Cambium cnMaestro vs PacketFence

Cambium cnMaestro manages Cambium wireless and wired network equipment, including enterprise Wi-Fi, switching, fixed wireless broadband, and industrial IoT products. It provides network control, device visibility, and zero-touch provisioning through cloud-based or on-premises deployment. Cambium says it can run in a public cloud, private cloud, or on premises without Wi-Fi controllers; the on-premises edition is a standalone virtual machine for data-center installation. Management tools include network hierarchy, ping and traceroute troubleshooting, ePSK generation, guest portal management, email alerts, and rogue access point detection. The free cnMaestro Essentials plan requires no subscription and supports up to 10,000 devices and 10 management users. cnMaestro X has a 90-day free trial and 1-, 3-, or 5-year subscriptions priced by device tier and required device counts, with purchase through an authorized reseller or distributor. X includes Cambium Care Pro support, software updates, hardware diagnosis assistance, and accelerated access to Level 2 and Level 3 engineers. APIs use HTTPS, JSON, and OAuth 2.0 Client Credentials Grant; REST APIs and webhooks can send alarms to external servers.

PacketFence is an enterprise network access control platform for organizations managing wired, wireless, and VPN access. It can enforce policy through SNMP or RADIUS, inline Layer 2 or Layer 3 deployment, VLAN assignment, and quarantine isolation. Authentication options include 802.1X/EAP, directory services, external RADIUS, OAuth2 social login, SAML 2.0, and PKI certificates. Guest workflows include self-registration, sponsored access, email or SMS confirmation, and CSV imports. Self-service provisioning can configure 802.1X profiles for iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, and ChromeOS. The platform checks antivirus, operating system patch level, and security-agent presence, and can quarantine devices that fail policy. Administrators get a web interface, command-line tools, REST API, customizable captive portals, and Perl extension points. The self-hosted Community Edition is GPL v2+ with unlimited devices and full source code. Its listed minimum requirements include Debian 12.x or RHEL 8.x, four CPU cores, 16 GB RAM, 200 GB disk, and a network interface. Paid plans include Starter at $5,000 /year for up to 250 registered devices.