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Are there any knowledgeable types here who can properly with some degree of neutrality give an honest assessment of these various Wi-Fi vendors.

From what I can see:

* Cisco, stable, but not very intelligent APs (their adaptive radio technology doesn't seem to work as well as Aruba)
* Cisco, terrible management platform (as usual for Cisco)
* Cisco, widely used. Nice fit if you are all Cisco, but still no single management platform.
* It's Cisco. Good to be in the mainstream.

* Aruba, best adaptive radios
* Aruba, Expensive licensing, all features cost
* Aruba, most secure
* Aruba, easy to use RAP technology for VIPs and homeworkers (almost self installable VPN)
* Aeuba, expensive if you want redundancy

* Colubris, cheap!
* Colubris, realiable radios
* Colubris, not as secure as others, no client to client encryption
* Colubris, rudimentary firewalling, no policy based management

I am thinking of going with Aruba, as overall it seems a tighter solution. But I obviously don't have any practical experience.

Anyone gone through an eval of these, or got working experience and compare?

Are there other enterprise WiFi forums I can read?

Thanks for any pointers.

i think you reight
i can send to you more features for ARUBA

hwangeruk Escribi?3:

Are there any knowledgeable types here who can properly with some degree of neutrality give an honest assessment of these various Wi-Fi vendors.

From what I can see:

* Cisco, stable, but not very intelligent APs (their adaptive radio technology doesn't seem to work as well as Aruba)
* Cisco, terrible management platform (as usual for Cisco)
* Cisco, widely used. Nice fit if you are all Cisco, but still no single management platform.
* It's Cisco. Good to be in the mainstream.

* Aruba, best adaptive radios
* Aruba, Expensive licensing, all features cost
* Aruba, most secure
* Aruba, easy to use RAP technology for VIPs and homeworkers (almost self installable VPN)
* Aeuba, expensive if you want redundancy

* Colubris, cheap!
* Colubris, realiable radios
* Colubris, not as secure as others, no client to client encryption
* Colubris, rudimentary firewalling, no policy based management

I am thinking of going with Aruba, as overall it seems a tighter solution. But I obviously don't have any practical experience.

Anyone gone through an eval of these, or got working experience and compare?

Are there other enterprise WiFi forums I can read?

Thanks for any pointers.

i work with Aruba products and i find it the best than any other vendor

hwangeruk Escribi?3:

* Cisco, stable, but not very intelligent APs (their adaptive radio technology doesn't seem to work as well as Aruba)
* Cisco, terrible management platform (as usual for Cisco)
* Cisco, widely used. Nice fit if you are all Cisco, but still no single management platform.
* It's Cisco. Good to be in the mainstream.

I use Cisco and the RRM seems to be good. However, I have found that it is better to manually configure in difficult RF environments.

Regarding management, I think it has improved considerably and I find WCS to be a very powerful management tool. I also find the GUI on WCS and the WLCs to be Cisco's best.

Cisco's RRM is much improved, but it still kicks clients off in order to do DCA and DTPC. From what I hear, Aruba won't kick clients off (won't make a change on an AP w/clients), particularly power-save clients, which is critical in healthcare. Can anyone more familiar with the Aruba OS confirm this?

To say the WLC and WCS is Cisco's best GUI is faint praise indeed. While it gets the configuration tasks done its completely deficient in terms of performance and fault management. AirWave is superior to the WCS in just about all tasks. It just doesn't mimic the WLC GUI, but it has what the WCS lacks, user-definable controller configuration containment and configuration-checking.

The Aruba software will not throw off an active call if scanning has been enabled. This is because the sw has the intelligence to realise that a call is taking place & therefore if scanning was implemented it would cause disruption & possibly drop the call. 8)

I would also include Motorola (formerly Symbol)

* Best interface
* Less expensive - especially for <6 APs
* Best when used with their handhelds
* Mature
* Strong brand recognition

BTW - I install probably 65% Cisco, 25% Motorola, 10% everything else.

Thanks Tearley,

In all fairness, Cisco also refrains from disassociating active voice clients. What does Aruba do for active data clients? I know the Aruba OS has a provision for Power Save clients.

Aruba has several different mechanism for preserving RF communication as well as minimizing problems for clients.

Voice aware scanning: when enabled, the system will not allow an AP to go into scanning mode while an active, off-hook call is in progress. It works very well as I've tested with and without it during a call. Definitely makes a difference.

Power save aware: If a client is in power save mode, the system will not change channels (and possibly power level). This is a good thing but realize this: Spectralink phones like to sleep often!!!! This means ARM can NOT change channels when needed if you have these in your buildings.

Client aware: AP will not change to a new channel if a client is associated to the AP. There's more to this but I can't find the docs at the moment.


I've used Aruba, Trapeze and Airespace (the last 2 as Nortel OEM). For our large size, security needs and VoIP over WiFi, there is no contest. Every deployment is different so each product available has a different fit.

I did a great deal of research on Meru, Colubris, Xirrus as well as some others. You really have to pay attention because they play games (my opinion) with words and meanings. If you delve deep into the subject matter for explanations, you will discover some of the things done are not a good fit for your environment. You may also discover the problems they are solving aren't the most important ones for your situations. Pay close attention to all vendors because they want to sell you something in the end.

With that said, Aruba does pretty much everything they promise. I've worked with them for over 6 years. Their tech support is extremely good and helpful. If they can't tell me they've found a bug in the code within 7-10 days then I'm extremely confident it's a design/configuration issue.

Interesting comments, I am quite heavily involved with Cisco but looking for good alternatives.

Where do you all sit with Xirrus ?

I have their sales manager after me....