Cisco Catalyst Switches Reviews

We primarily use it to provide a hierarchy in the data center, enterprise solutions, and high availability solutions.

The performance of this equipment is much better than other options. The warranty on offer is perfect for me as they attend to issues in a maximum of four hours or within the next business day.

The solution is easy to implement and quick to deploy.

The solution is very stable.

I found the scalability to always be good. 

The technical support, in some cases, should be faster and could improve.

I've been using the solution for ten years. It's been a decade. I've dealt with Cisco for a while. 

The product is stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

The scalability potential is very high. I can put many types of equipment on it and the solution will keep in the same level performance. It doesn't dip. 

Currently, we have 1,000 people on the solution. 

I do plan to implement the solution in future projects, as, so far, it has been issue-free and works very well. 

Technical support could be a bit more responsive. 

in terms of the initial setup, and how easy or hard it is, it depends on the technical knowledge base and on the person that will be implementing the solution.

I was working with data center providers, and, for us, with our level of knowledge, every time it was very easy to implement this equipment.

The deployment is pretty fast. After a couple of hours, you should have it up and running. We had a big team as well, which helped ensure it didn't take us long.

We have about 15 people at three technical levels that can handle maintenance tasks. 

I implemented the solution myself. I did not need an integrator or consultant to assist. 

Likely, after three or so years, you may see an ROI. 

The licensing costs vary. If you buy a lot, the costs are lower, however, if you only need a few, the costs are very, very high. 

You can also pay for additional support that guarantees four-hour or next-day resolutions. 

I am a solutions provider. We're consultants and we help other companies implement this solution. 

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten. 

I would recommend the solution to other users and organizations. 

The price could be improved.

I have been using Cisco Catalyst Switches for 25 or 30 years,

We don't have any issues with the stability of Cisco Catalyst Switches.

Cisco Catalyst Switches are scalable.

We have approximately 20,000 people who use this solution.

I have not contacted technical support.

It is easy to install. Most of the engineers already know about it.

The pricing could be cheaper.

There is a one-time license, but we pay for the smart net license every three years for support.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I would rate Cisco Catalyst Switches a ten out of ten.

The solution is primarily used for getting network switching and routing for the telephone exchange here.

The solution is rather inexpensive.

The product has very good routing capabilities.

The installation process is very straightforward.

We would like the solution to be more stable.

I've been using the solution for about five years or so. It's been a while. 

The solution's stability is questionable. It's something they could work on. It would be ideal if it had better performance and reliability.

I've bever dealt directly with technical support as everything so far has been fine. We haven't had any issues or required any assistance so far.

We previously used Huawei switches, however, we do not use them anymore. We have completely moved away from them.

We have found that the installation process isn't overly complex or difficult. It was pretty straightforward and simple for us. We didn't face any complexity issues. 

For every switch, it took a few hours to be adjusted and managed.

We only needed one technical person for deployment and maintenance.

We had a manager that was able to handle the initial setup. We didn't hire any consultants or integrators.

We found the product to be reasonably priced. It's not too expensive.

We do not pay a licensing fee to use the product.

We use various versions of the solutions, including versions 12 and 15X.

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten. We're mostly happy with the product.

I'd recommend the solution to other users and companies. 

My primary use case of this solution is for connecting up drivers and desktops. I'm a system administrator and we're a customer of Cisco. 

I like the expandability of the solution. I have a pair of 6509 catalyst switches and they use the add on boards. I also like the dual power supplies. 

We are not working off the latest version so the switches on the product are very old and that could be improved. The one gig boards are strictly one gig and not backward compatible. This switch also does not have power over ethernet, so that's old.  

I'd like to see a better web interface. I can't tell you what the existing generations have so I'm sure there have been improvements. These are so old and I'm sure modern switches now have much better tools to interface with them.

I've been using this solution for over 10 years. 

It's clearly very stable, otherwise we wouldn't be using it anymore. The fact that we still use it shows how stable it is. 

