Cisco Wireless Reviews

The primary use of Cisco Wireless is for IT solutions. 

I have been using the solution for approximately 10 years. 

I find the solution to be very stable. 

The solution is highly scalable.

We have approximately 1500 users using this solution.

We have been satisfied with the technical support of Cisco Wireless.

The installation is not too difficult but the solution could improve by making the configuration easier.

We did the implementation of the solution ourselves. 

We have approximately 10 engineers and managers that do the implementation and maintenance.

The price of the solution is fair.

I have evaluated Aruba, D-Link, and Ruckus solutions.

I rate Cisco Wireless a seven out of ten.

We use the solution for our company as well as for our clients. 

What's the most important for us is the reliability of this product, and that's it. We are sure that they work fine and they are fully developed and add great new functions.

The support is very good.  Technical support is very helpful.

The initial setup is easy - especially in the Mobility Express solution.

The stability is very good. 

Cisco proposed a new version of their product, however, I don't have any requirements which are not already met.

For all products on the market, the availability of the products may not be ideal. We're waiting on a lot of products simply due to the fact that there's a material shortage. We've ordered products and have had to wait three or four months for anything to get delivered. This is not just Cisco. It's a problem on the market for all components which include semiconductors.

I've used the solution for 20 years. I've used the solution for a long time. 

We've never faced any stability issues. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

We use this solution for medium enterprises. 

I'm very satisfied with technical support. The technical support of Cisco is the best on the market. They are very helpful and responsive. 

I also work with Fortinet. I have much more experience with Cisco. I don't have so much experience with Fortinet.

The initial setup is very straightforward. It's not overly difficult or complex. A company shouldn't have any issues with the process. 

As integrators, we can install the solution for our clients. 

They have different products which can be used by some customers, from small and medium to large enterprises. The portfolio is very wide. It's difficult to say if they are expensive or not as they have expensive products, however, they are very scalable and great for very large objects.

Maybe they are a little bit above the average on the market, however, for what you get, mostly it's worth it.

I'm a system integrator. I'm a Cisco partner. The company is a Cisco Gold Partner.

Cisco is great due to the fact that there is so much documentation online. It's very easy to research it and learn it and to troubleshoot if you need, simply due to the fact that there's so much shared knowledge out there. I'm not sure if that;'s the case for any other solution. 

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten.

We primarily use the solution in order to provide wireless clients access to our hospital network.

The BCO is a great basic feature.

We enjoy having access to the security features and MAC filtering. 

All the files are standard and supported, which is a good thing.

The initial setup is easy. It's fairly quick to deploy.

The product scales well and expands quite easily.

The interface could be better.

It's a hospital network; we have a lot of X-ray machines and other machines which may interrupt the WiFi signals. They need to provide more stability with respect to the interference or help us can analyze what is causing the interference issues from the controller side so that we could more effectively troubleshoot.

The pricing of the product is quite high.

I've heard the WiFi 6 is in the market and I would like to explore WiFi 6 features. 

Having a single SSID and adding a personal device or an organizational device that an SSID can automatically pick and connect to would be great.

I've been working with the solution for over ten years at this point. It's been a while now. 

While the product is stable, in some areas when the user sees a disconnection, we are not able to identify whether it's an access point issue or if it is due to some interference in that area of the hospital (due to hospital equipment). We need help detecting issues via the controller.

We have around 4,000 to 5,000 users on the solution. 

It is easy to scale as it is centralized. You just need to add more access points if you would like to expand the product.

Technical support is great. One time, we had a controller issue due to a hardware failure and they replaced it within two days. They are extremely helpful and responsive. We are satisfied with the level of support they provide. 

The initial setup is very simple. It's not overly complex or difficult. A company shouldn't have any trouble implementing it. 

Initially, we need to get the hardware and put the basic configurations of network settings in order. I don't think it will take more than one hour to do the basic configuration. More complexity, however, does take time. 

The solution doesn't require too much maintenance. Our access points are very old, however, they are pretty stable. For around 10 years, we have been running on the old hardware and it is time to renew, actually, as the product is almost end of support. However, so far, the maintenance has been quite minimal.

The first time we implemented the solution, we did request vendor support.

The product is quite expensive, and it's making us reconsider staying with Cisco. 

As this solution is near its end-of-life, my company is looking into other solutions such as Aruba or Huawei. We have not decided yet on what we will do, however, the Cisco pricing is very costly. We would like to check out other options that are cheaper, and which can offer the same kind of stability and features.

