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Cisco Aironet 2800 Series Access Points (discontinued) vs. Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Cisco Aironet 2800 Series Access Points (discontinued)

    Score7.4 out of 10
    N/ACurrently supported by Cisco, but no longer sold, Cisco recommends migration to the Cisco Catalyst 9100 Family of Access Points, which offer greater performance and flexibility.N/A

    Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers

    Score9.2 out of 10
    N/AThe Cisco Catalyst 9800-80 is a modular wireless controller with optional 100 Gigabit Ethernet (G) modular uplinks boasting seamless software updates for large enterprises and campuses, and security with ETA and SD-Access.N/A
    Pricing
    Cisco Aironet 2800 Series Access Points (discontinued)Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cisco Aironet 2800 Series Access Points (discontinued)Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Cisco Aironet 2800 Series Access Points (discontinued)Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
    Considered Both Products
    Discontinued Products
    No answer on this topic
    Cisco
    Chose Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
    9800 is a big improvement in easy of overall configuration, upgrading and troubleshooting.
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    83%
    Would buy again
    5 Answers
    99%
    Would buy again
    97 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    6 Answers
    97%
    Delivers good value for the price
    88 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    6 Answers
    97%
    Happy with the feature set
    95 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    6 Answers
    93%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    71 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    6 Answers
    85%
    Implementation went as expected
    77 Answers
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    Cisco Aironet 2800 Series Access Points (discontinued)Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
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    Score9.5 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Cisco Aironet 1800 Series Access Points (discontinued)
    Score9.8 out of 10
    Cisco Aironet 1800 Series Access Points (discontinued)
    Score9.8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Cisco Meraki MR Wireless Access Points
    Score9.1 out of 10
    Cisco Meraki MR Wireless Access Points
    Score9.1 out of 10
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    User Ratings
    Cisco Aironet 2800 Series Access Points (discontinued)Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
    Likelihood to Recommend
    7.0
    (28 ratings)
    9.7
    (88 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.1
    (3 ratings)
    6.4
    (2 ratings)
    Usability
    6.6
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Availability
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    9.1
    (87 ratings)
    Performance
    10.0
    (11 ratings)
    7.1
    (88 ratings)
    Support Rating
    6.8
    (2 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.2
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    10.0
    (11 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    7.3
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    5.5
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Cisco Aironet 2800 Series Access Points (discontinued)Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Discontinued Products
    Cisco Aironet 2800 Series Access Points is very well suited for large enterprises and high-density environments. It is not well suited for high ceiling buildings like warehouses and storage places because of low antenna gain. In our main office, it is working very well. For around thirty or so wireless devices this access point works very well and after forty or so wireless devices it starts to suffer.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    I think any size organization can benefit from them. The smaller "L" models work well for a smaller organization and of course, the same answer for the larger platforms. The failover/redundancy options are quite nice and the unified setup and UI is always nice for consistency.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    Discontinued Products
    • They are rock solid in terms of reliability (we rarely have to replace them).
    • They are easily managed from the controller. It's easy to push new settings out, like RF profiles, etc...
    • They are fairly easy to install using the included mounting brackets.
    • They seem to be compatible with pretty much everything, although occasionally we will have roaming issues with Apple devices.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    • I think the updates are great. ISSU upgrading code is fantastic. I think the speed with which CAPWAP converges or reconverges, I think the redundancy mechanisms for roaming APs to other controllers is very good. I think overall, getting away from more of a monolithic processor where subprocesses handle what they call the WNCD tasks, I think fundamentally is an improvement in performance.
    • The radioactive tracing, all of the troubleshooting and all of the logging and all of the importing and exporting features for logging and analytics within the controller itself is really, really good compared to the predecessor AireOS.
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    Discontinued Products
    • CleanAir - Put this technology into all the APs.
    • GPS Tracker - I can't understand why only the Cisco 1570 has this option as well as larger Cisco 3800 APs. Why can't this be in all APs so they can be easily mapped in Google for positioning and later plotted for the coverage zone.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    • The only downside I would say is the GUI performance is a little bit slow, even with a newer 9800, performance still lags a bit even compared to the previous generations. So I would like to see that improved. But aside from that, that's really the only issue that we have with it.
    Incentivized
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    Likelihood to Renew
    Discontinued Products
    Because until now I haven't had any issues or cases where I needed to create a ticket with Tac from Cisco related to their performance or availability. They have a small size that permits or allows you to install it in each place that you need to mount it, their design is small and appropriate for every kind of office.