That switch was very scalable because itwas one of the ones that had nine slots in it. So it could have additional boards within.

The initial setup was fairly straightforward but we're not doing anything fancy with it.

We're not paying maintenance - these switches were end of life years ago. Maintenance is separate from licensing. Now there is no additional monthly recurring cost on the Cisco switches that we are running.

This solution has been good to us, it's very solid.

I would rate this solution a nine out of 10. 

I design, implement, and troubleshoot networks that use Cisco switches. I am involved in every part of the design, including wireless.

The biggest advantage of having this solution is that it is easy to find engineers, and they are cheaper than hiring HP engineers. HP engineers are difficult to find and you have to train them, which brings up the price of an HP solution.

Cisco switches are really expensive compared to other solutions, which is something that should be improved. They are almost double in price.

As of late, Cisco has been moving from one technology to the next and they don't support each other. If you want new features then you have to buy a new product and forget about the old one. This is from a licensing perspective. For example, the Cisco DNA license versus then Cisco One license are things that I don't know about.

I would like to see better compatibility between Cisco and other vendors. There are a lot of features that are for Cisco devices only, and when you bring in a second or third vendor there are a lot of problems. Fixing this incompatibility would be an improvement. I have not tried a lot of other brands, but I have connected both Huawei and Aruba Wireless with Cisco. Connecting Huawei with Aruba Wireless works well with no hangs. However, connecting Cisco and Huawei is terrible. Sometimes you have to restart one, whereas other times you have to restart the other. I do not recommend mixing equipment between these two companies.

I have been working with Cisco Catalyst switches for close to 11 years.

If the switch is set up properly in the first place then you don't need to come back to do anything with it. This is especially true with the Catalyst 3750. It is the most stable thing in the world. I have found that some of the newer switches will hang or lose their configuration, but this never happened with the 3750.

For example, I have faced a lot of problems with the 3850, especially if there are Aruba access points. Sometimes, it will just reject the access point, although when I bring a new one, it will allow it. Sometimes the VLAN, itself, hangs. Then you can put in another VLAN and it will work. There are a lot of mysterious things that I could not find an explanation for.

I have not faced any problem with scalability.

In my opinion, the Catalyst switches are for enterprise-level organizations with 5,000 or more employees. If there are 1,000 or fewer employees then any switch will manage.

Some of the places I have worked in had networks with 20,000 to 70,000 users. 

I have not contacted technical support from Cisco. I have friends and colleagues who have received support but I just keep reading, then trial and error until I get it. I wouldn't want to pay for support if I don't use it. The only time I would require support is a hardware failure.

I have worked on two projects in the past where support licenses were purchased for a year. What I found was that I could purchase four additional switches and in total, they would cost less than the support. Those switches then go into storage and if one of the others fails then a replacement is available. Ultimately, it is much, much cheaper.

I have always used Cisco networking solutions, although we are opening a new branch and I think that this time, we will use HP. They do not want to pay one to two million dollars for IT infrastructure. With HP, if they have to pay half a million then they will approve it.

I have experience with a hybrid environment where it was a Cisco LAN and an HP Aruba wireless LAN, and I didn't like it. I was losing some great options. Based on that experience, I think that all of the hardware should be from a single vendor. Either Cisco all the way, or HP Aruba all the way.

It is very easy and very straightforward to set up and deploy. It takes maybe 15 to 30 minutes to get it working.

The price of Cisco equipment is very expensive and you have to pay extra for support.

My advice for anybody who is implementing this solution is to design the system well before deploying it. You have to consider all of the aspects and all of the options. Always beware. If there is a 1% chance of failure then consider it to be a 90% failure rate because when it fails, you will have options. Always have a plan A, B, C, and D. In my experience, sometimes all of the plans will fail, and sometimes the first one succeeds.

I can't give them a perfect market but they undeniably are of good quality.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Our primary use case of this solution is for routing, switching, and for interconnecting sites.

It has become easier for us to troubleshoot and find issues faster in the management software for the switches. It saves us troubleshooting time because if the network is down it has a big impact on production.

