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CEO at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
Real User
Scalable with good authentification and great technical support
Pros and Cons
  • "The authentication overall - including to the VPN and LAN - is excellent."
  • "The guest portal is hard to use."

What is our primary use case?

The typical use case for this solution is for authentication devices in the network. It's for authentication in cable networks and WiFi networks and is used as well as enterprise WiFi for branch offices. The main use case, therefore, is basically for LAN and corporate WIFI.

What is most valuable?

The authentication overall - including to the VPN and LAN - is excellent. Authentication to devices with less duplication is great.

What needs improvement?

The guest portal is hard to use. Clients have faced many difficulties, especially around various mobile devices in order to get LAN authentication. They need to improve this area. Right now, the user experience isn't the best.

The guest portal customization also isn't ideal. It's quite difficult to achieve. In some cases, you need to point to another external portal completely in order to provide more functionality.

The solution is multi-connective and it's pretty good. If you compare Cisco to HP, Cisco is better, however, it's expensive to implement it and operate it. I need to consolidate and configure our Cisco systems and configure out LAN to DNA. However, the DNA has poor authentification and automation when configured with the solution. There needs to be better integration in the next version or better features that can patch the two together effectively. Otherwise, right now, if it stays as it is, it's not great.

In a future release, it would be nice to see more automation with integration in DNA and the product. This would make for an easier administration.

For how long have I used the solution?

We've had the solution for three years at this point.

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What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is nice. It's good. We have small bugs occasionally, however, this is normal in software solutions. The complications of the solution come when checking the initially projected metrics of compatibility. We have a virtual suite, virtual controller, and virtual supplicant. If this works well in the initial process, we don't have any problems in the final installation. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is very scalable. We have two models and we've separated functions now in many servers. Admin solution monitors everything in order to receive logs. In many cases, it's a load balancer situation. If you want, you can, by using a load balancer, try to provide scalability. It's mostly scalable. It's very good.

We have multi-use cases and use the solution for both big and medium-sized companies.

How are customer service and support?

Technical support is very good and Cisco does a really good job of helping vendors. We're quite satisfied with the level of service they provide.

How was the initial setup?

I don't handle the implementation or deployment. I only project and provide a logical projection for the client's needs, including how many servers, how many licenses, how many features, etc. will be needed. However, I don't deliver the projects.

That said, the installation as far as I understand it, is complex. 

It's complex in the sense of personalizing it. The implementation itself doesn't need to be complex, however, it takes a few hours of work. The actualizing of the VMware and hardware servers can be pretty expensive.

Usually, deployment requires 18 hours per server to install and actualize. However, if you need to personalize it, the rule is to authenticate and to provide tags, too. Due to the segmentation, you need to plan for a six to 13-day deployment period.

What other advice do I have?

We're a reseller. I sell products. I don't use the solution myself. I sell cloud products, security and network products, firewalls, data centers, and collaboration tools. We have many partners including Cisco, Fortinet, VMware, etc. 

In terms of this product, we sell different versions of the solution and not just the latest.

We typically deal with on-premises deployment for this product and the cloud has many security issues in Brazil. For big clients, it's typically on-premises.

Overall, I would rate the solution nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Reseller
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free ThousandEyes Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: April 2025
Buyer's Guide
Download our free ThousandEyes Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.