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Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers vs. HPE Juniper Access Points

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    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

    HPE Juniper Access Points

    Score9.9 out of 10
    N/AThe Juniper AP Series Access Points work in conjunction with the Juniper Mist Cloud Architecture and Mist AI to collect and analyze metadata in near real-time from all wireless clients. This is to enable rapid problem detection and root cause identification with predictive recommendations and proactive correction realizing the self-driving network.N/A
    Pricing
    Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless ControllersHPE Juniper Access Points
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless ControllersHPE Juniper Access Points
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
    Additional Details
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless ControllersHPE Juniper Access Points
    Considered Both Products
    Cisco
    No answer on this topic
    Juniper Networks
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    99%
    Would buy again
    97 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    97%
    Delivers good value for the price
    88 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    97%
    Happy with the feature set
    95 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    93%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    71 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    85%
    Implementation went as expected
    77 Answers
    No answers on this topic
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    Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless ControllersHPE Juniper Access Points
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    Medium-sized Companies
    Cisco Aironet 1800 Series Access Points (discontinued)
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    Enterprises
    Cisco Meraki MR Wireless Access Points
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Cisco Meraki MR Wireless Access Points
    Score9.2 out of 10
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    User Ratings
    Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless ControllersHPE Juniper Access Points
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.7
    (88 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    6.4
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Availability
    9.1
    (87 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    7.1
    (88 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless ControllersHPE Juniper Access Points
    Likelihood to Recommend
    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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    Juniper Networks
    The Mist portal-controlled Juniper APs are great in an environment where clients are relatively stationary. Coverage is fantastic, and throughput is really good. I would be more concerned about placing these in a distribution-type warehouse where clients frequently roam between APs. While I've not had any issues, I could see where some APs might become sticky due to the cloud-controlled nature. In my experience, a local controller would be better suited to environments like that. I'm also concerned that support and quality may suffer due to the HPE merger.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    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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    Juniper Networks
    • Mist APs are really good at self-adjusting power and channels.
    • Mist APs provide quality bandwidth to all users.
    • Mist Radius meets my authentication needs for production users.
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    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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    Juniper Networks
    • I wish there was a mobile app that allows configuration and health status checks
    • The MIST UI could use some improvements - some things take more than 1 click to access
    • Marvis doesn't impress me. I ask it questions and sometimes it doesn't respond or understand
    Incentivized
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    Likelihood to Renew
    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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    Juniper Networks
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    Cisco
    It's not simple, but this is the result of being very deeply configurable
    Incentivized
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    Juniper Networks
    We used a reseller to help set up and initially manage the Juniper APs. Templates are set up and deployed to sites, and at first, it may seem complicated, with a slight learning curve. Once created and deployed, the overall management and usability are great. In summary, the initial setup takes some advanced knowledge of the Cloud Dashboard setup with templates. After that, it's easy to use and manage moving forward.
    Incentivized
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    Reliability and Availability
    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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    Juniper Networks
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    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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    Juniper Networks
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    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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    Juniper Networks
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    Cisco
    You need to understand wifi basics
    Incentivized
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    Juniper Networks
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    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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    Juniper Networks
    Mist has more features than meraki in regards to wireless management. Adding devices is still simple and licensing is much easier to undertsf
    Incentivized
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    Scalability
    Cisco
    There are different vesrions for different requirements, there's HA as well.
    Incentivized
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    Juniper Networks
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    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.
    Incentivized
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    Juniper Networks
    • Streamline our infrastructure so we don't have multiple brands to manage.
    • Allowed for better placement with channel planning
    • Saves time when configuring
    Incentivized
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