Aruba - Controller or IAP (your opinons)

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jahsoul

Active Member
Dec 13, 2013
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War Eagle Country
So I'm in the process of moving away from Cisco wireless and really looking into Aruba. In planning out what I want to use, I'm at the crossroad of going with a controller vs IAP. I bought a sealed 7005 that was just out of the post warranty support threshold so now I have a controller that may be stuck on the same firmware that it shipped with (unless someone can point me in the right direction to get firmware ;)), so I've been looking into running a few APs in IAP mode. For those that have used both, which do/did you prefer? I couldn't find any updated information on feature parity between them but I've work with both with Cisco and while preferring a controller, Mobility Express was not bad with a limited amount of access points. I could have 2 access points as active/standby and then the others as lightweight aps. Does Aruba work similarly? Thanks
 

TLN

Active Member
Feb 26, 2016
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I'm pretty sure you can download stuff from Aruba without active support to start with.
I've only been using IAP clusters and that works perfectly fine for me: Any AP can be master and if it fails, another one takes over.
Id go with controller if you have complex config: Auth, multi site, lots of AP and such. We used to have 15 AP in the office and it worked just fine in IAP. I got 3 APs at home, might add another one later: it will cover my needs for next 2-3 years if not longer.
 
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nickf1227

Active Member
Sep 23, 2015
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I prefer the controller version. You get better roaming support, 802.11k/r.
You get more control in general with crazy profile customization, you get AirWave integration in you want it, and you can CAPWAP traffic which introduces alot of cool options for managing your traffic.

Also sent you a PM.
 
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TLN

Active Member
Feb 26, 2016
523
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I prefer the controller version. You get better roaming support, 802.11k/r.
You get more control in general with crazy profile customization, you get AirWave integration in you want it, and you can CAPWAP traffic which introduces alot of cool options for managing your traffic.

Also sent you a PM.
Hes not talming about aruba instant. Hes talking about aruba iap: 802.11k/r fully supported, custom profiles, airwave (its licenced/paid, right?) and such