Cisco Catalyst Switches Reviews

We have customers that use Cisco Catalyst Switches for SMB, enterprises, schools, colleges, and universities. We have worked with almost everything except the federal government.

The Cisco software ties all the hardware together better than the competition. Cisco used to license their IOS software to HPE for their own switches, which were decent switches as well. HPE has been through a bunch of different changes over the years and now has Aruba switches. 3Com was part of HP for a while and the ProCurve was the original HP switch that I remember.

Cisco Catalyst Switches do not have an open architecture and you have to buy into the Cisco architecture to be able to use them.

I have been using Cisco Catalyst Switches for approximately 20 years.

The solution is extremely stable and reliable, this has been proven from many years of use.

Cisco Catalyst Switches can be used in any sized company. We have customers in small to enterprise companies, with our largest being General Reinsurance. Multi-national companies would benefit the most from the use of Cisco switches. This is why the international community likes this solution because it can be used anywhere in the world.

The paid technical support is very good.

I have used many other switches, such as HPE, Juniper, and Aruba.

The installation is a definite effort to get everything set up and working correctly. They do not work out of the box. However, these days they have improved a lot and the new Cisco solutions today would be much easier to put together than the ones in the past.

The cost of Cisco switches is a little more expensive than the competition. However, as the saying goes, "you get what you pay for." If you want a reliable solution and other benefits, Cisco Catalyst Switches are worth the money. 

There are additional costs for support.

My advice for others looking to implement this solution would be to work with a reseller, such as us, that has a good history of working with Cisco and can give the customer a good short and long-term plan.

I rate Cisco Catalyst Switches an eight out of ten.

We are using the Catalyst 9200 series as a network switch and the 9500 as a core switch. We sometimes use a 9300 for the distribution switch.

Catalyst switches are highly stable and easy to use. It's a technology well known by most engineers.

We are an enterprise end-user. We also consult for other government entities and recommend using certain technologies to them. I've been working at this business and using Catalyst Switches for a year now. 

Catalyst switches are highly scalable.

I'm satisfied with support from Cisco and the vendor as well as their partners here in Egypt.

It is a straightforward installation. You don't need anyone to install Catalyst Switches for you. You just add it to your network and then do the installation and configuration as well as the pre-setup preparations. It doesn't take a lot of time. You take the switch from the box and put it in the network, then configure it directly. The switch will only take about 30 minutes to configure.

Cisco licenses are yearly. A single 9000 series Catalyst switch is about 75,000 Egyptian pounds. It is kind of expensive. But compared to other switches, it will save you in the long run. You need to hire specialized engineers who know how to operate those devices, and some of them are rarer in Egypt, like FortiSwitch or HPE Switch. Most engineers know how to use Cisco Catalyst. You would need to hire a specialist engineer and train them, and that will cost money. There are other cheaper technologies, but for Cisco, the price is expected. 

I rate Cisco Catalyst Switches 10 out of 10. I would recommend it. This is a leading technology, and the price is reasonable, especially the Catalyst switches I mentioned. Other types of Catalyst switches are more expensive, but the ones we use are more affordable. 

We pretty much use the solution primarily for everything that connects to a network. For example, we use it for user work stations or some endpoint equipment.

The solution is quite stable.

We've found the product to be very easy to use.

The solution is extremely flexible.

You can scale the solution by simply adding another device.

The solution is very easy to set up.

The solution is expensive. They should work on their pricing model to try to make it more affordable for customers.

I've been using the solution for more than a year at this point. It hasn't been too long.

We haven't had any issues with the stability. It doesn't crash or freeze. There aren't bugs or glitches. It's been good. It's a reliable product so far.

The solution is not stackable. To gain any kind of scalability with the solution is just about adding another 2960 Catalyst device. IN that sense, you can scale it however you like.

In our organization, we have about 3,000 users on the solution.

I've never contacted technical support and therefore I can't speak to how knowledgeable or responsive they are.

I did use Ubiquiti switches at one point in time, however, they were not enterprise-level products. They were more designed for small or medium-sized organizations. It's hard to compare the two.

The installation of the solution is not complex. The implementation is very, very straightforward. If you have a prepared configuration, a basic configuration, for example, it takes about, 10 minutes to configure the switch. Installation is just plugging power into it, and connecting it. It's very easy. You don't need to be too technical.

We had three people that handled deployment and maintenance.

We do plan to increase usage. We bought some more devices at the end of last year. We're just waiting for them to arrive. It's my understanding that the 2960-Plus is going out of sale this year. Therefore, we'll have to find some replacement series if we want to buy more switches.

I've handled the installation myself. I did not need the assistance of anyone. We didn't need to hire consultants or integrators.

The solution is a bit expensive.

We use the Catalyst Series 2960 or the 2960-Plus and some L3 switches for distribution-level switches, such as the 3850, which are out of sale and at end-of-life now. We're using the current versions of the solution for the most part.

