Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers for Your APs
We use the Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers in our environment to manage and keep updated our Wireless Access Points. The Access points in …
Overview
What is Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers?
Cisco offers wireless LAN.
Recent Reviews
Awards
Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards
Reviewer Pros & Cons
- See how many clients are connected. I don't want to go the technical, but it does a lot of things we need to see and address. Make our job easier to s...
- So right now we're investing in the new wireless controllers. I think the conversion from IRS iOS XE, we're still struggling with it. So it is a learn...
Product Details
- About
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- Downloadables
- FAQs
What is Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers?
Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers : Cisco offers companies a comprehensive wireless portfolio to address the needs of networks, from small deployments all the way up to large enterprises. Optimized for 802.11ac Wave 2 and Wi-Fi 6performance, Cisco wireless LAN controllers are highly scalable, service-rich, and resilient platforms that provide centralized control, flexible management, and troubleshooting for large and small-scale deployments. Cisco aims to equip companies with the tools they need to help grow their network as their business grows with their wireless LAN controller portfolio.
Cisco promises to deliver key wireless innovations through custom-built access points that go beyond the Wi-Fi 6(802.11ax) wireless standard to provide radio-frequency excellence for high-density environments.
Cisco promises to deliver key wireless innovations through custom-built access points that go beyond the Wi-Fi 6(802.11ax) wireless standard to provide radio-frequency excellence for high-density environments.
Cisco now offers a two-question, two-minute interactive tool to identify the Cisco products and services that help solve up to five network challenges.
Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers Video
Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers Competitors
- Fortinet Wireless LAN
- Aruba Networks Wireless LAN (WLAN)
Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers Technical Details
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
|---|---|
| Mobile Application | No |
Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers Downloadables
Frequently Asked Questions
Cisco offers wireless LAN.
Fortinet Wireless LAN are common alternatives for Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers.
Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 8.2.
The most common users of Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
Comparisons
Compare with
Reviews and Ratings
(132)Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-25 of 66)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
October 26, 2023
Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers for Your APs
We use the Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers in our environment to manage and keep updated our Wireless Access Points. The Access points in our environment originally were not keeping up with the bandwidth and traffic that was going through the Access Points. When we finally updated the Access points we were able to allow more traffic through. The traffic was able to be filtered depending on the different content we wanted to allow or restrict. The Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers also gives us insight to rogue access points or devices that are trying to connect to our Access points or our controller. This LAN controller really was a game changer for monitoring our wireless traffic.
- Monitor Rogues Access Points
- Allows traffic restrictions
- Only has to make changes to one controller and deploy to the Access Points
- The Interface for the controller
- Web GUI to be more accessible like Meraki
- Have the controller deploy-able to the cloud
August 27, 2023
Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers Review
We use this product to manage the connectivity over wireless. Like we have thousands of devices connected daily to our wireless environment. So we see who's connected, we have issues with troubleshoot. A lot of people need connect wireless. Right now everything is wireless from mobile iPads, laptops, and phones. We have to make sure they have WIFI coverage everywhere. And the product works fine.
- See how many clients are connected. I don't want to go the technical, but it does a lot of things we need to see and address. Make our job easier to see who's connected, how many users, and the locations. Make it so easy for us.
- So right now we're investing in the new wireless controllers. I think the conversion from IRS iOS XE, we're still struggling with it. So it is a learning curve for us.
August 26, 2023
Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers Review
So wireless line controllers are used to basically manage our wireless access points throughout the enterprise. Specifically, I manage the controllers for several hospitals, many clinics, and a couple of business offices as well.
- It does keep track of our wireless access points particularly well I guess, and then just, you know, providing the current status of access points as well.
- Oh my goodness. The GUI, the graphical user interface of this product, I'm speaking specifically of the 5508 and 8510 models needs a lot of improvement. I do not like using it. It's buggy glitchy. At times I have to reload pages several times to actually get any work done. Things don't get saved correctly. It's just I can't rely on it being consistent at all.
March 10, 2023
Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers - WLC 9800
We use Cisco Wireless LAN Controller 9800 as a centralized solution to manage all access points, we have indoor and out door models.As a local government, some access points are in critical infrastructure, like hospital and some health unities, also we use it in administrative buildings, many schools and parks. In total, near 200 different places.The use cases are in administrative and guest networks. Also we integrate WLC 9800 with Cisco DNAC. Administrative networks use radius autentication, and the users get the VLAN where AP's are installed.
