I'm curious: what significant benefit do you expect to get with a controller? I couldn't justify it last time I looked into it.

I have been playing with a pair of standalone Cisco Aironet 1600 APs with a SG300 POE switch.

The 1600s support server authentication so I wouldn't need to deploy a preshared key (if I set up a radius server). snmp for monitoring and alerting. With POE I can power cycle them from the switch.

Will the environment evolve so much that occasionally touching 5-8 routers is more expensive than a controller? Editing a half dozen configs and uploading/saving them one by one goes pretty quickly. (I managed 20ish 2600 routers that way a few years ago with no trouble.)

As I say, I haven't used a controller, and I'd like to learn more.

-jk