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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.
Senior Network Engineer at Auckland University of Technology
Angie was very kind and communicated well in both Spanish and English, making it pleasant to connect with her.
TI at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
Broadcom technical support is very good.
Senior Program Manager at Tata Consultancy Services
 

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.
Senior Network Consultant at Data Market
Aruba Airwave is fully scalable, as we have a large number of tenants using the network with approximately six thousand end users.
Executive at a government with 201-500 employees
 

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.
Server Administrator at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
I have found Aruba Airwave to be stable.
Executive at a government with 201-500 employees
 

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.
Senior Network Engineer at Auckland University of Technology
I find the price of Aruba Central compared to Aruba Airwave to be more expensive.
Senior Network Consultant at Data Market
When attempting to copy a floor plan, it does not copy well, so I often have to redraw the walls.
Executive at a government with 201-500 employees
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.
Solution Architect at SA Consulting
The event management should have more deduplication and alert correlation and check the bidirectional communication with ServiceNow.
Senior Program Manager at Tata Consultancy Services
 

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.
Senior Network Engineer at Auckland University of Technology
The price of DX Spectrum is not competitive when compared to other solutions, such as SolarWinds.
Solution Architect at SA Consulting
 

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.
Executive at a government with 201-500 employees
It provides near real-time monitoring using AIMON and AURO protocols, which is robust with multiple models and brand support.
TI at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
The feature that proved most beneficial for our organization's network monitoring is the virtual four, which we use frequently when working with Aruba.
Senior Network Engineer at Auckland University of Technology
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.
Solution Architect at SA Consulting
DX Spectrum uses an SNMP Trap to accept all the details, especially for device monitoring of faulty devices, allowing me to use Spectrum effectively.
Senior Program Manager at Tata Consultancy Services
 

Categories and Ranking

Aruba Airwave
Ranking in Network Management Applications
6th
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 (20th), Network Troubleshooting (7th), DX NetOps (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Network Management Applications category, the mindshare of Aruba Airwave is 4.0%, down from 7.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of DX Spectrum is 3.2%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Management Applications Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Aruba Airwave4.0%
DX Spectrum3.2%
Other92.8%
Network Management Applications
 

Featured Reviews

Edward Zeng - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Network Engineer at Auckland University of Technology
Troubleshooting obstacles occur but technical support excels
My general opinion on Aruba Airwave is that it's acceptable, but it's not ideal because we are accustomed to Cisco. We didn't use Aruba much, but once you set it up, you probably don't need to worry about it too much. The version we are using is quite old now, probably around version four. I can't remember the version exactly because a lot of the products require Aruba Central, but we haven't used Aruba Central yet. I face challenges with Aruba Airwave, particularly with troubleshooting. When someone has a problem, we try troubleshooting, but 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. If Aruba Airwave can apply AI capabilities, that would be even more perfect. I'd appreciate integration with Aruba Central; it would be great if they could incorporate it into Airwave.
Balabrahmam_Chakka - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Program Manager at Tata Consultancy Services
Comprehensive device monitoring enhances operational efficiency
DX Spectrum should have an automatic ticketing mechanism with ServiceNow. I need to use other tools for event management. It has a dashboarding mechanism and monitors devices and network switches through SNMP without an agent, which is good, but it should also have event management. Its LDAP authentication is fine. However, event management is not available, which is a concern. Not much else. If they can add event management, it would help. The event management should have more deduplication and alert correlation and check the bidirectional communication with ServiceNow. If a previous ticket is open and the same alert is generated, there's no need to create another ticket; updating the work notes would suffice. It should help reduce noise in alerting.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Educational Organization
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Energy/Utilities Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise89
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Aruba Airwave?
They have other sensors which can manage and control all the sites. There is an IoT component where we can restrict internet services such as Facebook and YouTube. These things can also be managed....
What is your primary use case for Aruba Airwave?
For Aruba Airwave, I am using the wireless devices for the Wi-Fi for the full company with access points. This is the top product I feel, and I see in the Gartner also. It is a good product and eas...
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: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.