We compared Cisco Wireless and Huawei Wireless based on our user's reviews in several parameters.
In summary, Cisco Wireless is praised for its robust network connectivity, seamless roaming capabilities, and excellent security measures, while Huawei Wireless stands out for its strong connectivity, efficient performance, and reliable signal strength. Cisco Wireless receives positive feedback on customer service and support, setup cost, and licensing, leading to a highly satisfactory return on investment. On the other hand, Huawei Wireless users appreciate its sleek design, user-friendly interface, and long battery life, along with efficient customer service and competitive pricing. Areas for improvement for Cisco Wireless include signal strength, security features, and user interface, while Huawei Wireless could benefit from enhancements in signal strength and device compatibility.
Features: Cisco Wireless is valued for robust network connectivity, seamless roaming, reliable performance, excellent security measures, and user-friendly management interfaces. Huawei Wireless is praised for its strong connectivity, efficient performance, user-friendly interface, and reliable signal strength.
Pricing and ROI: The setup cost for Cisco Wireless is reported to be manageable and user-friendly, while Huawei Wireless is acknowledged to have a straightforward and hassle-free setup cost. Additionally, users mention the flexibility and options provided by Cisco's licensing, while Huawei's licensing is easily obtained and offers usage flexibility., According to user feedback, the ROI from Cisco Wireless has been highly satisfactory, while Huawei Wireless has contributed positively to our return on investment.
Room for Improvement: Cisco Wireless may need improvements in signal strength, security features, user interface, reliability, and connection speed. On the other hand, Huawei Wireless could benefit from enhancements in signal strength, compatibility, user interface, and durability.
Deployment and customer support: The reviews for Cisco Wireless mention varying timeframes for deployment and setup, ranging from three months for deployment and an additional week for setup to a week for both deployment and setup. On the other hand, Huawei Wireless reviews also mention varying durations, with some users spending three months on deployment and an additional week on setup, while others spending a week each on both deployment and setup, suggesting that these terms may refer to the same period., Cisco Wireless products have received high praise for their customer service and support. Users have expressed satisfaction with prompt and helpful assistance, efficient and responsive support staff, and an overall positive experience. Similarly, Huawei Wireless products have also been highly praised for their customer service and support. Users appreciate the prompt and helpful resolution of issues, the expertise and knowledge of the support team, and the professional and efficient customer service experience.
The summary above is based on 66 interviews we conducted recently with Cisco Wireless and Huawei Wireless users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"The most useful feature of Juniper Wireless AP is the reporting Marvis."
"It provides private network access, helping us protect our company’s devices."
"The artificial intelligence feature is very good."
"The solution is pretty generic and easy to use."
"The most valuable feature of Juniper Wireless Access Points (AP Series) is the ability to troubleshoot ports on the network. Additionally, when there is an update on the APs they are able to reboot quickly reducing downtime. Other solutions have a longer downtime when updates are done."
"You can easily monitor, manage, and cover all your IT equipment."
"The most valuable feature of Juniper Mist is the Virtual Network Assistant, powered by artificial intelligence."
"Overall, we've been very pleased with the performance."
"Wireless access has enabled users to be mobile and as a result, more productive."
"The ability to deploy wireless access points with templates."
"The FlexConnect feature is the most valuable."
"It is a stable solution."
"Cisco Wireless is scalable."
"Before COVID, the emphasis was primarily on wireless connectivity in specific areas like conference rooms. However, with the shift to remote work and increased mobility, coverage areas needed to be expanded to accommodate users throughout the entire location. We are beginning to expand our infrastructure."
"The most valuable feature is the coverage."
"Cisco Wireless gave us the ability to deploy and seamlessly manage wireless devices at our corporate office and remote locations."
"What I like most about Huawei Wireless is that it's customizable. It has many unique features, such as encryption, spatial streams, hiding features for different scenarios, low-density and high-density areas, and smart antennas."
"The solution is easy to set up."
"The solution's roaming feature is very nice. When you move to another place it automatically changes the access point. It's one of the most valuable features."
"Installation is easy."
"The best feature of Huawei Wireless is the quick and fast setup."
"I am impressed with the tool's seamless integration."
"The most valuable thing about Huawei Wireless is that it is one of the cheapest WiFi 6 systems. Its price is very nice. The other WiFi systems cost about 15% more."