The stability is the most valuable feature. We have some outages but it's 95% stable. 

The newer models are not so stable. Other products like 6800, 3750, were stable but starting from 3850 it got worse. We have a lot of issues and a lot of bugs. It's a new product so it's understandable but it should be improved. 

Scalability is easy. It's easy to increase the size of our network, we use templates. 

We haven't had to use their technical support. 

We wanted a reliable solution so we chose Cisco. We began working with them ten years ago. We have everything on Cisco and it's not worth it to switch everything to another brand. 

The initial setup is a bit complex but we have templates so we just have to deploy our template configuration. The VLAN configuration was complex. We have STP and different protocols which are not on the V-port so we had to enable it.

We implemented it ourselves. 

Ten years ago we used Avaya and HPE. 

I would rate it a seven out of ten. Not a ten because we are highly satisfied with all of their products but with the newer products, some parts have problems that take a while to fix.

I would say to go for Cisco. It is a stable and quality solution. 

We primarily use the solution for the virtualization infrastructure and for bare metal platforms.

We are satisfied with the solution's performance so far.

The stability has been perfect.

The solution can scale.

It is a very easy solution to use.

We have found the installation process to be very simple. 

The pricing is quite good.

The delivery dates need to be more expedient. This could be improved. Right now, when we need to buy a new Cisco Switch, we may have to wait a few months. It could be as much as six months sometimes. It's far too long of a wait.

I've been using the solution for a few years at this point. 

So far, the solution has been very stable. The performance is excellent. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.

The scalability of the solution is quite good. If a company needs to expand, it can do so.

We have hundreds of users that are leveraging this product.

At the moment, we do not have plans to increase usage.

We've never contacted technical support in the past. I can't speak to how helpful or responsive they are. 

A very, very long time ago we used HP Brocade Switches. W removed over to Cisco mostly due to the fact that there is a very rich knowledge base over the internet. Also, the implementation is pretty straightforward and the commands are pretty easy to follow. 

When it comes to the initial setup, the solution is very simple and straightforward. It's not overly complex or difficult.

How much time it takes depends on the configuration, specifically the complexity of the configuration for the Cisco Switch. Most of the time, a few days are enough for any configuration.

Two engineers are enough in terms of handling the initial setup.

We were able to set up the solution ourselves, in-house. It's not a complex process, and therefore, we did not need outside help from integrators or consultants.

There is a license that is paid with the Switch when you are buying the Switch.

It's reasonably priced.

I'm not sure if we are using the latest version of the solution, although we are often handling product updates.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for ethernet WAN connectivity, LAN connectivity, wireless, then integration with other third-party solutions. That's all we use it for, for the most part.

The solution is easy to use.

It is very stable and the performance has been very reliable. 

The installation process is fairly straightforward. 

Technical support has been helpful.

The solution should work to become more scalable. 

The price of the product is very expensive.

I've used the solution for a long time. It's likely been 15 years or more. It's well over a decade at this point. 

The stability is very good. The performance is great. It doesn't crash or freeze and there are no bugs or glitches. 

The solution is scalable enough. It could be better.

We have around 2,000 users on the switches currently.

Technical support has been good overall. We've been in touch in the past. They were helpful and responsive and we've been satisfied with them in general. 

We did not previously use a different solution. We've been using Cisco switches for a very long time. 

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. If I need to do a new deployment, for example, we just go to the store, get a new one, and install it. We have 40 right now. The installation is very easy.

Due to the fact that we have another of the Cisco products in our environment, Cisco Prime, it helps to deploy switches faster. It's very easy. It doesn't take much time to deploy.

We have five engineers that are able to handle any deployment or maintenance.

I was able to handle the implementation process myself. I did not need the assistance of an integrator or consultant. 

We do find the cost to be quite high. They should work to lower it if possible. 

I would rate the product itself at a nine out of ten. It's been very good so far and we are satisfied with its capabilities. The cost is quite high, however. 

I would recommend the solution to other users and organizations.