improved further.

I've been using Aruba Networks Wireless WAN for around six years.

Aruba Networks Wireless WAN has good stability, so that's a nine out of ten for me.

The scalability of Aruba Networks Wireless WAN is good. The only constraint is that the hardware comes with a fixed number of access point support, which becomes problematic if you have an on-premise deployment. Still, if you plan for the capacity in advance, then it's okay.

That could be a constraint from a large deployment when the access point only lasts two or three years. I don't want to put a high number or high capacity on the hardware on the first day, so scalability-wise, I rate Aruba Networks Wireless WAN as five out of ten.

The technical support for Aruba Networks Wireless WAN is good. That area is an eight out of ten.

Positive

I'd rate the initial setup for Aruba Networks Wireless WAN as six out of ten.

One of my Aruba Networks Wireless WAN deployments took two and a half months. Deploying the product entailed site-specific surveying, identifying access point location, how my controller will be set up on-premises, the IP schema to be utilized for the access point, IP allocation, and which access IDs I'm going to broadcast.

My team and I deployed Aruba Networks Wireless WAN.

I enjoyed almost fifty percent of the cost reduction from Aruba Networks Wireless WAN because it helped reduce the LAN infrastructure, such as switching hardware, LAN cables, etc. I no longer needed to deploy the switches and LAN cables for every point, which resulted in an almost fifty percent reduction in costs compared to the past cost computations.

Aruba Networks Wireless WAN is pretty cost-efficient than Cisco ISE when my company did a PO, but for a single-party tender, its pricing was on the higher side, so it depends. I rate the pricing for Aruba Networks Wireless WAN as six out of ten.

I have experience with Aruba Networks Wireless WAN.

My company has a 7200 series Aruba controller, almost five hundred access points, and Aruba ClearPass Policy Manager.

My company's existing database is deployed on-premises, including the controller, access point, and the Aruba ClearPass Policy Manager.

A team of five people, including myself, deployed Aruba Networks Wireless WAN. It was a process of putting and mounting access points. I also had two members in charge of configuring the switches while I configured the controller and the Aruba ClearPass Policy Manager. Once access points become visible on the controller, my team will proceed to the template configuration deployment for Aruba Networks Wireless WAN.

The deployment team consisted of five L1s, three L2s, and me, so a total of nine. My unit deployed five hundred access points to six thousand end users. My team of eight takes care of administration.

Aruba Networks Wireless WAN requires maintenance, for example, upgrading the controller or the Aruba ClearPass Policy Manager and then posture agent deployment for six thousand users. Any agent upgrade means deployment for the users as well.

I'd tell anyone looking into implementing Aruba Networks Wireless WAN that it's a good solution with many advantages, such as mobility, flexibility, and scalability, so I suggest using Aruba Networks Wireless WAN to enhance user experience.

My rating for Aruba Networks Wireless WAN is seven out of ten.

My role is similar to an integrator of Aruba Networks Wireless WAN.

My company is an Aruba Networks customer.

We use it for wireless access in our sales offices. It is a wireless access network.

It works well. It is reliable. 

We just upgraded it to 6G. The main reason why we chose Aruba is that we are an Aruba partner and we get significant discounts on Aruba.

The initial setup is straightforward and simple. 

It is scalable. 

It's providing us with the coverage that we need. The speed is good. Basically, you set it up and forget it, which is good.

We're not very sophisticated with it. We just use the wireless and it just does what we need it to.

It works. We don't look at it any deeper than that and don't find any features ar missing. 

We had one problem with one of our remote sites. We opened up a ticket and it turned out there was a problem with one of the end users' desktop. It needed to be patched and support was very good about it. They told us about it and we did it and it worked. It was nothing to do with the product itself, really. 

We've used the solution for ten years or so. 

The stability, in general, is good. We have problems from time to time; however, for those cases, most of the time, it's related to users. They might have patches that need to be installed or things like that.

It's generally reliable and there are no bugs or glitches. 

It meets our needs. We find it to be scalable. 

We have maybe 20 to 30 people using the solution at this time. 

We do not have plans to increase usage as we don't have any other locations for anything.

Tech support is efficient. If we have a problem, we open up a ticket and they help.

The solution is easy to set up. It is straightforward and simple. It's not overly complex. 

We have one person on staff that can deploy and maintain the product. They are a network admin. 

I wasn't involved in the process of looking into ROI, if that was even considered.

The pricing is good for us. As a partner, we get discounts. 

I don't have any information in regards to the exact costs we pay. 

We are resellers of Aruba. We don't do a lot with the wireless. We consume it. We don't sell it.

The solution works well and it does what we need it to do. 

It's a good product. Cloud management works very well. I would recommend cloud management to others any day.

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten. 

We use Aruba Wireless at a big trading center in two ways. One use case is a corporate network with restrictions, and another is for customers. For our corporate use case, we have around 30 people on various devices, like laptops and mobile phones. In the second case, we provide access to around 1,000 users. 

An engineer with enough experience can tune the network however they want. It's crucial. It's good to customize our information security how we like it and configure the solution to achieve the level of stability we need.

Support is a little expensive. It's also a little tricky to configure Aruba sometimes. For example, if we want to whitelist a device, it works in unexpected ways. I want to allow this device to connect somewhere, and it lets it connect to any device in the network.

Let's say I want to allow my phone to connect to the network printer, but if I add my phone to the white list, I automatically allow my phone to connect to any other devices, and it's not secure.

I've been using Aruba Wireless for a year and a half. 

My team is highly experienced, so I haven't needed support so far. 

Setting up Aruba Networks is a little difficult, but experienced professionals can handle it, and we have help from partners, so it's not a problem. In Ukraine, there are several companies with expertise in Aruba. We can pay them for the initial setup and some training.

We pay every year for Aruba Central. It's a subscription. In other cases, we use Aruba AirWave on-premise, and that's a one-time payment. 

I rate Aruba Networks Wireless WAN nine out of 10. It's a stable solution with advanced technical capabilities. We never need to worry if it's going to work. 

Like any professional solution, you need to do some evaluation before implementing it in a project. The customer must fully understand the project requirements before they buy and implement it. 

There is a clustering feature, so the APs immediately switch back to the next available controller. The users will not notice any impact and will feel connected to the network. They will not notice any disconnection.

The AirMatch feature is also very useful. If the radio channels and the power being utilized in the RF environment are filled up, it will update all of those channels and power transmission.

They have to work on their Aruba Central cloud platform. There are still some glitches such as not showing proper user details.

When we removed the AP from the Aruba Central cloud, it showed up as being connected to Aruba Central. They need to fix these issues.

I would like to see artificial intelligence and machine learning in the next release. Other vendors already have artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities in their cloud platform-based wireless solutions.

I've been working with this solution for the last six years.

It is a stable solution.

Aruba Networks Wireless WAN's technical support was very good in 2017 and 2018. Now, the calls go here and there, and we don't get an immediate response.

The initial setup was very easy. It's not that complex.

Compared to Cisco, Aruba Networks Wireless WAN's user interface is very nice.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate this solution at nine.