"From an implementation perspective, it's easy. I rate it a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one is a difficult setup, and ten is an easy setup."
"Enrolling into the tool is a tedious process."
"The pricing is very high in the Indian market."
"The solution is expensive."
"It would be helpful to have even stronger security features to help protect against interference from other nearby access points that aren't part of our network."
"Juniper Wireless Access Points (AP Series) could improve if the MIST platform had a built-in master key. This would be an advantage."
"The pricing should be made cheaper."
"Improving third-party integration is key for Juniper Mist's next release."
"If you want to do more specific stuff, it's a bit limited."
"In the future, it would be great if the solution had a GPS feature that could have the ability through access points to locate cell phone users inside a local wireless network, for example in a stadium."
"Older versions used to be hard to deploy. The latest OS, however, has made things a lot easier. While deployment is much better, it could always be even easier."
"The product could improve the security system's alertness to detect and respond to intrusions more effectively."
"Apple is definitely causing a lot of issues by turning on more security features on its equipment. It is causing more problems on the business side. One is what they call a randomized Mac address that Apple has put out. As far as I know, Cisco doesn't have a fix for that."
"The solution's pricing should be improved."
"The internet speed is high within environments. As you move further away from the access point, there is a decline in speed. Omada or Ruckus don’t have the speed degradation as you move away from the access point."
"Requires a firewall body to improve security."
"For pricing, Cisco has to make an effort, or Cisco has to improve the distribution channel."
"There was one time I had a problem with their centralized licensing. I called the Indian call center, but the response was not that good. One guy attended this call and he told me, "Definitely, I am forwarding your call to the next level. I'll let you know." After that, it took between 10 to 15 hours before I got a call back. By then, we had already resolved the issue. Therefore, they could improve the local support; there should be at very good Tier 1 and 2 support in India. They should be both proactive and reactive."
"The solution could be easier to use."
"Support could be a bit faster."
"Huawei Wireless has a small technical problem. When you use a power injector, it needs to be specially configured for the switch to which it is connected. It tries to take power not from the power injector but from the switch. The funny thing when you look at it is that you have three switches or maybe four or five that are theoretically capable. However, the port on these switches is disabled. When you connect the access point to a power injector, the access point checks for features from the switch, but on this port, the switch doesn't do power. So, the access point changes these features to energy save mode and cuts off some features, especially WiFi 6. It took me two weeks to find out what's going on and how to mitigate this sort of problem. It is very easy to fix. You need to disable LLDP on the port on which you connect the access point to the power injector. Power injectors aren't quite commonly used, but I have 54 access points, and I have used about 27 power injectors. So, about half of the access points were working at reduced speed, not full speed, for two weeks."
"As such, there are no problems. It has been good. There were some issues with the network design, but that is not specifically related to the product. We had to make some improvements in the network design. The product as such is fine, and there are no big issues. We are using the latest version having most of the features available in the industry, so the specs are very high. If something new comes up new in the industry, it needs to be incorporated into the product."
"The ongoing support and ongoing follow-up on customers is an area where the solution lacks."
"The demo program is an area for improvement in Huawei Wireless as it's hard to use. As a partner, you can use the solution for free, for thirty days, for example. On paper, everything looks fine, but you have to get permission and explain why you want to download the software, even if it's just for demo purposes. I don't get why I have to do this as a partner and still give an explanation that this would be for a demo setup. Downloading the solution isn't a click-and-install process that should go smoothly and efficiently. You have to get a lot of approvals and explain a lot, and in the end, you find out that you received the approval for one piece of software. It looks like you need additional software to use the software. My company asked for approval and received the approval three days later, but you need to install another software to use some of the features. In the past, most features were separate. Because Huawei wants a single pane of glass where all features should work with the Huawei equipment, Huawei decided to combine everything into the iMaster NCE Campus, which incorporates every other cloud solution. However, you still have to ask for approval for every piece of software, and without clear information on the features, the type of software, and the software files required, it's not so good from my point of view."
"The technical support needs to be improved. They also need to produce some more technical guides."
