Wireless Water Cooler

I wasn't sure where to post this pondering so I figured I would just drop this in right here at the old Water Cooler.

While talking over a beer or three with some of my other IT buddies, they were asking me about the how strong/secure/versatile Aruba controllers were. It didn't take long to get into the fact that the controllers, specifically the new 7000 series, were basically layer 7 firewall/routers with extended other capabilities. So another beer or four got us to talking about whether a controller could be be used as a core or edge firewall/router for small to mid-size deployments.

So, have you or anyone you know, done this? I would think a 7000 series could do the job well, especially now with its application filtering, but am curious to see what others think/know/have heard.

Im deploying branch controllers in this manner.  Branch or VPN controllers really the same thing if you ask me.  Controller is the edge device and I use unmanged switches behind them.  From there I can run multiple VLANs for phones, data, server, management, wireless etc...  I plan to hang APs off it and maybe even a local Avaya IP office system for analog and pri circuits.

Hi, I have done it for a couple of costumers. Mostly small SMB costumers that need a controller for RAP/small remote offices. Some years ago a large venue needed a high-speed WLAN and a FW for their public WLAN. They bought a controller-based Aruba WLAN and with a 1Gbps internet-connection they needed a heavy FW. A firewall like this was expensive in that days. We ended up with a normal smaller FW to handle their ADM and management network because they wanted heavy logging on this traffic. And used the WLAN-controller as a high speed FW for the venue networks. It worked very well. The only downside using the WLAN controllers as a internet FW is logging. That part is not good enough.