I'm just a customer and an end-user.

We aren't necessarily using the latest version of the solution. Some access points, for example, are so old we cannot upgrade them any longer. 

I'd recommend the solution to other users. If you have the money and budget, Cisco is a good, stable solution.

I would rate the solution at an eight out of ten. 

Our primary use case is to provide enterprise wireless solutions for employees. We're a system integration provider, and we have a number of customers. Our customers deploy our wireless solutions in an active-standby mode for better network stability. We mostly have customers who have standalone wireless controllers.

I like that Cisco Wireless is easy to implement. If you get stuck with any issues, they have ample documentation on the internet. It's easy to implement, and Cisco documentation is easily accessible.

In the next release, I would like to see some AI capability deployed. Other competitors like Mist and Juniper already have it. So, AI features need to be introduced next year. Cisco is the defacto brand in wireless technology, and they're a little bit behind. They need to introduce some AI features so we can introduce the customer to these new features.

Some training will help because Cisco's new offering, 9800, requires a lot of hands-on experience. This is because the Cisco 9800 controller is new compared to the previous models, like 2504 and 3504. It requires more hands-on experience to get familiar with the terminologies used in 9800. This is because there are some AP profiles and site profiles, and all these things we aren't familiar with. It's a good tool.

I've been implementing Cisco Wireless for the last five years.

Cisco Wireless is obviously very stable, and there's no doubt about that. When you go for Airwave, it's very stable. The new IOx is going to be stable, and we're deploying it for a couple of customers.

You can deploy it for whatever your user wants and their AP count. It's very good when it comes to scalability.

Cisco technical support is great. Cisco is based in Texas and provides technical support in any manner. Cisco provides support to customers who require it for updates or break-fix IT.
Support is wonderful. We haven't had a problem.

It's easy to set up and implement this solution. For a basic implementation, you can deploy it within two or three hours. This is for a basic deployment for publishing SSID and testing. At a granular level, you may need a week to deploy this solution. This is because, in wireless scenarios, you need to do tests and try different testing scenarios. It's a very good basic solution for deploying to the cloud.

From a pricing point of view, it's a little bit expensive compared to competitors like Aruba and others. But the product is also very promising and very stable. The hardware is wonderful. As a system integrator, it's okay, but you'll probably see it as expensive as a customer.

I would advise potential users to implement Cisco wireless if they're implementing Airwaves. The old models like 2504 and 5508 work well with Airwaves. But it requires some specific knowledge to take that to the controllers and unplug the device. Some connectivity is derived from the core to the controller. You need to know what type of connectivity is required, what kind of access, and all those things. Cisco 9800 is a pure IOx, and it has a very straightforward configuration. It's very easy when compared to Airwaves.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Cisco Wireless a ten for stability and performance. I don't have any issues with that.

We've got a very large install base with Cisco Wireless. We use it for a number of situations.
We use it in warehouses, retail branches, and offices.

It is a reliable and robust solution. Access and Mobility Groups are useful. We don't use anything very fancy.

Its licensing has been very frustrating. There is also the complexity of managing the product. These are probably the two reasons why we're looking at Aruba.

The way they license this product is not simple. There are some good features in the latest version, but there are additional license costs as well, which is frustrating for us. It is not really a feature issue for us. It really comes down to cost and licensing.

They should make it a bit simpler to manage. We find the overall solution a little bit more complex than we would like to deal with. Its troubleshooting is a bit difficult, and it does require a high skill set. Comparatively, Aruba seems quite simple. One of the benefits of the Aruba product is that it is cloud-managed. We don't have to manage the management platform itself, whereas Cisco is on-premise. Its user interface could also be better.

I have been using this solution for maybe 15 years.

It is stable and reliable.

It is scalable. There are no issues with scalability. We have approximately 5,000 users.

They are very good. I am satisfied with their technical support.

Over the last 15 years, we've done so many installations, and we've had them refreshed many times. We've also done installations in the last six months. It is in the middle in terms of complexity. It is neither straightforward nor too complex.

Its licensing is not simple. There are additional license costs for features, which is frustrating for us. There are some features that are included for free in the base Aruba product, but they are available at additional costs in this solution.

I would rate Cisco Wireless a six 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. 

We have a business center with about 600 tenants. We use Cisco wireless throughout our business center. We have a coverage shortfall for WiFi access for our customers.

We have 600 users in our building spread between roughly 20 to 25 different companies. We all have different needs and different security issues. 

The flexibility on the controllers isn't that great.