I'd recommend the solution to other organizations.

Overall, I would rate it at a nine out of ten.

We are using all the three hierarchal models of Cisco Catalyst: 2960, 4500, and 6800. It is perfect for an enterprise setup where you have multiple buildings and you want to aggregate in a single building. 

I think one switch should go beyond the 10 gig connectivity to 40 gigs.

I've been working with Cisco Catalyst switches for more than 10 years.

Cisco Catalyst switches are resilient.

We can have multiple Cisco switches, like seven or eight, on a stack for 300 users. So it is highly scalable and easy to manage. There are 15,000 users on our campus total.

Installing Catalyst Switches is straightforward, just like with any other Cisco device. For the Alto switch, it hardly takes 20 or 30 minutes. I believe we used a configurator. All in, it takes seven to eight people to deploy because we have a large number of switches. And on the operations team, we have seven to eight people managing them.

I rate Cisco Catalyst switches nine out of 10. I would definitely recommend them to others.

We primarily use the solution as access switches they get connected to the end-users and access points and IB fronts. 

The solution is fairly simple to use.

We're able to use L2 switches with this product. We are using normal VLANS plus spanning trees.

The installation is very straightforward.

The overall functionality is very good.

The solution is already at the cutting edge in terms of innovation.

There aren't any features that are missing. It's quite a good solution.

There are two different families, the older family is not programmable. The newer family is programmable and everything is there, so for now, most of the improvement is in the capacity and the speed and other items.

They could use more layer trees or VXLAN. Any modern setup which uses the SD axis and other features would benefit from this. It would definitely be more stable as we could remove all spanning trees. It's already technically there in Catalyst 9K.

Any improvements that they make should be in the wireless area of the product.

We could see more 100 GB interfaces and higher speeds in the future.

The access levels could be improved.

I've been using the solution for six or seven years now. It's been a while.

The solution is good in terms of stability. Everything you need is right there. It's reliable.

The solution is very scalable. If a company needs to expand the product, they will be able to do so.

Our whole organization is currently using the solution. If I calculated all employees, it would be over 70,000 users. All of them definitely go through access switches, unless they are on remote access, in which case they don't access the switch.

We do plan to continue to use the solution going forward.

As a Cisco vendor and a company that deploys the solution to our customers, we tend to handle the technical support ourselves. We assist our clients if anything happens with the solution.

I cannot recall using any other switches. We've always used Cisco.

The solution is not complex in terms of setup. It's rather simple and pretty straightforward.

I cannot recall how long the deployment took. It actually doesn't take that much time. It takes a couple of days for the setup and to connect everything.

The number of people you need for deployment depends on the size. For simple use cases, if you just want to plug in a new switch, you do not need many people. However, in our case, we had a campus and that takes a bit more staff.  

I handled the implementation myself.

I'm not sure of the exact version of the solution we are using. It might be version 15.

I'm technically a Cisco vendor.

I would recommend this solution to others.

On a scale from one to ten, I'd rate this solution at a nine.

The security is very nice.

This is a feature-rich product and the newer models have improved features that allow for many new possibilities.

The virtual stacking feature is helpful.

My company would prefer that the price was more cost-effective.

I have been working with Cisco Switches for approximately 25 years.

With respect to stability, Cisco is a vendor that we can rely on.

I work with a variety of Cisco network products, including Cisco Wireless.

Pricing from Cisco is expensive but we pay for the reliability.

I am in the process of changing my core networking infrastructure, and I am moving into the new portfolio that is offered by Cisco. My boss regularly asks whether we can change from Cisco to another vendor to get better pricing, but I always reject this. We rely on Cisco.

When you have a homogenous network, as I do with only Cisco networking products, with no other components, then all of the features from the old platforms are available. I can use the same access procedures, regardless of whether the device is wireless, wired, or remotely accessed.

Overall, I am satisfied with Cisco Catalyst switches. The only complaint that my company has is about the pricing.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

My primary use case is providing Catalyst switches for the edge and campus networking. You may have lots of IoT switches, like surveillance access points and you need to implement IPE switches that deliver the power and networking through the endpoint sensors. Most of these are considered access switches. We then implement the distribution layer that links all of the access switches and network traffic, then move to the course switches that handle all the packets and connect all the buildings to each other. After, the core is connected to the firewall, from Cisco as well, to get out of building to the internet. So the core portfolio comes from access to the core. I end with the firewall and the routers to the internet.

Cisco's support is called SMARTnet, but we provide support to customers in case of any troubleshooting or if it's on-premises. We act as a mid-layer between the customer and Cisco. Most customers deploy it on-premises, but some prefer to build their own private cloud. 