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    Cisco
    Despite common software and hardware issues this is still the best product on the market for large scale enterprise deployments. Cisco has worked with us extensively to reduce the amount of bugs in every iteration however new bugs are introduced or new incompatibilities always arise with major releases. Thus, while I'm hesitant to recommend the product it's still much better than all the other competitors such as Aruba and Juniper in the WIFi space. There is also extensive integration with DNAC/Catalyst Center and ISE in an SDA deployment. Recently there has been a number of critical issues with the controller software and Cisco has proved themselves to be incapable of timely troubleshooting and diagnosis. This has reduced our confidence in the product and it's current and future stability and maintainability. At it's current state the product is taking up too much of our engineering resources to maintain despite also paying for premium support from Cisco. As such I have reduced by rating as we are likely to look at alternative vendors for our long-term wireless management solution
    Incentivized
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    Usability
    Discontinued Products
    Lately we had less issues. Most probably because we reduced the number of Wireless LAN controllers. So less trouble for upgrades as well. We don't have any access point in stand alone mode. It's something I don't suggest, unless it's just for a small office and not for a larger company with different sites.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    It's not simple, but this is the result of being very deeply configurable
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    Reliability and Availability
    Discontinued Products
    This access point does not usually randomly shut off. It can't happen but it's generally due to a power over ethernet failures which would could be considered a user error.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    Due to our HA set up we have always managed to access our wireless networks without problems, when issues occur. When we have lost access to the GUI, due to internal network problems, console access is always welcomed and brings with it the normal Cisco CLI syntax. From previous versions of CLI, it is now a lot simpler and reflects other Cisco products, making it easier to troubleshoot and navigate when necessary.
    Incentivized
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    Performance
    Discontinued Products
    Performance wise [Cisco Aironet 2800 Series Access Points] are among of the best pieces of technology we have on premise. I don't say that lightly, we have a lot of cool tech. But if you consider how many users are connecting to these day in and day out without a single blip when they're downloading large files, roaming to new AP's or needing a boosted signal at a far end of the range then these are unmatched.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    Monitoring is very good Seamless integration with Cisco ISE RRM configuration very easy. It has REST API support IOS-XE is very powerful operation system. Multicasting and mDNS features are really good and very easy to configure. It supports Pyats and Genie so getting constructed data from python script calls very helpful.
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    Discontinued Products
    I believe that there is always room for improvement.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    When it's a config issue, TAC is usually useful. If it's some bug and BU needs to be involved, it might take forever.
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    Discontinued Products
    Make sure to get a professional wireless assessment before purchasing AP's. That way you will only purchase what you need and know where the wiring infrastructure will need to be to streamline the installation and tuning process.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    You need to understand wifi basics
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    Discontinued Products
    D-Link Wireless network solution was being used previously in [a] few areas of our plant and it was working well with [a] low number of users but as the company grew, and user base started to grow we started seeing hanging, disconnection, and very low-performance issues in our wireless network. We replaced the entire network with Cisco Aironet Access Points and since then the issues have been resolved and [the] wireless network is working with great performance.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    Ubiquiti WLAN is very much a consumer platform. It is not production ready, it is buggy, it has issues. It is cheaper than Cisco, but you get what you pay for. Aruba doesn't integrate nicely with our existing largely Cisco based networks, so when time came to replace AireOS, the Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers came out on top.
    Incentivized
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    Scalability
    Discontinued Products
    When it comes to deploying the Cisco Aironet 2800 Series Access Points in locations around the school district it has become easier as you get used to putting 4 screws in the mounting plate to the bracket and then slide the access point onto the bracket.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    There are different vesrions for different requirements, there's HA as well.
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    Discontinued Products
    • There are cost savings in buying a separate WLAN network controller because the 1850 Access Point already has this integrated feature.
    • It allows for remote management and saves time on administration.
    • The return on investment is achieved in a short period of time.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    • Positive impacts, yeah, is good to have a central location to control all these profiles for different countries and locations. And the drawback, like I said to you really because of the too many integrations that have a dependency on the software version. For example, Cisco ONE for Access have certain software that can run through and then this scatter center need to make sure it's working with the others APS version that is currently working. And we also, the Cisco Catalyst Center also have some kind another version of software that you need to support this controller. So it's like two tier three tiers of the software version that we need to match. Then only it can work.
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