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Aruba Airwave vs DX Spectrum comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 2, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
5.8
Aruba Airwave provides long-term ROI with efficient troubleshooting, significant cost savings, and improved productivity despite initial hardware costs.
Sentiment score
7.1
Organizations experienced significant ROI with DX Spectrum, noting enhanced automation, cost savings, efficiency, and effective integration despite high costs.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.4
Aruba Airwave technical support is praised for effective service, knowledgeable staff, and multilingual communication, despite occasional slower responses.
Sentiment score
7.1
Customer service excels with high ratings, but technical support varies; Broadcom acquisition raised concerns over response times.
I would rate their technical support as a nine or ten, as it's quite good.
Angie was very kind and communicated well in both Spanish and English, making it pleasant to connect with her.
Broadcom technical support is very good.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.0
Aruba Airwave is scalable, supporting different user counts and environments, often used with Cisco tools, rated highly for scalability.
Sentiment score
8.1
DX Spectrum is highly adaptable and scalable, effectively supporting growth in diverse environments from small businesses to large corporations.
Aruba Airwave gives good information about SNR value, signal value, and you can get extensive information.
Aruba Airwave is fully scalable, as we have a large number of tenants using the network with approximately six thousand end users.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Aruba Airwave is stable, reliable, and highly rated, with minor manageable issues during high usage and integration.
Sentiment score
7.3
DX Spectrum is praised for its stability and reliability, with minor issues usually due to incorrect configurations or updates.
As it is centralized, sometimes it disconnects from the cloud, and I need to reboot.
I have found Aruba Airwave to be stable.
 

Room For Improvement

Aruba Airwave requires cost reduction, system integration, UI simplification, pricing changes, and better synchronization, support, and compatibility.
DX Spectrum users seek a modern interface, enhanced integration, simplified processes, better analytics, and improved support for device certification.
The end-to-end users' messages show some details that are not always up-to-date, and sometimes the information from the GUI is not exactly aligned with what's on the website.
I find the price of Aruba Central compared to Aruba Airwave to be more expensive.
When attempting to copy a floor plan, it does not copy well, so I often have to redraw the walls.
Currently, they appear as pop-up messages, but I would prefer having alarm messages shown as a scrolling bar at the taskbar for easier visibility.
The event management should have more deduplication and alert correlation and check the bidirectional communication with ServiceNow.
 

Setup Cost

Aruba Airwave licensing is seen as complex and costly, yet often cheaper than Cisco, with variable pricing flexibility.
DX Spectrum's pricing favors large enterprises, offering flexible but complex licensing, with high costs impacting smaller businesses.
The pricing for Aruba Airwave is acceptable because compared to Cisco, it's slightly cheaper, but not significantly - maybe 5% or 7% less expensive.
The price of DX Spectrum is not competitive when compared to other solutions, such as SolarWinds.
 

Valuable Features

Aruba Airwave provides multivendor support, robust reporting, real-time analysis, and easy network management with zero-touch provisioning and Visual RF.
DX Spectrum offers comprehensive network monitoring, fault management, scalability, and seamless integration, ideal for managing extensive IT infrastructures.
Aruba Airwave provides good visibility, offering extensive data on network dynamics, such as access point connections, usage, signal strengths, and potential interference from neighboring Wi-Fi networks.
It provides near real-time monitoring using AIMON and AURO protocols, which is robust with multiple models and brand support.
The feature that proved most beneficial for our organization's network monitoring is the virtual four, which we use frequently when working with Aruba.
The interface has the needed configuration for visualization, and it's effective in providing a complete diagram of network links and connections across various stations globally.
DX Spectrum uses an SNMP Trap to accept all the details, especially for device monitoring of faulty devices, allowing me to use Spectrum effectively.
 

Categories and Ranking

Aruba Airwave
Ranking in Network Management Applications
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
DX Spectrum
Ranking in Network Management Applications
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
117
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (21st), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (21st), Network Troubleshooting (6th), DX NetOps (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Network Management Applications category, the mindshare of Aruba Airwave is 5.7%, down from 8.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of DX Spectrum is 3.1%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Management Applications
 

Featured Reviews

Ahmet Bulbul - PeerSpot reviewer
Reports generation remains efficient while support and updates require attention
The biggest problem for not using Aruba Airwave extensively now is that HP is not upgrading this tool. They're not investing money and time into it, which is why we're not using it. I find the price of Aruba Central compared to Aruba Airwave to be more expensive. Customers start to complain and get annoyed about the license price. For example, when customers have 500 access points and features about access point licenses, moving to Central requires purchasing new licenses. This makes customers annoyed and complaining about this situation. It's hard to move from on-premises to Central because they always compare costs. If Aruba gave free licenses, they could move. But going to cloud and Central means more investment, and their budget doesn't cover the new investment. This creates problems for local partner companies.
DickBaker - PeerSpot reviewer
An all-inclusive monitoring solution that adapts to emerging technologies
The product helps to correlate events.  The solution's most valuable features are its integration with Broadcom tools and scalability. DX Spectrum needs better documentation on its complex features.  I have been using the product since 2005.  I rate DX Spectrum's stability an eight point five…
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Educational Organization
7%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Aruba Airwave?
I would rate the stability a nine out of ten.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Aruba Airwave?
The pricing for Aruba Airwave is acceptable because compared to Cisco, it's slightly cheaper, but not significantly - maybe 5% or 7% less expensive.
What needs improvement with Aruba Airwave?
The biggest problem for not using Aruba Airwave extensively now is that HP is not upgrading this tool. They're not investing money and time into it, which is why we're not using it. I find the pric...
What do you like most about DX Spectrum?
The solution's most valuable features are its integration with Broadcom tools and scalability.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for DX Spectrum?
The price of DX Spectrum is not competitive when compared to other solutions, such as SolarWinds. The high price has caused us to lose many deals.
What needs improvement with DX Spectrum?
I would like to see improvements in making the interface more user-friendly. Many people find it not simple to use. One of the common customer complaints is about the alarm notifications. Currently...
 

Also Known As

No data available
CA Spectrum
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Henkel, University of Findlay, University of Minnesota Duluth, University of Iowa
National Informatics Centre India, Banese, Olympus, AlphaServe Technologies, Sicredi
Find out what your peers are saying about Aruba Airwave vs. DX Spectrum and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.