Cisco Catalyst Switches Reviews

We use it mainly for access, as an access switch to other PCs.

The greatest benefit for our organization is that our Cisco Catalysts are quite reliable. We can depend on them.

The most valuable features of this solution are that they are quite robust, they hardly ever fail.

In terms of additional features or improvements, I would like to see more fiber ports, more security features, and perhaps the integration of wireless features into the switch.

It is very scalable, because of the stacking features.

Cisco supports this solution quite well. I like the support from Cisco.

I have always used Cisco. I think it is the most reliable solution on the market.

When selecting a vendor, for me the most important criteria are 

• the competency of their engineering staff
• their product knowledge.

As I said, I mostly deployed it as an access switch, and at that level, it is not complex. If you are talking about using it as a core switch, that would be much more complex. But we are only using it as an access switch.

Do a comparison with other brands and look at their features. The main Cisco Catalyst features are that it is scalable and reliable. These are two things you should look into when doing your comparison.

I would rate Cisco Catalyst at eight out of 10. It's reliable, the features are quite full-fledged, and it's scalable.

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.

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. 

We have the Cisco Catalyst 2940 Series switches. We usually use these switches for connections inside our office. We have a three-story building, so we have quite a number of switches to connect specific departments. These switches are mainly used to share a connection among computers in a specific department. 

They are stable. We haven't had any particular problem with them. 

Their price should be improved. They are a little bit expensive.

We have been using these switches for around five years.

They are stable. We haven't had any problems. There was a time when due to power failures or outages, we lost some switches and had to replace them. Power is very unstable here, and we are experiencing outages due to heat.

In one of the devices that I am using, I notice lights blinking from time to time. I don't know whether it is related to the equipment, but it seems that the connection is not going through. It only occurs from time to time. I am yet to understand the reason behind this. It is not a big problem, and we are able to use it.

Our network doesn't grow so much, and it has more or less the same things. We are a public university, and we have three sites. I am at one of the sites. At this site, we have about 60 to 70 people. We also have our campuses where some of these switches are used. All in all, we have about 1,000 people.

We are setting up a national research and education network for which we have acquired some Cisco Catalyst 9000 Series switches, which are new to me. When we start using these, I would have more to say about what they can achieve in terms of scalability.

We don't have external technical support. Unfortunately, this is not something that works very well in a country like ours. We have to rely on our own technicians. 

We have had the opportunity, although not so extensively, to use MikroTik. In my experience, they are easy to use, and they are cheaper. Our financial department opted for Cisco, but we are satisfied with Cisco. 

It is easy. We haven't had much trouble.

I can do it by myself.

They are a little bit expensive. We are a public institution, so we go through other traders, and sometimes, they put in their own surplus price because it is a government contract. Cisco products are expensive, especially when you compare them to Huawei.

I would surely recommend this solution. We plan to keep using these switches. 

I would rate Cisco Catalyst Switches an eight out of ten.

I am a solution architect and design authority. I define what we need and in which direction we are going to look. We then do some detailed investigation, get reports back, and make a decision. We are working on air traffic control systems. We use this solution for data centers and remote clients.

It is a pretty good product. I don't see a problem with this product. Cisco Catalyst Switches fit the best for the type of systems that we deploy. Our customers usually are happy with Cisco equipment. Many partners and third parties have ordered this solution.

Its initial setup can be simpler, and it would be great if we can work with a reference architecture.

Cisco has the capability to provide a very integrated solution. They have DNA Center, Cisco ISE, Cisco Prime, FMC, and AMP. We are looking at all the products, but it is rather complex to pick out the right licenses that you need. The license structure is a bit complex. Sometimes, there is an overlap in products, which does not really make sense. For example, you have DNA Center and Cisco Prime, and it is not really clear what you would use for what exactly.

There is a lot of information on the Cisco website, but it takes a while to go through all this and look at the presentations that are available from Cisco Live. These presentations are appreciated, but sometimes, they are a bit too much like bullet points. You don't exactly know what's behind it, so you have to do a second guess. Overall, there is a lot of information but not always to the point.

I have been working with Cisco switches for 30 years.

It has pretty good stability.

Scalability is pretty good.

We have experience with professional services. If we do a design, usually we can get some support. After we deploy a new network, we can get professional services from Cisco to help us. I think that is fine. I had an experience with Cisco last week, where they wanted to sell professional services to help us in the early design phase, where things are more conceptual. They shouldn't do that. 

Cisco should help based on the reference architecture. They should help the potential customer to get started without asking for money. I think Cisco equipment is expensive enough for that. I have no problem paying for professional services after we deploy it or when we do a detailed design. When it is early in a project's phase, we should get help from them to go in the right direction. It should be part of the normal business to work with an initial customer.

The initial setup works well if you can build on earlier projects, but if you really have to make a completely new design, you will struggle a bit. We are working on a project now, and we have our experienced network engineers on this project, and they are struggling. The initial setup could be simpler.

It would be great if we can work with reference architectures. I have also seen something like this with other suppliers, and I really liked it. I have seen some of the ideas in the Cisco Live presentations, but I'm not sure if it is really complete and clear enough. It should be worked out a bit further so that we can work with reference architectures, and then let's say base it on multiple products that you would apply in the reference architecture. 

