The 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.
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Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers
Score 9.9 out of 10
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Cisco offers wireless LAN.
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Pricing
Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers
Editions & Modules
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Pricing Offerings
Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers
Free Trial
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No
Free/Freemium Version
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No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
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Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
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Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers
Best Alternatives
Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers
Small Businesses
WatchGuard Secure Wi-Fi Cloud
Score 9.5 out of 10
WatchGuard Secure Wi-Fi Cloud
Score 9.5 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Cisco Aironet 1800 Series Access Points (discontinued)
Score 9.8 out of 10
Cisco Aironet 1800 Series Access Points (discontinued)
I really like central switching. Central switching is converging all of the tunnels, fewer people can administer the product. It's much easier to scale, it's much easier to configure and it's much easier to get predictable results out of that. I have run FlexConnect before under AireOS. I'm proficient with it. But yeah, I think as a centralized controller it works very well. And I think as building redundancy with regard to not just HA-SSO but with an N plus one design, I think the scheme and logic and architecture of the platform is very well thought out and I don't know what use cases I would find it to be lacking. There's a few things when you drill into it, it actually is not that simple. AireOS I feel like was a lot simpler. I think the catalyst, how it breaks out the hierarchy of configuration requires each of these tags and profiles and policies and how you bring them together. Actually, even though they've decoupled a lot of these elements from how AireOS did it, I think fewer of those features, even though it was less extensible, it was not as easy or intuitive to deploy. So I think the intuition and how you actually construct a 9800, an entry engineer would struggle a lot more in a 9800. So I would not recommend the product if somebody did not already have a good foundation of network engineering.
Setup is very quick as it is designed for smaller organizations. Of course, this comes with its own limitations, but it's really the question of what you need. If you can cover your office space with 3 to 4 access points, you got a pretty good alternative to the more enterprise-level of Cisco Wireless products, but you still get excellent throughput and signal strength.
It is good kind of design with the multiple flow profiles and also location base whereby the long very, I think the traditional controller doesn't have this, so we need to have that specific. Every day is getting the same profile but this have a little bit difference. It's very good with the site tagging and also designing all the location-based requirements.
The WLC are very reliable. In the 10+ years the company has had them installed, we have not had any hardware or component failures.
No need for reboots. The CISCO WLC is not like a router you may have at home which you may have to reboot every few weeks or months. It can run for months without needing a reboot.
The Cisco WLC gives you a quick Network Summary when you first log into the system. This is very helpful to get a quick rundown on the status of your wireless network.
If possible, please add a column for WAP Name and WAP Model within the 2.4/5/6 GHz radio sections, as we have different models of WAPs in the fleet, and it would be easier to identify WAPs within a building.
We conduct digital exams for our students. If there is a way to identify clients and block traffic for applications like ChatGPT, it would be greatly appreciated. Currently, there is no filter for ChatGPT or generative AI.
Configuring wireless settings is very confusing because various settings are scattered all over the interface in different tabs
Lots of settings use Cisco's technical verbiage rather than common phrasing, so it's confusing what a lot of settings will do and requires researching the meaning before modifying the setting
The interface could be easier to use to do simple tasks such as reboot an access point
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
Although it is a very good product, support is easy and can manage by Level 1 support persons and downtime is too much less but still there is a cost factor matters which is consider by each organization. Furthermore, organizations also compare with other competitors so it is hard to pursue and defend the high prices.
As I said before, the only thing we miss in our old model is the fact that the management interface never received an improvement in design. It has the same look and feels since it was launched. It's not that it's hard to use. It's just the case of could be modernized.
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.
Downtime fear is the first fear which IT persons look and want to eliminate as much as they can but eventually you have to face it as nothing is perfect. Cisco Wireless Lan controller are feasible to use and easy to manage and other than this their issue reported are pretty low so you can get the best up time. now it also depends on scenario as well as environment.
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.
Cisco Wireless Lan controller are feasible to use and easy to manage and other than this their issue reported are pretty low so you get the better uptime. if your get the uptime then it means its a stable product in your environment. Product performance also depends on the product management and Cisco Wireless Lan controller management is easy so you can get the great output.
As usual, the support from Cisco's TAC (Technical Assistance Center) is lacking. Granted, they always get the job done, but the amount of lead time on a non-emergency is enough to make you just handle it yourself. The good news is that if you ask for Cisco's assistance and forget about it, they'll jump on by the time you've forgotten where you were in troubleshooting it and have it fixed for you.
Originally, when we deployed our first controller it was on a very limited basis. We only deployed it to our administration building and our High School. It was pretty straight forward. Because this was new to us we leaned heavily on our Cisco partner to assist us. With our last upgrade, we upgraded the controllers, added redundancy and expanded the building count along with new SSID's and restrictions. It went much easier, but again, we did rely on Cisco TAC and our partner to clarify and assist as needed. Having already been familiar with the product help tremendously.
We are moving into a more unified and centralized design, and the benefits offered by the 9800 compared to the above listed 5520 series and 8500 series of wireless controller is much preferred. The staggered upgrade option is again another feature much improved moving to the new model and management through DNAC
Not sure why "Ruckus WLAN controllers" is not listed above but that is another major WLAN controller solution I've used in the past. Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers provide the most flexibility when it comes to designing a large WLAN deployment. They also have some of the best reliability and TAC support out of all of the other vendors.
Cisco is a brand name and people trust on it. if any one thing about the networking then Cisco is among those brand which is count as trusted brand and people rely on it. Also it support is good so people can use it. Cisco Wireless Lan controller are easy to use and manage so it requires less effort.
I mean, return on investment is really hard to quantify. Being in a healthcare scenario, it definitely has very good uptime, very good performance. It's easy to manage, fairly trouble free with a few issues not withstanding. There's really no income based off of it, but it does allow our nurses, nursing staff, our physicians to take care of patients better and more reliably and enables a lot of communication options that we wouldn't have had we not had that controller.
We have had our [Cisco Wireless LAN Controller] 5508s for a very long time now and although they are getting dated, they have earned us our money's worth with consistency, stability, and ease of use. Users have minimal wireless complaints and when they do seldom are they WLC-related.