- MAC Filtering
- Easy troubleshoot
- Very nice GUI
- Robustness
- No heatmaps
- No HA compatibility between physical and virtual WLC
February 11, 2023
AirOS WLC Review
We use Cisco WLC as the main entry point to our network for our users, which are students and teachers, with employees as well.<br><br>The main business subject (more than problem) it addresses is to provide with an efficient and simple client side solution way to connect our users to internet and give them access to our ressources.
- Fast Roaming
- High density management
- Centralizated Access Points Management
- Security
- Web Interfaces
- Bug Fix
February 11, 2023
Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers Review
The controller is used to connect wlan-devices to the LAN. Connections are tunneled from APs to the controller. For certain SSIDs the tunnel gets extended to DMZ. Furthermore the controller helps troubleshooting connectivity issues and access problems.
Bothering is the fact you need for HA two licenses for each AP...
Bothering is the fact you need for HA two licenses for each AP...
- tunneling traffic to and from AP
- forward software Images to AP
- deploy ssid
- smaller license consumption for HA
- support of a wider range of AP generations
- update procedure
In our environment, we have over 6000 students and 1900 staff users that require access to the internet and network resources. We brought on the Cisco wireless solution originally to accommodate staff laptops and notebooks. Eventually students notebooks were requiring wireless connectivity too. With the expansion of the 1 to 1 plan, and BYOD (bring your own device) our wireless environment has expanded. With a strong secure wireless solution we can also accommodate visitors, students and support technicians much easier.
- The cisco wireless controller allows for very granular access to internal and external systems.
- The system allows for allowing special needs uses (medical, security, guest) very easy.
- The system allows for various levels of bandwidth to a variety of users.
- The security, flexibility and ease of use is phenomenal.
- On 5508 and 5520's it is possible to drill down to specific users, but can be tedious.
- Some of the security regarding rogue access points can be difficult to tweak when dealing with neighborhood homes with wireless. If you fully implement the block rogue option, you can easily disable neighboring wireless systems.
September 14, 2022
Cisco Wireless - Seamless Integration for your Enterprise Needs
Cisco wireless controllers are used for enterprise wireless deployments in various sectors. They provide all major features to be fulfilled and implemented as per each site's requirements. They come in with the best security as well as integrate and work with other products for seamless integration to provide world-class high security.
- Corporate and Guest network Isolation
- Additional Security integration
- Redundancy
- Central Management
- Better Outdoor Products
- Bring back perpetual licensing
- Minimize subscription options
September 13, 2022
Cisco's budget friendly WiFi controller series: 2500.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
The Cisco 2500 WiFi series is used to spawn guest WiFi in office buildings. It was chosen to implement a completely physically separated network from the core company/employee WiFi access. As it's only serving guests, we didn't need to support a large scale of clients; the 1000 clients this series offers is more than enough.
- Automatically prioritizes time critical applications (e.g. VoIP, Video Chats).
- PoE so no additional wires need to be pulled.
- Provides information about RF interference, easy to diagnose connection issues.
- Only supports 1 Gbps.
We use Cisco Wireless controllers for production users and engineers in the first phase. Benefits that can be considered: No doubt it provides ease on the administrative and implementation side, as its configuration is easy and GUI is very user-friendly. Strong authentication provides good security. Stable APs and makes roaming easy between multiple areas. You can configure HA in multiple APs. It is a very stable device and has very few issues you may face which ensures your uptime much more. Things you may Dislike: SSH support is a limitation of Web Browsers. Too many updates annoy the admins. Application consumption information did not appear. Pricing is high as compared to market products.
- Interface is good.
- Configuration is easy.
- High Availability.
- Stable product.
- Pricing
- Limitation on SSH console.
- Web Browser Limitation.
- Licensing Requirements are too much and which are costly too.
We use 5520s and 5508s. 5520s for our 4800 APs with location services enabled on them. We use the 5508s for our older APs. Both controllers give us a single pane of glass approach to managing the APs.
- Segmentation
- QoS
- Administration
- Ease of use. The product is big and there are lots and lots of screens/pages to wade through.
