Cisco Catalyst Switches Reviews

We use Cisco Catalyst Switches for network connectivity.

The performance of Cisco Catalyst Switches is good.

The only improvement I would like to see with Cisco Catalyst Switches is the pricing.

I have been using Cisco Catalyst Switches for five years.

We use Cisco Catalyst, 9000 series.

The stability of Cisco Catalyst Switches is good.

In our organization, we have more than 7,000 users.

Cisco Catalyst Switches are quite scalable.

Technical support is excellent.

If there is one area where Cisco excels, it is in technical support.

We use Dropbox occasionally. OneDrive is mainly what we use. We also, use Teams.

The installation is straightforward. It's plug-and-play.

To deploy and maintain Cisco Catalyst Switches, we have a team of four people, which includes one manager and three administrators.

You can install Cisco Catalyst Switches yourself.

We pay the licensing fees annually because we have an enterprise license agreement.

There are other products that I personally prefer, but from an organization's perspective, I would recommend this solution.

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

We use the solution as a switch for campus locations.

One main feature with Cisco is you know you are going to get a very good switching infrastructure that is secure.

In a future upgrade, I would like to see integrated wireless in the solution.

I have been using the solution for approximately 20 years.

The solution is stable. 

The scalability of this solution is really good because you can attach switches together. We currently have 5,000 users using the solution and we plan on having approximately 30,000 in the near future.

Cisco provides great customer support.

The solution installation is straightforward to a degree. It is not as smooth as it could be. You cannot do zero-touch provisioning.

It is best to use a technician that understands the configuration file needed for the deployment and then there is some testing that is needed.

There needs to be some improvement with the Cisco DNA licensing activation process, it is difficult at the moment.

I would recommend this solution to others. When my customers want security infrastructure on their campus locations this solution is the one I will continue to suggest.

I rate Cisco Catalyst Switches a nine out of ten.

The switches are the easiest to deploy and maintain out of other competitors.

In terms of technology, Cisco is the leader in everything. I'd rather buy a second-hand Cisco switch than a brand new switch from a competitor. They're that reliable and resilient.

Cisco offers many ranges of switches and you'd know exactly if you were buying an access switch or a core switch distribution. They are definitely among the top companies. They just know how to predict things and what will evolve in the following years.

Out of the competition, Cisco switches are easily the most expensive.

There's something at Cisco called a console that is used for basic configuration and everything and I think that they excluded a normal USB. Instead of that micro USB they should put in the normal one. It would make things a bit easier.

I've had experience dealing with the solution since 2010. It's been about ten years now.

The stability of Cisco is unmatched. We don't experience bugs or glitches or have any issues. There's been no worry of crashing. The technology is impeccable.

The scalability is quite good. We've never had any issues with scaling if necessary.

If the company pays for a given device's Smart Net - that's Cisco's official name for support -  then the support provided is huge. It could be challenging for people that want to fix an old switch or a router but do not have paid support anymore. That's not the case for us. I do think Cisco could be a bit better at assisting in those instances instead of just putting customers in a position where they have to buy a new device where an old one just needs a repair. Beyond that, we have no complaints and have been satisfied with the level of service they provide.

For me personally, the initial setup was very straightforward. I have experience with the product so it helps. if you are a user who has the experience, it shouldn't be too difficult to implement. Otherwise, you will have to spend some time learning about it and how it works.

Everything depends on the size of the network that you want to design and implement. Of course, you need a consultant if you need something with 200 users or so. Or if you don't have any expertise in IT. The question is, is Cisco switch easier or harder to configure than some other brand or our vendor? And the answer is that, in my opinion, Cisco switches are not among the easiest ones to deploy, however, they are definitely the most reliable switches. 

Cisco is easily one of the most expensive on the market, but users are buying quality and reliability.

The company I work with is a Premium Cisco partner. I've even based my career around Cisco vendors.

The solution is on a Private Cloud that we are renting (including equipment and the data center space and the LANs). We have obtained everything from Alban India, and our customers are mostly on our product site with the cloud. The customers include various financial companies, payment providers, etc. We're a systems integrator.

I would easily rate the solution ten out of ten. It's really great.

In terms of advice for other companies, I'd say that whether Cisco would work for them or not depends on the size of the network they want to cover. The small and midsize network users just really don't need to spend that amount of money on Cisco equipment, but the larger organizations and mission-critical environments definitely require Cisco.

We usually use it for connecting campus switches and to provide access switching to the customer, through which they connect their end-user or end devices like WiFi, CCTV, or IP phone.

The features I mentioned definitely enhance the customer experience.

The most valuable features are the Stacking and the capacity of the switches because they have more throughput. Layer 2 is also part of its rich feature set.

For the access switch for distribution, I would like to see them support 100GB, 40GB.

It is very, very stable. We have not faced any problems with our clients. There have been no complaints. These switches run for many years. They have not complained about the stability of the network because of the failure of a switch. It works fine.

As I mentioned, one of the great features is Stacking. One of our customers bought two switches. After about three to four months they bought another one. They only stack the switches. They do not need to add more switches at the core or distribution, connected at the base. They can stack up to eight switches, and they will work fine with no issues.