Cisco products are not that cheap.

I would definitely recommend this solution. I would rate Cisco Catalyst Switches an eight out of ten.

Generally, we are using Cisco Catalyst switches for the campus network. We are currently using the Cisco Catalyst 3800 Series switches with IOS XE, and we also recently onboarded the Catalyst 9300 Series and 9400 Series, mostly for the campus network. We also use the 3800 Series switch for wireless connectivity, which provides UPOE, supporting up to 60 watts for the PoE devices.

Performance-wise, Catalysts are so good in the LAN infrastructure, especially for a campus network. But for a data center environment, we mostly prefer the Cisco Nexus series.

Cisco Catalyst is one of the most famous and popular devices for campus networks, widely used in most of the country. They are the preferred networking switches with many features that help eliminate the need for a more complex OSPF. They are also easy to configure and manage. With the vulnerability assessment report, we can see there are more improvements coming from Cisco for campus area network switches.

HSRP (Hot Standby Router Protocol) is one valuable feature. In the 3800 Series, we have the Stacking feature which enables combining switches to get more bandwidth and produce high-availability. The Stacking feature can also actually eliminate the need for HSRP.

I would like to see hosting multiple applications on the existing IOS.

Stability-wise it is good. We have had multiple Catalyst switches running for quite a long period of time without even a single reboot. Performance-wise that is quite okay.

The way it is being deployed it is expandable. We can add additional devices, so it is good.

I have used support for Catalyst and it was good.

In most places, we were already using it, and we are continuing to use it. We could see the stability was better and it's quite easy to manage. We are also used to it. In addition, we're able to get technical support as well as vendor support.

Setup is quite straightforward. You need to understand some of the basic components, how to set up the basic requirements. Apart from that, it is quite easy. You won't struggle much if you have a basic understanding of it.

Another candidate would be Juniper switches.

The main thing is that Catalyst has been around for quite a long period. Cisco is one of the leaders in campus area networks, so investing in Catalysts, given that they are reliable, is safe.

My most important criteria when selecting a vendor are the

• product knowledge
• support from the vendor and the availability of the technical staff to support it.

I would give a Cisco Catalyst a nine out of 10 because most campus networks use Cisco and it is one of the best campus network switches. Its performance is quite good, it’s seamless, and stability-wise it is good.

The last Catalyst I used was for a core solution in an airport. That was a 3850. The previous use case was as the backbone of an ISP. We used different models of Cisco Catalyst including 3560s and 3700s.

When we started working with a regular Catalyst, the 2060, we mostly had a VLAN-based network. But in 2015, I worked with a well-known NGO, World Vision, in Bangladesh. They have around 84 locations all over the country, and they expected that their entire network would be authenticated through 802.1X. They expected that their network would be centrally policy-driven and allocated, that they would have posture assessment, and captive portal. Other than using a Catalyst, we couldn't have afforded to have these features.

In my country, Catalysts are used mostly for simple distribution, not more than that.

There were some other areas we've worked on the last two years. Most of the organizations who were going for Catalyst switches with Layer 2 options expected Identity Services integration. They were concentrating on having 802.1X authentication policy-making.

Recently I have had a little hiccup working with Catalyst switches. They used a few power integration features but I'm not sure they really resulted in much power saving. But, it caused cross-vendor equipment trouble.

For example, if I put some sort of equipment other than Cisco in a Cisco network, where the energy is marked as an option for Catalyst, sometimes I end up with a link breakage situation. This is because Cisco can understand its own structural power dependency and optimization, but it cannot understand the power optimization for other vendors' equipment. I had a really tough time managing the networks.

Also, Cisco has been introducing some software options in Layer 3 switches. I don't find that to be important so far, when there are have SDN options all over the world now. Certain switches are even leaving that out of the licensing option, and they are providing you embedded options so that you can actually use open-source SDNs. I don't believe that this is a good option, that Cisco is actually keeping so many licensing options for Catalyst. That is my opinion on the Catalyst 9000 series.

So far, I haven't really found any lack of stability. The switches are really good. The Catalyst 2960 switches had some issues earlier, power issues as I mentioned. It had more port failure and port damage issue than previous versions. But after we found the 2960-XR and others, they really improved.

I have been happy with Catalyst performance. It's doing better.

In terms of scalability, it's really working fine.

Cisco tech support is really slow. In the time it takes them to actually understand a scenario, we have mostly found our way out on our own.

In 2015, when I had a major deployment, I had an issue resulting from a captive portal for a 2960-Plus switch with IC. I opened a ticket. The call created questions and seven days went by. So I had to intervene in the entire operation, and found that it had a workaround, and I instructed my engineers to do that. Eventually, the problem was solved, but I really wanted to see whether Cisco could solve the problem. So I kept the ticket going and asked them what they were doing, what results they were providing, because there are certain areas they are expert and, ultimately, they can actually tell me what is the better way to do that. But after 21 days, I found that they were not getting anywhere, whereas in 10 days, we had already solved the problem. Then I asked my people to close the ticket because there was no use keeping it open. It was better that we resolved it ourselves.