- Could use a set up wizard to walk you through basic configurations
May 15, 2022
Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers review
We use Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers for the mobility and proper handshake between the APs, which it does great, and other controlling options like Radius integration, Captive portal, and mac-binding are the plus points.
- Clean Air - interference Mitigation.
- Swift switching in the roaming between APs.
- Dashboard can be improved and more user friendly.
- Mac address support per SSID should be increased.
We use Cisco WLC 5520's for all of our critical Wi-Fi needs in our administration areas as well as our industrial areas. Those areas include warehousing and industrial manufacturing which is quite harsh on electronics. We use them for inventory management, wireless voice handsets, video conferencing, IoT connectivity, and daily user access. Our WLCs are set up in local mode so all traffic goes back to the controllers for central management as well as bringing data back to the data center. We oftentimes would need a wired ethernet connection where one was not possible so we would implement both mesh and workgroup bridge deployments using the Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers.
- Access Point Mangement
- Security
- User interface
- Feature set for wireless control and fine tuning
- Older interface
- Training
- Mesh setup can be difficult
April 18, 2022
Cisco WLC for Enterprise Environment
We have customer organizations that are very big and it is difficult to manage each Access Point with the various types of authentication methods, to overcome this problem we have suggested different types of WLCs like 3504, 5520, and 9800 series. These controllers can be used based on the customer infra size and user counts. These controllers can be integrated with various authentication apps as well.
- Manages different models of AP
- Various authentication Methods
- Wireless Guest user portals
- Support for different AP's
- Integration with Third party AP's
November 13, 2021
If you want performance and reliability, you are in the right spot.
Cisco [Wireless LAN Controllers] have been used for many years as the primary solution for dispatching goods via handheld scanners. Reliability and consistency is the main reason for our usage of Cisco products. Access points are spread out through the warehouses, both indoors and outdoors. Working in harsh environments and in all weather conditions without a single glitch. Reliability is the key, and Cisco provides more than that.
- Reliability
- Easy to configure
- Scalability
- Software
- Sorting of AP's by alphanumerical order
- Built-in capability of guest portal
October 05, 2021
The Best in Class Wireless
As our organization grew and our user base increased, we needed to upgrade our wireless network infrastructure and move towards a centralized solution, instead of isolated wireless routers and access points. After market research and study, we opted to go with Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers and Access Points. Since the deployment, it has been a core part of our overall IT infrastructure and it has been performing very well without any major issues.
- Centralized management
- Cisco Clean Air
- Native HA
- MAC filtering
- Support for high density environments
- 11ac support
- Automatic radio resource management
- OS upgrade without downtime in HA pair
- More features in virtual controller
- Improvement in GUI for monitoring
- Search filters for MAC address list in security
- High-gain antenna options for outdoor APs
Our 5508 [Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers] support about 60 APs spread across our campus. It has been deployed in an HA pair on the anchor side for redundancy and hands off to a foreign controller of the same make/model in the DMZ to host our "web only" WLANs (such as for guests, BYOD, etc.) The WLC itself makes deployment of new APs as easy as connecting them to the LAN, allows for [the reasonable] setup of new WLANs, and for putting APs into groups to deploy WLANs to specific sets of APs. It also allows for decent monitoring of who is connected, to what, their signal strength, etc.
- It's Cisco and like all our other Cisco products, chiefly switches, once you get it set up to your liking, it just runs itself after that. The reliability factor has been huge for us.
- Ease in deploying new APs has been nice. We have a DNS record (and DHCP Option 43 as a fallback) that helps new AP find the WLC. The WLC takes it from there.
- Good monitoring of connections, kicking people off, [and] blocking certain MACs are all useful features.
- With the 5508, at least, the interface is very dated. The newer WLCs are streamlined in the Web UI and seem to be able to achieve the same results in fewer (and clearer) steps.
- Steep learning curve right out of the box. Having a vendor assist that stands these up all the time will be very helpful.
June 08, 2021
Cisco Wireless 8510 Controllers
We installed a Cisco Wireless LAN Controller in the offices of a car factory in Latin America. To be able to manage more than 200 access points deployed throughout the factory from the administration to the part of the car production line. Thanks to the controller you can create a complex configuration from vlan separation for each sector to the different SSIDs that were requested by the client for internal and external use. I never had any problems with this driver as it is very complex and works very well.