We always have to inject a third-party if we want to do things on social media, etc. If you have a guest network, you can make some connections with guest networks within your social media account — that's not the case with the standard solution from Cisco. You always have to get a third-party solution.

Our solution is prehistoric — it's seven years old. Still, they have perfectly served all of our needs. But now the market is changing. Because of COVID-19, more and more people are using wireless solutions. They're using Teams. They have bandwidth issues. That's a limitation with Cisco — you have to change all your APs again.

There's no way to upgrade it to make it faster and better, overall. The only thing you can do is add more access points, but then you have to license each access point. 

This solution is highly stable. We have only had one issue in seven years. We had one issue with our controllers. We upgraded our controllers and there was a little bug, but that was solved very quickly.

Also, we've never experienced any downtime.

It's scalable, but there is a break-level replacement cost.

We expanded seven years ago. If we want to expand further, we'll have to replace our controllers and add new access points. So expandable? Yes, but it's pricey.

Cisco has a great support team. We pay a lot for support, but they are very accurate. They are very fast. They are very good and they have great knowledge.

We have a very good partner for technical support. We have a contract with them. The support is always great but it's limited to just one product.  

The initial setup is fairly complex because we have a lot of VLANs in order to enhance our customers' user experience.

This solution is expensive, but you get value for your money.

Cisco is not cheap. That's actually an understatement. Our Cisco partners want us to partner with Cisco Meraki solutions because their cloud platform is monthly-based. We pay roughly $2,000 a year with our current subscription.

I would recommend this solution to other users. If you're interested in Cisco, Meraki is a good choice, but they are lagging a little bit behind in terms of technology. If you compare Aruba with Mist, Mist has the most advanced wireless solutions that you can possibly get at the moment.

After over seven years of use, overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of seven.

Everything I do is generally command line and I use the gooey of the device. I also use a Cisco network assistant to manage the devices. I have a third-party monitor that checks to make sure everything's online — that's it. I don't have any kind of integrated solution where everything is captured within one piece of software.

I prioritize what buildings I can try to upgrade the access points from. I am looking to update my controllers because my controllers are older. They still function fine; I haven't needed to change them yet. I know eventually, they become end-of-life — that's when I'll have to switch them out.

I use Cisco wireless controllers, 2500s. I know they're pretty much going to be end-of-life soon, but I've been using them. They've been solid, I've had them for numerous years. That's what I use to manage those devices. My switches are pretty much a 3650s layer-three and they provide POE over POE plus over 40 access points to be online. It's a big network, but I keep everything in a very basic way. It's easily managed; it's just a very small department.

We're a school district, so every kid has a device. Every teacher has a device and everything is wireless. On a full school day, we can have up to 1,500 devices online at the same time. I try to make sure that everything is connected and that we have enough bandwidth. And if there's an issue that ever comes up, I always try to go there and evaluate it and correct it when needed. With the Cisco product that I've had, I've never had a lot of downtime. So I've been pretty happy with what they provide.

I want to purchase more because I want to update. Wireless standards are changing. You've got to go to WiFi 6, which is 802.11ax. That's in a few years. I don't need to do that yet because our devices won't accommodate that. Everything's still back on 802.11.ac. So there's no point, but in the future, maybe two, three years down the line, when we start getting new devices that accommodate WiFi 6, and I'm going to look for access points to be able to accommodate it as well.

The CleanAir features and the fast transition. They're probably the best things that I enjoy as well as just being able to put multiple SSIDs on those things and being able to segment my network that way. As for authentication, I use a RADIUS server, a third-party RADIUS server, for authentication on the wireless SSIDs.

I have nothing that's outstanding at this point that I think needs to be improved. Cisco has been solid so I don't have much to complain about. It's a little more money, however. I just configure it and it works for years, which is great. That's what I love about it.

I know Cisco has a Meraki brand, which uses a lot of cloud-based technology. I wouldn't mind if Cisco allowed their premiere devices to be able to have that cloud-based support as well, or cloud-based management. That would be a nice feature.

I've been using this solution for over 15 years. 

The stability is fantastic. I can't complain. Not one bit.

Scalability is nice. 

We have SMARTnet contracts with Cisco. On occasion, I've actually called them for technical support, but most of the stuff I just kind of figured out on my own.

The technical support is great. They were very accommodating and if they didn't have the answer, they would get back to me or send me an email with some information that I can refer to. But I've never been left in a lurch where I was waiting an excessively long amount of time. They've always been quick to respond and they've been very courteous as well.

