Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Reviews

If I have to give a neutral view of all the SD-WAN platforms that I have known so far, Cisco is good in routing.

The solution does not offer WAN optimization.

We have found that their SD-WAN has a lot of scope for improvement.

For example, they can probably look at their security stack. They can look at including some features like WAN optimizing, which is currently not there as a part of their in-built SD-WAN features. That could make their device a full-fledged SD-WAN with a single stack or a single device, solving many problems. It would mean once a customer goes for a Cisco SD-WAN, he doesn't have to look at a second device in his ecosystem.

Cisco has got integration challenges.

The solution lacks advanced security features.

Besides a WAN optimizer, I would like to see if they can do something about the security, and maybe they could have in-built security features such as a firewall.

The cost could be better. Cisco is not great for the SMB market. These are price-sensitive customers and they typically will not go ahead with Cisco, unless and until they are a global organization and they have their entire ecosystem deployed on Cisco. Otherwise, Cisco is struggling to connect with these players as their pricing is high. They need to have better technology at a more competitive price.

The organization that I work for, basically, we have deployed it in our lab. We do testing of multiple OEMs. It's been more than two years, that we have been using Cisco SD-WAN.

I have experience with a variety of different solutions. I also have worked with
Versa, Fortinet and FatPipe.

The initial setup could be more straightforward. A solution such as FatPipe, for example, has a very easy setup. In that case, when it comes to the GUI, in four, five clicks, the entire network gets established.

The solution needs to be priced more competitively. SMBs won't even look at Cisco as they already know it will be too expensive. 

I've worked with other solutions and therefore have evaluated them a bit.

For example, FatPipe has an easier initial setup. The GUI is very simple, and the platform is highly, highly advanced, even as compared to your Cisco, Versa, or Fortinet options. 

What I see in Fortinet is more for firewall extensions, with some software-defined controls. While the functionalities of WAN Optimization, functionalities of a seamless failover are not there. There are some potential technologies that FatPipe has, that are not there in any of these OEMs. On top of that, it's a very simple to use technology for many customers. A lot of our customers have also given this feedback that technically Cisco, Fortinet, et cetera, might be big names, however, FatPipe technically is superior technology today, when it comes to SD-WAN. In terms of FatPipe, they have a single device that has routing, switching, load balancing, WAN optimizer, and FatPipe does full WAN optimization. 

Cisco also claims to do WAN Ops. Fortinet also claims to do WAN optimization. What I have found is that Versa doesn't have that feature at all. Versa needs to come up with WAN optimization feature in order to catch up.

Cisco does a basic sliding window and PCP, UDP, which is a basic level of WAN optimization, whereas FatPipe does sliding window TCP, UDP, caching, comparison, data application - all seven or eight techniques are possible.

We're both customers and resellers. 

I'm not sure which version of the solution we're using at this time. I don't know the version number off-hand. 

Cisco is no doubt a great company in the routing area. Nobody can beat them or nobody can even come close to them. That said, to be very honest, in the SD Wan space, they are struggling. There are a lot of cases where Cisco is technically disqualified when it comes to pure SD-WAN. SD-WAN is the game of FatPipe. FatPipe is the one who invented this technology, and they have delivered SD-WAN since 2002. This company has more than 20 years of experience, from what I understand. Whenever you use these two technologies, you actually get to know that FatPipe in comparison to Cisco is so seamless, extremely seamless. 

Cisco doesn't have advanced security features. Cisco doesn't really do WAN Ops. It does packet duplicates. Technically, both do packet duplicates. If they have failover traffic from a primary to secondary link, they will duplicate the packet. Otherwise, there cannot be a seamless failover. FatPipe has patented technology that doesn't do packet duplication. That's the reason they save 50% of Enterprise bandwidth while doing a failover. On top of that, FatPipe is the only SD-WAN. If at all there is a video on the voice system that is going on in any of this other technology, it is bound to fail. If there is a glitch in the primary link, or the primary link is failing, FatPipe is the only technology that is able to hold everything down. The user will not even know that the primary link has gone down. That is why it's extremely unique and extremely compelling technology. It is something that no other OEM in the world has. Even Cisco can't touch it.

In general, I'd rate Cisco at a seven out of ten.

Normally, you use it for the internet connection.

The orchestration on the VPN connection between remote locations is a fantastic feature. I used it some time ago. 

The bandwidth limitations would be good to remove, but it is a policy and license situation for Cisco because the cost is very high. 

It would be good to have OTP implemented with VRF. It can have support for EIGRP Over the Top (OTP) VRF. I saw some limitations in regards to the VRF protocol and the advertisement between VRF configuration. EIGRP Over the Top basically was quite limited with the VRF configuration. If you wanted to do rollback in VRF by using the EIGRP OTP protocol, the formation was not populated across. Cisco got back and confirmed that it is a configuration that I need to wait for until the next release, which is going to happen in one year. 