So I don't appreciate Cisco tech support.

I have been using different switches side-by-side.

There have been certain issues. There was one implementation where Cisco was awarded up to the firewall and Dell was awarded from the server farm to all the servers in storage: the server from the switch, then the Dell MXL blade switches. That was the time got to compare the Dell performance with the Cisco Nexus 5 series performance. We found that Dell's performance was much more flexible than Cisco Nexus.

There was another case where I was using PowerConnect with the Dell EqualLogic. When we purchased a Dell EqualLogic, we had to buy a good throughput Cisco switch. When we compared the Cisco switch price with the Dell PowerConnect, we found that Dell PowerConnect was much cheaper. We had certain Cisco switches already. When we compared these switches side-by-side, we found that the PowerConnect was performing much better with the iSCSI.

I'm not saying that I shifted from another vendor, but I actually use these things side-by-side, considering several situations.

I wouldn't say the setups are really that complex because most of the setups we have done in Bangladesh were basically structured data center diagrams, which we have found from Cisco or any other network architecture. Those were pretty simple architectures.

If you consider Cisco's price with the Dell, you will definitely lose with Cisco. But Cisco has a major area of equipment in general. Cisco has routers, firewalls, NAC, certain video conferencing, Apple phones, and different security solutions. But Dell doesn't have such areas, Dell only has switching architecture.

On that basis, Cisco is still better, because whenever someone is actually moving towards Cisco products, they have to consider that they have certain other areas that they can invest in with Cisco. But if you consider the pricing of a Cisco switch against a Dell, Dell is definitely the winner.

I have used Cisco side-by-side with Dell and Maipu, and I found that Cisco is good. But if you compare Cisco's performance with these two, you will find that Dell and Maipu are not that bad. I wouldn't say that Maipu is that much of a product, but Dell is really performing well in comparison to Cisco.

Considering the performance, I really chose Dell. But when I have to consider that I'll have to move forward on the next project with certain security integrations, I have to consider Cisco. That is mostly the reason I considered Cisco. Otherwise, Dell would definitely have been the winner.

If you are considering going for a Dell or Cisco or Huawei, even certain other products out there, Dell has really good performance, and Huawei is also doing really well. ZTE is there, certain other organizations are there. But I always pitch good solutions for Cisco. I do that because Cisco has a variety of products, and Cisco has an enterprise-class solution. 

Whenever we are providing solutions to our customers, we have to consider security. On that basis, Cisco has a variety of security products. They have IAC, they have good sandboxing with Threat Grid. They have a benchmarking monitoring system. Then they have ESA and WSA. They have FirePOWER. They have a major cloud system security for Talos. Whenever you find Cisco is not actually putting the emphasis on perimeter fire-walling, they are saying "Save your endpoints. Secure your network. Monitor your network." Do surveillance.

On that basis I find, even if you go through the incident case analysis globally, you'll find that most of the incidents in the last eight or 10 years are happening inside a network. We need to focus on the internal user network. Cisco has a really good option, a one-dashboard option for maintaining and surveilling your entire network. So I give my customers a Cisco pitch, for that reason.

Overall, I am really happy with the 2960G switches, 2960-XR switches, but not that fond of 3560 switches and 3650 switches. And I am really a fan of 3850 switch, considering its performance.

We primarily use the solution for switching. Some devices are used for ethernet connections. Some we're using with our data center. For example, it's what's in use in the data center. It's got quite a few different applications.

I work in security with various switches and routers, and I find the product, without getting into too much detail, quite secure.

It's a stable solution.

We find the product to be scalable.

The device itself is quite good and reliable.

The security is very good.

Its implementation is quite simple as there's good documentation you can reference. 

The cost of the product is a little high. They should work to lower it a bit.

There's a ban on my country and therefore I can't get Cisco support if I need it. It's not allowed.

I've been using the solution for more than 15 years at this point. 

In terms of stability, the solution has been reliable. We haven't had issues with bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. the performance is pretty good overall.

For our purposes, the solution has been scalable. You can expand it if you need to.

We have more than 1,000 people using the switches. 

We tend not to have to worry about dealing directly with technical support. If we run into issues, we tend to reference the technical documentation and that always has included any information we've needed to find the answers we need ourselves. 

That's important as Cisco does not offer direct support to my country. We are banned from getting support services delivered to us.

I'm also familiar with Huawei devices.

That said, we only really technically deal with Cisco switches.

The installation of Cisco is easy. They have great official documentation and have a good design overall which makes it easy for everyone who needs to run the installation.

It takes about five to ten minutes to install a switch for our technical personnel.

The team that can deploy and manage the switches include ten to 20. That includes managers and technical support people.

The solution can be a bit pricey. That said, I can't speak to exact pricing as a different department handles licensing details. 

We are using various versions of the solution. We don't just use one kind. We have many different ones.

I'm not sure if I would recommend the solution to others. Cisco is a large and technical company. A switch that is just as good with less trouble is Huawei.

That said, I've had no issues with it and would rate the product at a ten out of ten.