The most valuable feature is that Cisco comes with built-in software access for network devices. You may use SDN for SD-Access, so you don't need to configure each switch with its own configuration, but can deploy the configuration from a single point of management. You can also monitor the traffic and access for the users. Especially if they are using their own laptops, you can make a VLAN for each switch. Cisco is a very stable portfolio format considering the network features and the heavy duties of traffic.

The prices could be improved. Cisco is dedicated to providing their customers with the latest technology, but it comes with a price. It's very expensive and when compared to competitors' products, like HP or Aruba, this is the most expensive one. 

I can't think of any additional features I would like to see in the next version. The features included are sufficient. 

I have been working with Cisco Catalyst for more than ten years. 

Cisco is famous for its stability and operating system. It's a very stable platform for heavy-duty network traffic. 

Catalyst is easy to scale, especially because of stacking. The stack member can reach out to each member per the tech stack group as well as for Catalyst. As long as you have a sufficient number of ports in the core and distribution, you can scale and connect as much as you need in the access layers. If you exceed the number of ports existing in the distribution, you can add another distribution layer and connect them together to extend the number of endpoints. 

I have been satisfied with technical support. Especially when it comes to hardware attachments, their response is very fast, and almost by the next business day, we're able to go and replace it on-premises for a customer. 

The process was simple and straightforward. Most of us started our first year by taking Cisco courses, so we are talented at implementing and configuring Cisco switches. It depends on the project, but if you are looking at full premises with maybe 20 switches, the setup should take around three or four days. 

We implemented through an in-house team. We are partnered with Cisco and have our own professional service team certification in data center, networking, security, and collaboration systems. 

This is expensive, even when compared to competitors' products. 

The Catalyst doesn't come with licensing, but it comes with models. It comes with nine key series, each with its own purpose: some are for access, some for distribution, and some for the core, so it's not a matter of licensing. The only licensing that you are using with Catalyst is either the Essential or Advantage licensing, which represents Layer 2 or Layer 3 switches. If you are going to use Layer 3 for routing, use the Advantage license. Otherwise, use the Essential license, which is meant for the access switches. 

Dell EMC has a magnificent working portfolio, but customers still may not trust its durability and reliability. Most customers will choose Cisco rather than Dell EMC, even though Dell EMC has a reliable reputation and is very cost-effective. Yet, from my side as a partner and someone who works a lot with technology, I would recommend Dell EMC for customers with a smaller budget that needs a flexible and a cost-effective solution, rather than picking a small solution from Cisco. I would commit to buying a large solution from Dell EMC, then going with a reliable solution provider. 

I would recommend Cisco Catalyst for its abilities, durability, and the support. Cisco is very familiar—all engineers know Cisco very well—and we can handle the troubleshooting and configuration. 

The Advantage license is suitable for large companies. All of the oil and gas sectors use the Advantage license for their switches. Even they are not going to use all the layers or access switches, but they invest a lot and have a huge budget for networking. For a small or medium company, you could use and split the Essential license and the Advantage one based on building needs in order to optimize the cost and make sure your solution is cost-effective.

I would rate Cisco a nine out of ten. Not a ten because of the high price. 

We use the solution for its switches. It's very similar to Dell or HPE - only much stronger. 

The product is very strong. It's much stronger than other options on the market, for example, Dell and HPE.

The software is excellent. 

Overall, the solution works very well and we don't have any real complaints in terms of its capabilities.

The product has been very stable and extremely reliable over the years.

You can scale the product quite well.

Technical support is always very helpful and fast to respond. 

The stability has been great over the years.

The product should work on its pricepoints. It's an expensive solution. It's the main complaint I hear from people.

At this point, I've been working with the solution for seven or eight years. It's been quite a while.

The solution is quite stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's very reliable. We've been happy with its performance and its stability.

The product can scale very well. When it comes to doing something like stacking - for example, stacking switches, of course, it is very simple to accomplish. It's very easy to stack two or more switches in order to expand the solution out. A company shouldn't have any issues with doing so. 

We have a client that has 800 users and up on the solution.

We do plan to continue to use the solution into the future.

Technial support responds quickly. They're very good at being timely. They also have a very good forum where you can ask your questions if you want to. 

Overall, it's very easy to get in touch with them and to find the answers you need to resolve issues. We're quite satisfied with eh level of support they provide to us. 

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The initial setup is not too complex. It's pretty straightforward. For setting up the access layer, it takes about half an hour, which isn't that long. However, for the correlator - and that includes designing and drawing the map of the network and tasks such as that, it takes a few days.

We're actually consulting and doing a project for a state company in Tehran, for more than 800 switches. We can assist clients in the implementation process if they would like s to.

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The solution is quite expensive. There are less expensive options on the market. The pricing can be a pain point for some companies.

I work often with the 3,000 and 4,000 series versions. It's not necessarily the latest version all the time.

I'd recommend this solution to other organizations.

Overall, we've been quite satisfied with their level of service. I would rate them ten out of ten. They've worked perfectly over the years.