Gartner crowned Cisco, Huawei, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) as leaders in its latest ranking of enterprise wired and wireless local area network (LAN) providers.

The research powerhouse commended Cisco for improved integration between its switching and wireless LAN services (WLAN) across Catalyst and Meraki management. The networking giant also got plaudits for centralizing its enterprise LAN suite around an AI-driven operating model with both the Linux-based IOS-XE and its Deep Network Model. According to Gartner, this supported more consistent insight, validation, and operator-initiated automation.

Regarding room for improvement, buyers were cautioned on “uneven” AI delivery across its enterprise LAN portfolio.

Gartner also reported increased purchasing complexity during Cisco’s enterprise LAN refresh cycles, especially when transitioning between Meraki and Catalyst, with muddled portfolio messaging on how traditional branding of the two services maps to offerings during said cycles.

According to an IDC report from last year, Cisco generated $904.5 million in enterprise WLAN revenues during the first quarter (Q1) of fiscal 2025. That number was 4.6% higher than what Cisco posted during the same quarter of 2024, and accounted for nearly 40% of the enterprise WLAN market’s total revenues in Q1.

HPE post Juniper

For HPE, the firm’s recent Juniper integrations were commended for having dual enterprise platforms in HPE Aruba Central and HPE Mist for supporting large-scale wired and wireless campus deployments via a common AI engine. Buyers were reminded that HPE operates them in parallel, making for a tough deployment choice between the two for enterprises. While HPE provides guidance here, additional evaluation effort is required for buyers.

HPE was also gilded for aligning its enterprise wired and WLAN strategy “closely with buyer demand for platforms that emphasize AI operations for assurance, automation, and security at scale.”

In IDC’s research, HPE trailed behind Cisco in WLAN revenue, earning $364 million in WLAN revenue in Q1 2025. That equated to 15.9% of the market, which was a 10.7% jump year over year, assailing reported customers' concerns over HPE’s WLAN portfolio pending the Juniper acquisition. That acquisition saw HPE ordered to divest its global Instant On campus and branch WLAN business.

Gartner on Huawei

Away from the U.S. giants and onto Huawei, where the Chinese vendor was heralded for closed-loop analytics and AI-powered, policy-driven automation across wired and wireless campus LAN environments.

Those environments are delivered through Huawei’s CloudCampus architecture, which Gartner noted for integrating switching, Wi-Fi, campus segmentation, AI, and zero-trust security. The firm also got the leader crown for delivering newer campus LAN capabilities such as Wi-Fi sensing and Smart Anomaly Detection (SmartAD).

But Huawei’s Chinese nature played against the giant, with its enterprise LAN offerings not universally available due to regulatory and geopolitical restrictions.

Joining the big three in Gartner’s leader segment was Arista Networks, which was also recognized for AI assistance in its LAN operations, and policy visibility and network detection and response capabilities with its CloudVision platform.

Working against the comparatively small player was market positioning, with Arista reportedly more associated with data center networking by buyers. Gartner also added that Arista's campus LAN portfolio may be too pricey for smaller enterprises.

LAN 'visionaries'

Snapping at the leaders’ heels were Extreme Networks, Fortinet, Nile, and Meter.

Extreme was touted for its high-density campus focus and expanding AI capabilities with its Extreme Platform One service.

The Sam Altman-backed Meter, meanwhile, got its visionary badge by embedding both AI and a production-informed digital twin into its network-as-a-service (NaaS) platform.

As the only pureplay security vendor on the list, Fortinet was touted for approaching the campus LAN as an extension of enterprise security, but lost marks on the AI front for offering guided, human-in-the-loop workflows instead of closed-loop or autonomous automation.

On the security front, Nile was commended for applying identity-based access control and segmentation through its Nile Secure NaaS by default across the LAN.

Gartner's report forecasts that by 2029, 20% of enterprises will replace traditional network access control (NAC) on campus LANs with zero-trust network access (ZTNA) or identity-based fabric controls, up from fewer than 2% in 2025.

The rest

Niche players H3C, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise (ALE), Ruckus Networks, Join Digital, and Allied Telesis rounded out the report’s final segment. H3C, Allied, and ALE were characterized by their region-specific concentrations. Ruckus and Join were downgraded for lesser enterprise visibility compared to their peers, amongst other reasons.

In its report, Gartner forecast that by 2030, 50% of enterprises will use agentic network operations for tasks such as change validation and incident analysis, up from basically zero in 2025.

Its researchers noted most enterprise LAN offerings now include AI agents to support diagnostics, correlations, recommendations, and other network workflows. But such interest in hands-off operations is "paired with skepticism about trust and control," with these doubts increasingly tied to operational coherence as AI advances further forward.

"The rate of capability delivery is expected to exceed most enterprises’ ability to absorb operational fragmentation. Vendor differentiation is therefore emerging around how offerings introduce new capabilities through a single, intelligible operating experience or deliver them across multiple operational surfaces," Gartner claimed.