Cisco Ethernet Switches Reviews

Our primary use case for Cisco is for access and core switching as most of our clients use it for these purposes. We also work with Fortinet for network solutions, mainly FortiGate, FortiAuthenticator, and FortiManager. Additionally, we use Cisco for campus switches, mainly the Catalyst series.

It helps our organization because Cisco switches are stable and rock solid, making them reliable for our clients.

The most valuable feature of Cisco Ethernet Switches is their stability. They are rock solid, and that's the advantage of Cisco. It is also easy to integrate.

Cisco should consider adding a GUI as most vendors now offer the ability to manage switches via a graphical user interface, while Cisco switches are managed using pure CLI.

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

Cisco Ethernet Switches are stable. I would rate their stability at eight or nine out of ten.

In terms of scalability, it's pretty straightforward to expand the number of users and the network. I would rate it an eight out of ten.

Their technical support is very professional, and I don't have any negative comments.

Positive

The setup and configuration process is very simple.

The pricing of Cisco is high, which makes it more suitable for enterprise-level companies. I would rate the pricing model at four out of ten.

Apart from Cisco, other solutions considered include Juniper, Aruba, and Huawei. Huawei is considered a strong competitor due to its pricing and features.

Cisco Ethernet Switches are mostly recommended for enterprise-level companies due to the cost.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

Cisco Ethernet Switches can be used for any particular application. We have many customers like IDBI and State Bank of India using Cisco switches, Cisco routers, and Cisco SD-WAN. My organization provides some Cisco switches and AMCs of Cisco switches.

Cisco Ethernet Switches is a very stable product. Cisco products are extremely rugged and stable. I have faced very few complaints about Cisco products supplied to my customers.

From a system integrator's perspective, Cisco must train system integrators, partners, and customers about their services. Cisco has many products like switches, routers, and now SD-WAN, and they need to educate the partners and customers about these services.

I've been dealing with Cisco Ethernet Switches for about 25 years.

I rate Cisco Ethernet Switches ten out of ten for stability.

Since Cisco Ethernet Switches can be integrated with different modules, we can have one switch to scale up to 10, 15, or 20 switches. The solution is enterprise scalable and telecom scalable. I've got about 12 to 14 customers using Cisco products.

In my previous organization, my service engineer used Cisco's technical support, and their response was quite good.

Setting up a Cisco switch or router is very user-friendly as far as the service team is concerned.

Cisco L2 switches hardly take a couple of hours or less than an hour to deploy. It all depends on whether the customer requires VLAN and what type of setup they require. LC switches would take a couple of days to deploy, depending on the SoW the customer provides. The solution's tech support is also quite good. Most of their employees have done the Cisco certification, and installing Cisco Ethernet Switches doesn't take any time.

The deployment model is quite simple. It's fit-and-play if it's an L2 switch. However, if it is an L3 switch, some configurations are required, which takes time.

There are certain modules for L3 switches. Customers have to pay for some of the L3 switches licenses, which are expensive.

Overall, I rate Cisco Ethernet Switches ten out of ten.

We primarily use the solution as an ethernet switch. 

The product is very robust.

It offers better reporting than any other OEM.

The solution is easy to set up. 

It is stable.

The solution can scale. 

In India, we have a requirement for free replacement warranties. For example, brands like HP are offering free replacement parts. Cisco needs to offer free replacement parts. They need to offer free replacements until the end of life for devices. They should offer this without requiring renewals. 

I have been using Cisco for the last 15 years. 

The solution is totally stable. I've used it for the last ten to 15 years and haven't faced any issues. There are no bugs or glitches. 

This is a scalable product. It expands well. 

We have about 50 users on the solution right now. 

I've never had to contact technical support. I cannot speak to how the support services are. 

The initial setup is very easy. We find it more straightforward than HP or Juniper.

The deployment process didn't take too long. If there is pre-planning done and it is okay, it shouldn't take more than one hour.

The solution is a bit more expensive when compared to other options. However, they are not so different. HP, for example, isn't much cheaper. They are all mostly the same.  

We are currently considering using Aruba and are evaluating them. 

I'm a customer and end-user.

It's a good solution. of course, you need to choose what meets your company's requirements. If you have the capital to buy it, I would recommend it. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. It is robust and I have very few problems when dealing with Cisco switches. Also, support is fantastic.

We use Cisco Ethernet switches for building on-site LAN projects and topologies. It depends on the switches I use. Usually, it's supposed to be a PoE, especially if we're supporting VoIP and wireless technologies. We deploy everything on-premises because I work with government entities in Singapore. 

Cisco Ethernet switches help build an office-based LAN. We seldom use Cisco Ethernet switches in data centers. We typically use Nexus switches for data centers. Compared to other vendors, Cisco switches are more like rugged switches. We seldom need to reboot those switches unless there's a bug or it was deployed on a different environment—like the racks aren't adequately ventilated.

Cisco switches have several valuable features like VLAN mapping. We seldom use that, but we find the security configurations helpful, like high availability with trading port channels and MAC filtering. 