Cisco documentation is not the way it used to be before. It just gives an easy way to configure, but it doesn't go into the details of the configuration. The information that you need is there, but sometimes you want to go further and get more information, but the information is quite limited. It would be good to cover a few business cases or configuration cases. They used to be there in the past.

I have been using this solution for around seven years.

It is good. There are some nice elements about it, but there are a few difficulties, and it is always an improvement process.

It is good. You can scale as much as you want, but you have a limitation of the license. 
You cannot go further than a certain number of licenses. I can only have 15 locations or so because it would scale the price.

Technical support is good and always handy to give the answers to the questions that you have about how to use it. They always find the issues and the resolutions of the problems that you have.

I am currently using Fortinet SD-WAN because it is less expensive. It is not as expensive as Cisco SD-WAN. That is the reason we switched from Cisco SD-WAN to Fortinet SD-WAN.

It is not that complex. If you concur with the previous configurations that you need to perform a VPN tunnel and everything related to it, then it is not that complex.

The deployment duration depends on how you implement it and the complexity of the connections. If you are having a full mesh configuration, it will take you quite a long time. It depends on the infrastructure that you need to connect to. For a basic operation, it might take you five hours.

I don't use any integrator or retailer at all. The way they have implemented SD-WAN is that they just provide the device. The devices are handed to me to be implemented and configured.

For maintaining the product, you just need to monitor the connection to the platform through the web portal. Overall, you need to dedicate two hours per day to assess the functionality of the devices and implementing them. It could be as easy as one day or five hours. It could also get very complicated depending on the configuration that you are doing. So, if you want to go fancy in the configuration, it can take you easily one weekend deploying the configuration. It depends on how complicated you want to go. I would say as long as you keep it simple, it will take you pretty much three hours or two hours for implementing it.

It is expensive. The license limitation is there in terms of bandwidth. Basically, Cisco is always good in terms of performance and related things. However, if you want to have a license, for example, for 100 Mbps, they charge you because of their 100 Mbps. If you want to go without the license of 300 Mbps, it is a bandwidth license as well. This is not happening with other vendors. That is the reason why we moved away from Cisco. The bill gets a little bit high.

I do remember that one time we were trying to increase the bandwidth for at least five devices, and the license got as high as 20-grand for five devices, only for the license. It was expensive for us at the time. Our company is not a big company, but it is a solid company. The price was very high, and we moved away from Cisco because of the price.

I would recommend it only if you have the budget to buy and implement a good solution with Cisco. Otherwise, unfortunate for Cisco, there are other vendors. They do the job pretty well. They are able to deliver what you require in the same way that Cisco does, but the price is going to be a little bit affordable for the company.

In my company, we don't have any plans of buying anything related to SD-WAN, but, in terms of personal growth, I'm planning to get more information and more knowledge about SD-WAN. There are a couple of courses that I could learn from.

I would rate Cisco SD-WAN a six out of ten. It is a good solution with SD-WAN, but it is not the best. 

We are a service provider and we plan to provide a managed service to our customers using this product.

The most valuable feature is the ease of central management. That is the main thing for us.

The licensing model needs to be improved.

Sometimes we feel that the choice of models is very limited, so we would like to see additional devices made available.

We have been evaluating Cisco SD-WAN for the past two months.

We have not experienced any issues with stability over the past two months.

We have about 16 users. Because we are just evaluating, we don't have a forecast at this point.

We contacted support because we needed some initial awareness about configuration-related issues.

The initial setup is very difficult. We did not find it easy because we hardly have any experience. This is just the first one that we are setting up.

The costs are a bit on the high side.

We are currently conducting a PoC. We did evaluate two solutions, and Cisco was the one chosen for the proof of concept.

Although we are still in the initial stages, I feel that this is a product that I can recommend. In general, we are satisfied with it.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Cisco SD-WAN's collaborative features are unique and sustainable. I also like the protocols, which use two SD-WAN.

Some configurations or procedures could be more user-friendly. Adding a bandwidth management feature would make Cisco SD-WAN more scalable and less resource-intensive. 

I've been using Cisco SD-WAN for more than five years.

The scalability could be better. 

Cisco support is good.

We are also using Fortinet. Fortinet SD-WAN is more user-friendly, but Cisco is better overall. 

Setting up Cisco SD-WAN is easy.

Cisco is in the top pricing tier among SD-WAN solutions. 

I rate Cisco SD-WAN eight out of 10. 

We are a solution provider and SD-WAN, Cisco's software-defined wide area network, is one of the products that we work with.

At this point, only one of our clients has implemented this solution. They are a bank that has redundant links in their branches.

The most valuable features are manageability, scalability, and simplicity.

We have had some problems with the licensing model, and it is something that should be improved. Specifically, Cisco has some bugs regarding licensing that they need to resolve.

