Fortinet’s wireless LAN equipment, including FortiAP access points, leverage Secure Networking to provide secure wireless access for the enterprise LAN edge.
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.
Fortinet has a great portfolio of access points for indoor and outdoor needs, low and high density and even access points for ruggedized needs. So you can find the appropriate access point for pretty much all scenarios, from office to storage or outdoor environments. We can find all you need to roll out small to large deployments.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Fortinet offers excellent support. They will work with you until the solution is doing what it is designed to do, within its capabilities. They also do an excellent to follow-up with the end-user prior to closing the ticket.
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.
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.
as a stand-alone product, the Fortinet wireless LAN solution isn't the most powerful, nor compelling out there. Others, like Cisco Meraki, offer great products, with added wifi features at a similar price point, but where Forti shines, is when integrated into a network with firewall enablement such as FortiGate. Overall, it stacks up well with others and is a solution that needs to be evaluated in a purchasing project.
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.
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.