Honestly, we have not really faced any problems with the Catalyst switches because the configuration is intuitive. Also, our engineers are expert in this area. Very rarely they may have to open a case with Cisco TAC.

For me, in presales, I can reach the system engineers easily. They support me a lot. Also the documentation is important. There are a lot of forums, discussions. If you have any problem they guide you and they solve the problem easily.

If you compare Cisco with another vendor, they are far and away better, in terms of performance and the rich features.

For me, in presales, the most important criteria when selecting a vendor are that I'm able to easily access the Cisco website and, if I need any kind of support, I immediately get it from the Cisco team, whether virtually or physically, here in Saudi Arabia. 

I'm not directly involved in the setup but from what I understand it is straightforward.

HPE comes into the picture because they have a wireless product. It's a good product. We definitely propose their switches.

If you need any support you can find it easily on their website, including documentation. You can reach out to Cisco's virtual team. Cisco gives any type of support needed to their partners.

I give Cisco Catalyst a 10 out of 10. It's scalable, resilient, and has rich features in terms of Layer 2, Layer 3, QoS. They have real vision.

The main use of Cisco Catalyst Switches is for enterprise networking.

Cisco Catalyst Switches should have better performance and be easier to use. Additionally, they should add artificial intelligence features.

I have used Cisco Catalyst Switches within the last 12 months.

My clients are not happy with the stability of the solution.

The solution is scalable but the configuration to have it scale can be complex.

I have not opened up a ticket for Cisco Catalyst Switches. However, I have used the support from Cisco and they are very good and responsive.

I have used other solutions, such as Juniper, HP, Aruba, and Fortinet switches, and they are better than Cisco Catalyst Switches.

The configuration of the solution is difficult. If you are not using the Cisco Prime or Cisco DNA for management then the solution will be complex.

Three or five engineers are needed for the implementation of large projects.

Cisco Catalyst Switches are very expensive.

We have found that we need to purchase a DNA license to be able to use the Cisco Catalyst Switches but we never used it. There is an annual fee to use the solution. There are additional services that can be added at an extra cost.

They need to remove the DNA license.

I have evaluated other solutions, such as Juniper, HP, Aruba, and Fortinet switches

I would not recommend Cisco for anyone, many of my customers have had bad experiences with them.

For the rest of the business for Catalyst customers, we replacing all of them for our customers. I saw the many cases the customers were replacing Cisco with another vendor. It is more expensive and it didn't meet their expectations. However, we are using another technology from Cisco but the security from Cisco is not good anymore.

I rate Cisco Catalyst Switches a four out of ten.

Our company is in the financial sector and we are customers of Cisco. 

The solution is good for computation and backup. 

We need to rely on other devices to provide management features. Other solutions provide more features and Catalyst Switches is not user-friendly. Even the configuration is difficult for our new engineers. Cisco has some weaknesses. 

I've been using this solution for 13 years. 

The technical support is very good, but anything support-related is based on payment. Without paying you won't see any service from Cisco. The same goes for training which requires payment. Other solutions provide training without payment but not Cisco.

The technical support license is very difficult because you can only get support if you've purchased the hardware. After you own the devices you still have to pay for support and pay for the license. Everything is an added cost. 

There are alternative solutions now penetrating the market and because of difficulties with configuration in this product, there are now more appealing options. 

I rate the solution seven out of 10. 

I've been using Cisco Catalyst for switching.

I find the quality of the solution to be valuable. I also like that many organizations use Cisco.

I think it is a reliable and scalable solution.

The licensing process should be back to how it was before. Now, you have to register online, and it makes staging a bit trickier.

Pricing could be cheaper as well.

I've been using this solution for more than ten years.

I have found it to be reliable and stable.

I think that Cisco Catalyst Switches is a scalable solution.

I have used Dell and HP switches before.

The initial setup was very easy and took only a few minutes.

I implemented it myself.

I think pricing could be cheaper, depending on the range purchased.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate this solution at seven.

It is a reliable and scalable solution, but I think pricing could be cheaper. 

I also think that the licensing process could be improved so that staging is not tricky.

We primarily use the solution for networking and the UCS.

The solution is extremely reliable as a product. The clients very much appreciate that.

The configuration is easy.

The solution is customizable.

We've found the solution to be stable.

A company can scale a solution easily.

Technical support has been very helpful.

The solution is quite expensive for our clients. It's a pain point for some companies. They should work to reduce the price.

I've been using the solution for a long while. I've used the solution basically since its inception.

We haven't had any issues with the stability of the solution. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable.

We typically deploy the solution to medium to large-scale enterprises.

The solution scales well. It's not hard for a company to expand it as they need to.

We've been in touch with technical support in the past. We've found them to be helpful and responsive. They are quite helpful and very polite. We're very satisfied with the level of support we receive.

I'm not a technical person. I didn't actually handle the initial installation for our organization.

There is little to no ongoing maintenance required once it is implemented. I'd say you have 1% to 2% of effort going into maintenance. 

We've found the solution to be quite expensive. 

We are a premium partner with Cisco.

We use various versions of the solution. It depends on the client. We have multiple clients and each instance is unique.

It's deployed both on-premises and on the cloud.

I'd recommend the solution to other organizations. We've mostly been quite happy with the product.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.