For me, the initial setup is straightforward because I have everything in place. Each VLAN has a wireless controller. When I put Cisco's access point on, dynamically, it basically finds the controller, joins it, and then after joining it, I'll just log in and I'll make any configuration changes that I need to accommodate the area that it's working in.

For me, deployment takes a few days; I've been doing this long enough. If I ever have an issue, I always look it up. 

I pretty much deployed it myself. I try to keep it simple, I don't make things complex. It makes it easier for me to manage it. A couple of times in the past we've had some outside help. A lot of that just had to do with the installation of something because it comes down to timing. Being a very small department, I don't always have the time to be able to put this stuff together. So sometimes it's just helpful to get someone outside to help us out.

It's expensive because a lot of the controls come with licenses. A couple of my controls have 15 or 25 access point licenses. And if it's in a building that I need more, then I have to go out to a vendor and be able to purchase the add-on license and then pop it in. It's not bad putting a license in, it's just the biggest complaint I have about Cisco is the cost.

Right now there's no subscription. That's the other thing I like about it. We buy it and that's it. The only thing I purchase is the SMARTnet that allows me to do software upgrades for my equipment. I'm paying about $6,000 or $7,000 a year in SMARTnet contracts for that support. Basically, I use it more for the software updates that allow me to keep everything up to date.

Like anything in life, if you're familiar with it, it's easy. Can it get complicated? Of course. But I would just say, just do your research. And make sure you count the cost too. There are two things that are in play here; do your research. Once you get on a comfort level, then you can proceed with it. It works. It's pretty solid. And then the cost. Make sure that if you've got to expand that you have the financial flexibility to be able to accommodate any expansion you need, if not, then you may want to turn to another solution that might be a little cheaper.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of nine. 

We use the solution for a corporate Wi-Fi network and we have another network for authentication for corporate devices, such as scales or hand scanners. These devices must have access to some internal resources and do not need accessing to the internet.

We have hardware controllers on our sites and a number of access points all over. The number is up to 25 currently.

We are using Cisco access point 2802, and they are very reliable. We have a number of those access points all over our network, approximately 550. I have been working with this company for about a year and the project was deployed a year before. The access points have been working now for two years without one failure.

In general, the solution completely meets our needs. However, the wireless controllers themselves could be more reliable. When they work in high availability mode, we have had some issues with them. Sometimes the cluster dissipates, the primary controller fails and the secondary does not completely switch on reducing functionality.

I have been using the solution for approximately one year.

The stability could improve, there are some issues. We were told the version of the software we are using on all of the controllers is best for Cisco IOS, but we might need to update our software. Doing so might fix the stability issues we are experiencing.

The solution is scalable. There are approximately 3,000 users using the solution simultaneously in the supermarket network and it can scale upwards to 100,000.

We have a partner that helps us with the solution's deployment and maintenance. In general,  we have three technicians that help with the solution but if we run into more complex situations we contact Oracle.

We are using the Wireless Controller 3504 on Wi-Fi 5.

If they work on fixing the reliability of the solution we will be fine using the product in the future.

I rate Cisco Wireless an eight out of ten.

We are primarily using the solution for wireless connectivity and expedience.

The basic features of the solution are excellent. 

The product has very good internet and internal systems for general applications.

Technical support is pretty good.

We've found the product to be fairly stable.

The solution can scale.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward.

For the customer, it would be ideal if the solution had more global reach. It's a bit complicated to explain, however.

The documentation can be a bit confusing. It would be better if it was easier to follow.

We're hoping that the solution will work well with 5G.

In Latin America, Cisco is very expensive in comparison to other technologies.

I've been using the solution for maybe one year at this point.

The solution is very stable. There are issues with bugs or glitches. It's reliable. It doesn't crash or freeze at all.

The solution is extremely scalable. Cisco makes it very easy for a company to expand the offering if they need to. It's a good selling feature.

I would say 60% of the technical support team are very experienced in the solution. They are quite good to work with, for the most part. We're quite satisfied with the level of support we get from them. That said, I wish that the documentation provided by the company could be better.

The initial setup is not complex at all. Cisco makes the implementation very, very easy.

I'm not an IT technician and therefore don't know exactly how long a deployment takes. I don't install the solution personally by myself.

The cost of the solution is quite high in our region. It would be better if they could take cost into consideration in Latin America to make it more reasonable for local companies.

We're a partner with Cisco. We aren't just a customer.

Overall, I would rate the solution eight out of ten. If it was more reasonably priced for the local market, I might create it a bit higher.