It's been a few months since we announced that we're transitioning our long-running AireOS controller series, and the response has been amazing. We knew that a lot of you really enjoy our products, but we certainly weren't prepared for the outpouring of love and emotion that you all have shown us in the last few weeks in the comment sections and on our social media handles.

For example, Asif posted on our blog's page, "We will always remember you as Hero AireOS!!"

You read our mind, Asif. We feel the exact same way about these products for a lot of reasons.

Craig, an Enterprise Networking Technical Architect at a telecommunications services company, is an incredibly strong advocate of the AireOS controllers, check out what he said about the GUI color scheme, "The day I found out that GUI colour scheme option had been added (from blue to red) was literally better than my wedding day!" Unsurprisingly, Craig said that he "classes [the AireOS controllers] as the best and I tell my customers that. I've used kits from other vendors and there's only one real contender."

Thank you for having our back, Craig. We definitely appreciate it!

This might not sound like the best compliment in the world, but to us, Colin's thoughts are music to our ears. The IT Professional from a telecommunications services company said, "I can't think of anything particularly fun, they have been boring in the best possible way."

As you can probably relate, in the tech world, oftentimes, excitement is another word used for chaos and networks crashing. So to hear Colin's comments, that means that the AireOS controllers have been humming along without a lot problems.

A Consultant at an enterprise computer services company, Mats, has been using the AireOS controllers for almost 15 years and here's what he had to say, "I have a fond memory of being responsible for a WiSM to WiSM2 transition with a complete uphaul of central network infrastructure. The customer was so satisfied with me creating SOP/procedures for their staff to streamline operation."

When it comes to troubleshooting, Cedric, an Engineer at a large enterprise industrial manufacturing company, loved his AireOS controllers, "My first bug involved a complex lab using a custom packet generator program made in Python. I had to prove to TAC the issue which ends up being a low-level corner condition in AireOS. The TAC engineer was very grateful resolving this together and ends up asking for more Python training internally (back in 2015). The great thing with AireOS is that it allowed us to troubleshoot at a similar level as TAC to discover product issues. I would rather this than troubleshooting in obscurity."

Cedric, the good news is that the new Catalyst controllers have even better troubleshooting technology!

Even though there are some people who might find these controllers boring (in a good way -yes, we see you again, Colin), don't say that to Chad, an IT Architect at a business-to-business computer solutions company. He loves them!

"I have configured and installed many, many WLC's for my customers. My favorite was a global network consisting of 22 WLC's across all time zones, supporting more than 5,000 APs world-wide. I upgraded all those from 3.x to 4.x and then also to 5.x fond memories of happy users, easy upgrades and just plain fun to use!"

What's that old adage, if your job is fun, you'll never work a day in your life? Something like that, right?

As the sun sets on the AireOS controllers Cisco is happy to look to the future. And Dan is too. He posted on our blog, "I'm preparing to transition from an all-AireOS environment to a company that is full-blow IOS XE ... and I couldn't be more excited!"

We can't either, Dan!

Here at Cisco, we know that transitioning to a new OS can be scary, but there's a lot of good that comes along with this journey too. Martin, a Network Admin at a small professional services company talked about the Catalyst 9800-CL, "[The overall experience] has been very good. The 9800-CL is a really good product that a lot of customers love."

Carsten, a consultant for an educational customer agrees, "The [Catalyst 9800] is a very good further development of the good old 5508."

That last line is simply music to our ears and as good as any to end on.

Learn more about the Cisco Catalyst 9800 Controller family.

If you want to join in the fun and provide some memories from your days working with the Cisco AireOS controllers, let us know in the comments below or hit us up on social media using the hashtags#rememberingAireOS#futureis9800 and#myAireOS.

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