Cisco Catalyst Switches Reviews

We use Catalyst switches to extend our network throughout the facility. It's a big facility, so we need to use switches the ABS to get the signal out to the entire facility.

I like Cisco because you are dealing with something old that the new generation doesn't know about, like telnet or how to configure the switch. I don't like simple GUIs where you can do everything with a click. 

I can't use older Cisco devices with newer versions of the controller or switches. For example, if a switch was manufactured in 2014, I can't use it with a controller made in 2019. I have to change the switch so that I can upgrade my network or my devices. I don't have the option to update the version I have on the image of the AP or the controller.

Also, in the K5 Series of the switches —  Cisco calls them "Core" switches — they have some commands that Catalyst doesn't support, so you have to know the command lines for two different devices to configure them. It's a bit confusing when you are working on both at the same time, and you have some problems, then you notice that you didn't use the correct command for that switch.

I've been using Cisco Catalyst for five years, but I've only been working with the solution in-depth for the past few months.

Catalyst Switches are reliable. We don't have major problems like lost connections, and we only have a minor issue with something every few months. In the last five years, a switch broke down once, and that was due to human error.

Cisco customer service is excellent. We had some issues with devices, and Cisco replaced them for us. We had some significant problems with one of the switches because they changed the image. It took a while, but overall, the support is good.

It's not hard if you have some networking experience. I didn't deploy the switches by myself. We had some help from the vendor, and I supervised them.

With some competitors, yes, it's about, let's say very high price. Half the price you can get Jupiter, or I think also, I forget the brand, TP-Link, you can have something like that, but half the price with it, with maybe also advanced features to deal with it.

I would rate Cisco Catalyst switches seven out of 10.

We use Cisco Catalyst Switches for the office network.

It can be expanded.

The integration is quite easy.

While it is scalable, it could be better.

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

We are using the latest version.

The stability is good. We have not had any stability issues with Cisco Catalyst Switches.

Cisco Catalyst Switches is a scalable product.

We have 450 people in our organization who use this solution.

We have no plans to increase usage at this time.

We don't have any issues with technical support.

When we report a problem, we receive the assistance we require.

Positive

We also use ATI.

The initial setup is quite straightforward. 

The configuration is easy.

The installation took less than an hour.

You can do the installation yourself.

This solution is being maintained by a team of three people.

The licensing, and maintenance fees are paid on a yearly basis.

You can also choose between a three-year and a five-year licensing fee.

When you select the longest subscription period, you will receive a discount.

No

I would recommend this solution to others.

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

We primarily use the solution for our server. It's a network solution as well.

It's a very popular solution.

We find the product very easy to configure.

The stability is very good.

The product can scale quite well. 

Cisco is basically the number one switch in the market. It makes it hard for other options to compete. 

The solution is expensive. Sometimes we will choose some cheaper options even though they are not as stable as Cisco's offering. However, if it is a small project, it may not be worth paying Cisco prices to get it done.  

I've used the solution for two or three years at this point. 

I have found the solution to be very stable. The performance is good. It doesn't crash or freeze. it's reliable. 

The scalability has been excellent. A company shouldn't have any issues with expanding it if they need to.

We have three to five people that directly work with this product.

We already use so many Catalyst switches. I'm not sure if we intend to add any more. 

We don't really need any support as we have a network engineer on staff that can help us troubleshoot if we have issues. 

I can't speak to the initial setup. In terms of the installation process, we have a network engineer that will help us to install the switches when we need them.

The solution is expensive. There are other cheaper switches on the market. However, they may not necessarily be as stable as this option. 

When you buy the Cisco, the price already includes a software license.

I'm not sure which version of the solution we're using. It might be the latest.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten. I've been pleased with its capabilities overall. 

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 use Cisco Catalyst Switches as access switches, for connecting to what we call the last mile within the office. We connect from the patch panel to the wall jack. 

We use layer three switchings to interconnect between branch sites.

It is easy to use. I have only had one course on Cisco Switches.

The pricing needs improvement.

Price stops entries in Africa. We are not at that level where IT is considered a very big business enabler.

When I compare with the competition, MikroTik or NETGEAR I can purchase the switch and use it for whatever I want. I don't have to add the license, or the BGP routing license, and an ERGP writing license. Other switches are the providers that work out of the box without additional hidden fees.

I have been using Cisco Catalyst Switches since 2005.

We have 1,500 end users.

I have only ever contacted Cisco support once in the time that I have been using it, but it was not related to the switches. Rather, I contacted them regarding Cisco ISE.

We started out with Cisco Linksys in 2006, now we are fully using Catalyst.

It was very easy to install. The last switch I implemented took me 15 minutes to install and set up a complete network.

We have 15 admins to manage this solution

We love Cisco, but the price is very prohibitive. We don't require any licensing, we scaled down to 2960.

I would not recommend using this solution in Africa.

I would rate Cisco Catalyst Switches a six 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. 

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.

The most valuable features include the redundancy one and the spanning tree. We also use the power over the ethernet. Moreover, we like the RRP, virtual redundant routing and GLBP, which are primarily on the Cisco Switches.

In the future it would be nice to see a dynamic VLAN database that's not managed by another, say, Cisco product.

I would like for Cisco to come up with an affordable dynamic VLAN solution. This would mainly serve the purpose of network access control. My thinking is along the lines of that of my colleagues, that there are non-Cisco infrastructures available which are more affordable. This would give us the option of using Cisco Catalyst or of moving on to the competition. 

Cisco ACI is a feature I would also like to see. When it comes to automation, it would be good to be able to use Ansible or Puppet to run one's network and enforce compliance. Roadmap is the way to go, especially when it comes to network engineers. I would be very pleased if Cisco were to enable its product to work with these automation tools. This is where the challenge lies in deployment for most network engineers. Automation is key. 

I have been working with Cisco Catalyst Switches for around 13 or 14 years.

The solution is very stable, durable and resilient. We had many issues in regards to other people and products and upgraded these solution so that they would be on par with Cisco.

I have not had to make use of direct technical support. Mainly I have taken advantage of the one which is online and this works very well for me. There are no issues to report. It has provided me with much assistance, especially the forum, and I would rate it as pretty good. 

We have worked with switches from other vendors, specifically SP and Ubiquiti. Then we worked with Cisco, as well. However, multiple infrastructure mainly applies to Cisco and this is in accordance with our enterprise standards. This means that we deploy Cisco for all sites that we take over.

When it comes to the access points side, we found Cisco to be a bit pricey and have utilized a different product that we combined with the Cisco switches. 

The pricing is on the high end. Recently, at the beginning of this year, we actually did a  comparison of Cisco and HP products. As far as I see it, given the same specifications and features, Cisco is comparatively expensive.

Cisco delivers when it comes to business value. So, I would advise others to go for it. But, they should be aware of budgetary considerations vis-a-vis the pricing. This is key. 

The product is one which delivers, especially as concerns large enterprise networks that put an emphasis on visibility and the time it takes for deployment and reaction to situations. Keeping this in mind, I would say that Cisco Analyst is the best for me. 

I rate Cisco Catalyst Switches as an 8.5 out of ten.