Their firmware could be better secured against vulnerabilities or other exploits. Also, only selected catalyst switches are allowed to onboard to Cisco SD Access technology. 

I have used Cisco switches for 10 years.

I rate the hardware stability 10 out of 10. 

I rate Cisco Ethernet switches seven out of 10 for scalability. Unless the switch is submodular, you can remove those modules and plug in better ones. Scalability is harder if it's fixed hardware, but it's easier to scale a virtualized network appliance.

I rate Cisco support 10 out of 10. We usually purchase their highest level of support. 

Positive

Our setups are simple, but it depends on the complexity of the client's infrastructure and requirements. I'm more on the operations side, so everything is already deployed, but when we build a new network, I am involved in configuring the new switches. When we do an RMA for a faulty device, I configure it. It's usually a copy-paste of the configuration, but I can build the design from scratch.

The number of people required for deployment and maintenance depends on the size of the environment. A data center usually needs about five or six people to maintain it. You have two people on 12-hour shifts; the rest are senior staff. 

I'm not usually involved on the financial side, but the ROI is excellent based on the performance of Cisco products overall.

I rate Cisco Ethernet switches three out of 10 for affordability. They are expensive, but they're worth it. I believe in quality over quantity.

I rate Cisco Ethernet switches nine out of 10. I highly recommend Cisco switches, but the bottom line is that it depends on your budget.

We use this solution for our university campus network.

The most valuable feature of this solution is the stability.

The solution is simple to configure.

The layer-2 switching is very fast.

We would like to have the option of two power supplies on these switches. It is important for us because these switches are installed in our data center and critical departments. These units have to be available all of the time.

I would like to see this solution automatically store multiple versions of the configuration file. For example, Juniper switches will save forty versions of the configuration, while Cisco will only store one. If you want to keep more than one then you need to make it manually. If you need to restore it then you will have to use the saved file to do that manually, as well. In the large switches, they do keep one primary image and the backup image, which is good, but it is not like Juniper. I can roll back to any version within the last forty that have been committed. It's a very, very nice feature that I would like to see in Cisco equipment.

This is a very stable solution. You install it and then you don't have to touch it for many years.

At this level, the edge, we are not concerned with scalability. We will be able to update the edge using the new uplink port module if we need to.

The core switches are scalable. You can add another slot of forty-eight ports with 10-gigabit each. 

On the university campus, we have approximately thirty thousand users. These are not concurrent connections. We have more than twenty thousand students, about six thousand employees, and there are guests. I can say that more than twenty thousand connections may be active at one time.

We have about one thousand switches, and we have four people in charge of maintenance. They do the installation, repairs, and all of the other tasks in the data center. Three are technicians and one is a manager.

We work with our vendor, who in turns works with the Cisco support. There are times, however, when we need to get support directly from Cisco as well.

We are satisfied with both the local vendor support and support from Cisco. When we have problems, they put the effort into it until the problem is solved.

We had a problem with the structure of the switches in the core. We weren't sure what the problem was, but we were helped at every step of the process. Cisco was in contact with us every day until the problem was solved. We are very satisfied with the support.

I have experience with Juniper LAN switches, but that was with a previous company.

The university campus had bought Juniper switches about six years ago, but they are moving completely to Cisco equipment. Cisco is more expensive than Juniper by perhaps double. The price is higher because they are more stable.

We still have about one hundred Juniper switches out of our one thousand in total.

The initial setup of this solution is very simple.

You can copy the image to the switch using FTP and run a command to install it. The process is very simple and we always upgrade our switches without any problems.

This is an expensive solution, but you are paying for stability.

We evaluated Meraki switches but they were not suitable for the university campus.

We are looking forward to the 10-gigabit uplink port, which is an improvement that we have waited for. We expect to have this new module in one or two months.

Cisco has a family of Small Business Switches called SG. For example, the SG300 model. This is a cheaper model, and although they are missing some protocols, they are very good. Out of our one thousand switches, we have about one hundred SG models. The price of these is lower than Juniper switches.

I surely recommend this product, and the new Cisco line seems to be even stronger. There are improvements in terms of new modules and power supplies, and the price is not increasing.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Cisco Ethernet Switches are pretty reliable, and I have rarely seen one of them break. Cisco has a wide portfolio that fits every need.

Cisco's equipment is expensive, especially since it introduced the obligatory purchase of Cisco DNA.

I have been using Cisco Ethernet Switches since 2008.

I rate the solution an eight out of ten for stability.

Around 50,000 users are using Cisco Ethernet Switches in our organization.

I rate the solution’s scalability ten out of ten.

The solution’s technical support is pretty good.

I rate the technical support of Cisco Ethernet Switches an eight to nine out of ten.

Positive

I previously used Alcatel and Aruba HPE.

The solution’s initial setup is easy.

We implemented the solution through an in-house team. Depending on the engineer's knowledge, a single switch can be deployed within twenty minutes.

Cisco's equipment is expensive, especially since it introduced the obligatory purchase of Cisco DNA. Cisco DNA is really, really expensive, and eliminating the necessity for purchasing it would reduce the solution's price. Some new Cisco switches support Cisco DNA, and some don't. You would have to buy more expensive switches to fully use Cisco DNA, which most enterprises simply don't do.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing ten out of ten.

