Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers vs. D-Link Wireless Access Points

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
Score 9.4 out of 10
N/A
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.N/A
D-Link Wireless Access Points
Score 4.7 out of 10
N/A
D-Link offers wireless access points. Designed for versatile deployment, their enterprise products supports indoor, outdoor, and wall-mounted installations to meet diverse coverage and environmental needs.
$120.99
one-time fee
Pricing
Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless ControllersD-Link Wireless Access Points
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
D-Link Wi-Fi 6 AX1800 Access Point (DAP-X2810)
$120.99
one-time fee
D-Link Wi-Fi 6 AX3000 Outdoor Access Point for Business (DAP-X3060OU)
$239.99
one-time fee
D-Link BE9500 Tri-Band Wi-Fi 7 Smart Router (R95)
$249.99
one-time fee
D-Link Nuclias Cloud-Managed AX3600 Access Point - (DBA-X2830P)
$349.99
one-time fee
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless ControllersD-Link Wireless Access Points
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsAvailable through D-Link's shop or through third-party resellers.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless ControllersD-Link Wireless Access Points
Considered Both Products
Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
Chose Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
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 …
Chose Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
Easy to manage and centralized policy manager
Chose Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
Aruba Instant Wi-Fi Access Points and Cisco Meraki Dashboard
Chose Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
Used all the Cisco 5504s, the 25, 06s s, all of the old legacy Cisco controllers. And on the competitor side, we did have a few sites that had Aruba and not a fan of that. Cisco is much easier to use, implement and to deploy.
Chose Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
I've used Ruckus Zone director, so another controller. It's way more robust. There's more features and there's more devices that integrates with. So overall, a more comprehensive solution, I think.
Chose Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
Honestly, I haven't used a non Cisco wireless controller since about 2004 when I used to put autonomous APs in. It's the difference between eating broken glass and having a five star meal. I mean there's no comparison.
Chose Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
From a wireless standpoint? Just any, well, we have the 9300 switches from Cisco. We also just went to the new firewalls that Cisco just came out. I forget the product name right now. So I like the wireless controller from a ease access or be able to configure better than the …
Chose Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
More advanced and easier to stand up with virtualization.
Chose Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
Cisco is more industrial grade
Chose Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers is more modern, looks better, supports newer access points. Using different tags - site tags, policy tags, etc. is a nice way to configure different access point groups or locations. Also Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless …
Chose Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
Cisco Catalyst Switches
Chose Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
Cisco 5520 Wireless Controller
Chose Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
Aruba Instant On AP Series Access Points
Chose Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
We use Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers as standard in the company
Chose Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
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, …
Chose Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
Cisco 8540 Wireless Controller
Chose Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE), Cisco Prime LAN Management (discontinued), Cisco Catalyst 9100 Access Points and Cisco Catalyst Switches
Chose Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers can be easily integrated with Cisco Identity Service Engine. It is easy to configure policy sets for multiple authentication methods like MAB, dot1x, Centralized web authentication. Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers …
Chose Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
Recommended by technical professionals
D-Link Wireless Access Points
Chose D-Link Wireless Access Points
We studied and selected D-Link due to usage in a limited area, and it is a very cost effective solution; therefore, D-Link Wireless AP and D-Link Wireless Controller [were] selected for our organization.
We also [researched] Cisco, but Cisco was an expensive product and not …
Best Alternatives
Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless ControllersD-Link Wireless Access Points
Small Businesses
WatchGuard Secure Wi-Fi Cloud
WatchGuard Secure Wi-Fi Cloud
Score 9.5 out of 10
WatchGuard Secure Wi-Fi Cloud
WatchGuard Secure Wi-Fi Cloud
Score 9.5 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Cisco Aironet 1800 Series Access Points (discontinued)
Cisco Aironet 1800 Series Access Points (discontinued)
Score 9.8 out of 10
Cisco Aironet 1800 Series Access Points (discontinued)
Cisco Aironet 1800 Series Access Points (discontinued)
Score 9.8 out of 10
Enterprises
Cisco Catalyst 9100 Access Points
Cisco Catalyst 9100 Access Points
Score 8.7 out of 10
Cisco Catalyst 9100 Access Points
Cisco Catalyst 9100 Access Points
Score 8.7 out of 10
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User Ratings
Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless ControllersD-Link Wireless Access Points
Likelihood to Recommend
9.7
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
6.4
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
7.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless ControllersD-Link Wireless Access Points
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
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Best in small networks & appropriate in industrial areas. AP works fine in any temperature & location (in remote locations office or remote location). Open area wireless connectivity is good with good range. Simple VLAN management and management are good. Backup and restoration is very good. Small home offices using wireless network work awesome.
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Pros
  • 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.
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  • Due to multiple switches in a single network environment, communication issues are common; therefore, productivity is effected. After installing D-Link Wireless, we resolved these kind of issues in our network.
  • One windows solution make management easy via D-Link Wireless.
  • Logs and troubleshooting is now easily handled. Pictorial form help in configuration and users management.
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Cons
  • 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.
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  • Hanging issues are common in large scale networks. Even wireless controller is hanged in peak hours.
  • Issues in VLAN configuration and port configurations.
  • Cost is high in front of other brands.
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Likelihood to Renew
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
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No answers on this topic
Usability
Very good product
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No answers on this topic
Reliability and Availability
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.
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No answers on this topic
Performance
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.
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No answers on this topic
Support Rating
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.
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No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
You need to understand wifi basics
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No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
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
Read full review
We studied and selected D-Link due to usage in a limited area, and it is a very cost effective solution; therefore, D-Link Wireless AP and D-Link Wireless Controller [were] selected for our organization. We also [researched] Cisco, but Cisco was an expensive product and not appropriate in our required area or task; therefore, we selected D-Link.
Read full review
Scalability
There are different vesrions for different requirements, there's HA as well.
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No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
  • 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.
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  • Organizational needs are fulfilled [which] means return on investment.
  • Smooth connectivity increases productivity. Yes, we are satisfied in this area.
  • Management and troubleshooting are core features & very quick in production area.
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