- The Clean Air feature are very useful
- Being a very large controller, it allows the connection of many access points and does not consume much
- Documentation from design to setup is excellent from Cisco
- Unfortunately it is a very expensive equipment to buy
- Great knowledge is needed to start the equipment
May 15, 2021
Cisco 5520 is an excellent WLC.
The scenario used is two WLCs installed in the local datacenter, one wlc appliance with licenses and the other is the HA model without license costs. This appliance manages the wireless network and configures the APs automatically. We just have to install the APs on the ceiling of the offices and connect the ethernet network and that's it. In the WLC we are able to capture details of each AP such as number of connected users, IP, radio frequency, range, noise, interference and others. In this management we are also able to administer authentication on users' radius server to allow access.
- Support for 802.11ac APs.
- Excellent quality smartnet contract.
- Manages and automates the park of APs.
- Incompatibility with some browsers.
- Technical documentation in only a few languages.
We are using Cisco WLAN controller to manage a number of Wireless Access Points in our organization. Multiple APs are installed in our building and it provides a single console to manage them all. We enable, disable or manage patches through WLAN controller.
Its one window operation made life easy for IT professionals.
Its one window operation made life easy for IT professionals.
- Managing APs.
- Patching.
- Controls over routers, switches, firewalls.
- Command line.
- Interface.
- Complexity.
April 29, 2021
Great system for controlling all your AP's in one place
We are using the Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers across the organization as a means to get all our separate access points managed with a single application. The Cisco [Wireless LAN Controllers] allows us to push updates, configurations, and changes out to all Access points at once instead of having to do these things separately which was a problem in the past.
- Easy to upgrade access points together
- Stable interface
- Bug and feature updates come out continuously
- They do cost more than the competition
- We have run into many licensing issues on the back end
- Bug patches updates and outages are frequent
April 28, 2021
Top notch system with equally great support
Originally we had deployed a massive rollout of Cisco access points and were managing them by hand with a ton of time spent setting them up, managing, and various other duties. This was time consuming and tedious. When Cisco showed us the Wireless LAN controllers we were easily sold. They have been rolled out across the whole company and are massive time savers!
- Well built hardware
- Nicely designed UI
- Very few outages if any
- Management for all features isnt easily discoverable
- Lots of issues getting some remote sites (vpn) access points into the system
- Needed to convince management of the high price tag
February 13, 2021
Simple, effective and easy to use wireless equipments
It is used in our company for providing wifi connectivity in a warehouse for parts pickers. It is also used to connect approx. 600 wireless devices on different segments of the network. We are using this equipment for over 2 years, no major issues encountered during deployment and day to day use, management is simple, and Mac address filtering also works well.
- Simple to deploy, and use.
- Rouge devices mitigation.
- Multiple Ssids provision.
- Frequently update features and security updates.
- Grahical user interface needs improvement.
- Required features must be easier to access.
February 11, 2021
King of WLAN
Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers are being used by my organization as our primary wireless connectivity solution company-wide and country-wide for our remote locations. Before Cisco, we used multiple brands for wireless connectivity; we always faced communication issues among departments, especially in the production area, so we studied and selected Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers for our whole organization.
- Hanging issues are resolved after Cisco Wireless deployment, over loading of users on a single AP is managed well.
- Users are connected very smoothly, now no issues reported from users.
- Logs and rectification are very easy and troubleshooting is very good.
- One windows solution for all wireless issues company & country-wide users.
- Pictorial shape must be added in reporting or add date range for logs
- Recently removed or added devices must be highlighted in a report or on the dashboard.
- Single tool for Cisco Wireless and Cisco switches network monitoring.
January 16, 2021
A solid product for managing APs and SSIDs
I'm a network admin who is using the Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers in our business to manage our many wifi SSIDs--both WLANs and guest internet VLANs. We have many users and many access points, and this product solves the problem of management among all those devices and users.
- Easy-to-use web interface
- Fast push of settings and firmware to APs
- Simple management of many SSIDs and networks
- Upgrades can be fairy difficult
- Licensing is always a sore point for Cisco products
- Among the top of wireless LAN controller price ranges