I have utilized Cisco Ethernet Switches in production, regular office plans, and all kinds of environments. In enterprise environments, I have covered everything from offices to manufacturing and labs. We faced no challenges while integrating Cisco Ethernet Switches into our existing network infrastructure.

Cisco should definitely give customers the ability to choose whether they want Cisco DNA or not. Currently, customers need to choose Cisco DNA for at least three years, which is appalling. Customers are buying something they will never use. I would recommend Cisco Ethernet Switches to other users because of its reliability and simplicity.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

If I have to make some connections, I use Cisco products and protocols, but if I have to multitask or have other requirements, that's where I use Cisco Ethernet Switches. I also use Cisco Ethernet Switches for my storage use case, particularly for FCIP.

I like that Cisco has a wide range of solutions, and you get good support for Cisco Ethernet Switches versus other products in the market.

An area for improvement in Cisco Ethernet Switches is its command-line interface, for example, for Juniper, because it's not working if you want to do some implementation. Still, for any system integrator or simple integration, it works.

Generally, an issue arises if you miss a semicolon or a space, for example, or if you add one word. It can be tricky because people usually forget minor details in a configuration. What could make Cisco Ethernet Switches better is a rollback feature. If you can quickly roll back the changes you made and revert to your old configuration, that would be helpful.

Another area for improvement is the response time of the technical support team. It could be faster.

I've worked with most Cisco switches for over twenty years, including Cisco Ethernet Switches. I still deal with Cisco Ethernet Switches.

Cisco Ethernet Switches are fine most of the time in terms of stability. However, for any significant number of machines, in some cases, systems fail, and that's normal.

I can scale Cisco Ethernet Switches when required. For example, when I'm running out of port, I need a new switch, but that only happens sometimes.

I'm not directly involved in contacting the Cisco Ethernet Switches technical support team. My company is a large service provider, and when you go out of scale, there'll be some limitations in the product, and that's when technical support comes in. Support takes a bit of time, though.

The initial setup for Cisco Ethernet Switches could have been more straightforward and user-friendly. If the setup were easier, then more people would love the product.

Deploying Cisco Ethernet Switches requires checking with the project coordinator on requirements, such as the network type, the bandwidth, etc., to determine the type of switch to use. I'll then figure out whether to input single-tier, dual-tier, or multi-tier on the Cisco Ethernet Switches.

I cannot comment on pricing for Cisco Ethernet Switches because customers use the product continuously, which also depends on the requirement. If I need to multitask or use up 40 GB, I need to change the switches or use a new solution. It depends on the customer's requirements.

I'm currently working with Cisco Ethernet Switches.

I'm not an end-user of Cisco Ethernet Switches, but I help the network team implement the product.

My company is huge because it's a telecom service provider, so it has a significant number of users of Cisco Ethernet Switches, but the number would not reach millions.

I recommend Cisco Ethernet Switches as long as your solution is correctly designed and your requirement is okay. You can implement the product or any other Cisco technology based on the two points I mentioned.

I'm rating Cisco Ethernet Switches as eight on a scale of one to ten.

We primarily use the solution for our data center and edge switches. Like a lot of companies, we use (in the data center) core switches on Layer 3, and (on the edge) switches in Layer 2. 

Cisco as a whole is flexible. 

The solution can be configured to our specifications.

The solution allows you to monitor CPU utilization and memory usage.

You can only configure both switches and routers via the command-line. They should work to take on the newer HP and Aruba approach where you can configure from a URL or command line.

It could be useful if they developed the GUI interface to enable us to configure all features such as VLANs, port assignment, routing, DSP, through the GUI. That would make it easier for beginners. 

Cisco products are expensive compared to any other solution. Now, there are many competitors that give the same level of services - such as Juniper or Aruba.

We've been using this solution for about eight years. It's been a long time.

The solution is quite stable. Cisco offers very reliable products. All of their hardware is quite reliable.

The solution is quite scalable. However, the pricing is a concern. If I need to add switches, I tend to look at cheaper options like Juniper or HP.

In my organization, there were about 150 switches or more. That covered about 4,000 users and covered both wireless and LAN, wired and wireless.

We may not continue to use it, as it is expensive and there are alternatives.

There are many vendors in Egypt. Therefore, we can always find someone who can help us with technical support.

On top of that, we've found the website to be quite good in terms of finding documentation to help with troubleshooting.

We also use Aruba switches. I've used HP in the past as well.

Depending on the project for configuration, and considering deploying only one switch at a time, it may take about five minutes to handle one switch. Aruba, in contrast, might take ten minutes.  

We had about four people who handled the deployment.

The pricing of the solution is quite high. There are lots of comparable products out there that are nowhere near the cost. 

We're just customers and end-users.

We use Cisco switches at Layer 2 and Layer 3.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend Cisco to other organizations. After using HP, I found that they had just as good of a product with more features and better pricing.

In general, I would rate this product at a seven out of ten.