More Juniper Mist Wireless Access Points Pricing and Cost Advice →
Cisco Wireless is ranked 2nd in Wireless LAN with 148 reviews while Huawei Wireless is ranked 10th in Wireless LAN with 33 reviews. Cisco Wireless is rated 8.2, while Huawei Wireless is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Cisco Wireless writes "Allows us to deploy a wide range of wireless products with stable WiFi". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Huawei Wireless writes "Customizable and has many unique features, such as encryption, spatial streams, and smart antennas". Cisco Wireless is most compared with Aruba Wireless, Ruckus Wireless, Ubiquiti WLAN, Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN and Omada Access Points, whereas Huawei Wireless is most compared with D-Link Wireless, Aruba Wireless, Ubiquiti WLAN, Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN and Fortinet FortiAP. See our Cisco Wireless vs. Huawei Wireless report.
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All are good selections, and this question is difficult to answer without knowing your throughput requirements, as each vendor has multiple models within there series.
Personally I recommend looking at Arista Networks’ cognitive Wifi, where controllers are a thing of the past.
Ruckus virtual smart zone will be your best bet allowing up to 300k connected devices and 30k access points. furthermore, Ruckus has time and again proven best in speed, throughput in high density environments by independent studies. I have over a decade of working with this product and none of the other competitors can beat the layer 1 connectivity of Ruckus WiFi
Hi,
Every one of the mentioned solutions is good but you need to check the needs which are security since the firms you are working with need protection and tracking of data. For this reason, I recommend:
- if you have FortiGate installed then go for Fortinet Wireless since they can be integrated with the Fortigate without buying a controller and they work perfectly together and you will get the advantage of applying rules to the client himself whether mobile or computer, easily managed & monitored, more visibility over your network and incident notifications.
If the above doesn't apply then you can go with the best one that fits your budget and security needs which for me doesn't fall on the mentioned solution but to go with ARUBA Instant Access Wireless Solution and the reasons are as such:
- Cisco is too much expensive and you got to pay smart support with some complexity in configuration and you need to buy a controller
- Ruckus is good but when you want to have the security you need to buy a controller with licenses and it won't give you the security needed since it is just a wireless solution
- Huawei is not a stable company since it had many ups and downs and they can reach with you to have all the solutions nearly free so that you install their brand.
Whereas Aruba you don't need a controller in the Instant access points and you will get the minimum security with radius integration and what is important a lifetime warranty on the access points.
In addition, if the number of access points increased and you want more detailed management and more advanced configurations, you can buy a controller either on-premises or on-cloud with Aruba.
The above information is based on my experience with all the solutions and their POC.
If you need any more details and consultancy, kindly feel free to contact me.
Regards.
Hi Imad,
Thanks for your input. Do you have any POC data for Cisco and Aruba?
Thanks in advance
Boa tarde
As soluções cada solução que você indicou tem pormenores que podem impactar tanto no funcionamento quanto em caso de disaster recovery.
Fortinet: Possui bons access points, aliado às funcionalidades de segurança do próprio UTM, porém será mais um serviço para o appliance gerenciar, e dependendo do que está rodando nele, corre-se o risco de degradar a performance da funcionalidade principal "segurança", por que tambem está gerenciando uma rede wireless, além do fato se houver alguma pane no appliance Fortinet, tanto os itens de segurança quanto a rede wireless irão ficar indisponível. Dê a Cézar o que é de Cézar, deixe a fortinet focada em segurança, que é o que ela faz de melhor.
Ruckus: Excelentes Access points, confiáveis e com alta performance, possui no mínimo 4 opções de gerência, sendo, controlerless Unleashed, appliance virtual, appliance hardware e cloud, ambas as opções não trará prejuizo à performance da rede wireless, porque não há tunelamento de dados para elas, além de possuir várias funções de segurança inerentes à rede wireless. licenças são perpétuas.
Cisco: Excelente access points, porém solução muito cara para aquisição e renovação.
Huawei: Pelo que conheço, tem bons access points, e controladoras virtuais e appliance físico, mas conheço poucas redes com esta solução.
É lógico que uma tem um recurso extra a mais do que a outra, mas considero mera perfumaria, pois o básico para uma rede wireless segura todas atendem.
Eu já atendi a mais de 40 universidades federais no Brasil, todas com Ruckus, e não há reclamação da solução.
Como recomendação pessoal, vá de Ruckus.
Hi,
It is all dependent on the size of the controllers in question. Though I would suggest getting a cloud base technology so you are limited by any controller and have much better redundancy. Take a look at Arista Cognitive Wireless