Cisco's SD-WAN is a stable product.

This is a scalable solution. Our financial client has approximately 200 branches.

This was our first implementation of this solution and we didn't need to contact technical support.

I have used Citrix SD-WAN as well, although I have very little experience with it.

The process is well documented and the installation is easy. In our team, we have four people on the team to implement SD-WAN.

The length of time required for deployment depends on the environment. For controllers, it takes between two and three days to deploy. For individual branches, it depends on the situation.

We have an in-house team of four people for deployment and maintenance.

Overall, this is a good solution and I recommend it. The only complaint I have is that I would like them to resolve the problems with the licensing model.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We are a solution provider and this is one of the products that we implement for our clients. the primary use case is interconnecting offices.

The main functionality includes a secure firewall, cloud access security broker (CASB), and zero-trust configuration.

It is very simple and easy to manage, compared to other methods.

They should enhance the reporting because, as it is today, they need more executive-level reports.

If in the future they can support Cisco SASE then it would be good.

We have been using Cisco SD-WAN for the past years.

As of now, the stability is fine.

We have not tested the scalability because the volume of traffic is not very high for us. We didn't have to look at it.

My team has been in contact with technical support, but I have not personally had experience with them.

Prior to Cisco SD-WAN, we were using a manual configuration. We used to achieve the same functionality; however, in order to make it simple and easy to manage, we switched to this solution.

I have not worked with other similar products and have no experience with them.

The initial setup is straightforward, and not complex.

It took us almost two months to deploy because we were connecting with a few offices outside of the country. We had to send the equipment to those countries, which was time-consuming.

Our clients have made decisions related to pricing, but we are not involved at this stage.

With respect to security, we did not use the functionality because we were mainly using it to interconnect offices. Security was not a big concern for us. Had there been a requirement for direct connectivity to the internet or accessing the public cloud, then security might have been needed. We were establishing IPsec VPN, which accomplished this task.

This is a product that I can recommend. I am satisfied with it.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

Our primary use case is for the web gateway and VPN server and for access list control. We basically use the solution as a minimal requirement for the network gateway. We have about 50 users. I work as a network analyst and we're vendors, not a direct partner of Cisco. 

The regular net routing is a good feature. It's not just good for routing although like a lot of things it isn't linked to anything else.

On its own the product does what it's expected to do but if you're looking for more features you'd need to move to a dedicated firewall like the ISA firewall. There's something a little inconvenient and old style about it. 

The solution could have a better web interface to simplify changing configurations or see some statistics. I think the main weakness of the Cisco product is the user interface, I'd like to see things more clearly. 

I've been using the solution for five or six years. 

The stability of the solution is one of the better features. 

Scalability is somewhat limited, especially from the technical side. It's just a gateway with some routing and we don't use any dynamic routing. There's nothing fancy and the scalability is enough for our needs. 

Cisco is always good with technical support, it's easy and the contact is fast when you really need it. 

Initial setup is a little difficult but more or less straightforward. We have an older version which is not as flexible. 

It took us one day to implement and we didn't use any advanced features so it was quite quick. We migrated the set-up from the old device and put it on the new one. They're both on the same platform. We did the implementation ourselves and we have one staff member involved with maintenance. We're currently looking to switch our internet gateway so I'm not sure how long this situation will last. We're looking for a provider so we can outsource the network. 

There's not much advice I can give other than to suggest that people get familiar with using the command line.

I would rate this product an eight out of 10 because it has good reliability. We've rarely had any problems with it.  

Some of my customers are replacing their legacy solutions with Cisco SD-WAN.

Encryption, which is native to the solution, is a valuable feature. Also, central management, onboarding of devices, QS, and routing applications are all okay.

All of the configurations are based on templates, and we need to spend a lot of time doing the templates. It's good because that means that all of the configurations will be equal in the network. However, we need to spend a lot of time implementing the templates and doing the customizations.

I've worked with this solution for about a year. It's a cloud solution.

It is a stable solution.

It is very scalable.

The technical support was okay.

SD-WAN is very difficult to implement, but nowadays, most solutions are difficult to implement.

On a scale from one to five with one being the most complicated and five being very easy to implement, I'd give Cisco SD-WAN a rating of three.

It is not difficult to maintain.

You should prepare to spend a lot of time with the design and implementation of the solution. The design in the cloud is difficult to do because you need to have all the connectivity in place to reach the cloud. It's very easy to spin up an instance of SD-WAN in the cloud, but the connectivity from on-premises systems to the cloud is sometimes difficult to accomplish because of the security features the customers have in place. It's not easy to establish connectivity from the enterprise network to the cloud.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate Cisco SD-WAN at seven. From a network perspective, it's a very good solution, but the security features could be better. It's not easy to manage security using Cisco SD-WAN. It's not clear; the solution is not related to security and is more related to planning and networking.