Cisco Ethernet Switches Reviews

We are using the solution as switches for our organization's network.

One main feature of this solution is the POE switches.

The interface and dashboard could look better.

I have been using the solution for approximately two years.

I have been using a lot of hardware that is probably close to 10 years old. We did have an issue once with one of our switches that would just auto-reset and wipe out and randomly restart. I do not know the full details, but we ended up just replacing it.

In the future, there should be readily available instructional videos.

The scalability is pretty good, all you need to do is add more racks. We have approximately 70 people that rely on this solution from my organization.

We paid for the technical support and they were good.

The initial setup is straightforward.

I have been evaluating Fortinet solutions.

I rate Cisco Ethernet Switches an eight out of ten.

We use these switches to improve client connections.

We're a manufacturing facility — we have POCs and terminals. We have maybe 90 to 100 users with desk phones, and roughly 20 printers.

We don't perform maintenance ourselves. A third-party company handles the maintenance. We also outsource other vendors to help us with some complex configurations that we've had implemented.  

I would like to have a way to access a graphical web interface, but they either have an outdated iOS or they don't work well with Flash. They don't work well or show us enough details. They don't show errors or bandwidth on particular reports. 

I don't know if there were optional models, but the models that we bought don't have a redundant power supply. It would be nice if they had higher wattage for PoE+.

It would also be nice if they didn't have plastic faceplates that break easily.

I have been working with Cisco Ethernet Switches for over 13 years.

These switches are both stable and scalable. 

Cisco's technical support is usually quite helpful.

The initial setup is not complex, but it's not easy either. I know what to do with Cisco switches, but we had one FortiGate switch that we used to connect our firewalls which I liked because it was easy to set up and had a nice interface. 

Deployment was easy. I just took it out of the box and configured it. Deployment only took a few hours. I deployed them myself. 

We haven't seen any gains as of yet.

I am interested in switching over to Fortinet FortiSwitches. I've been checking them out, comparing the price, features, and compatibility compared to Cisco Ethernet Switches. It may be a mixed environment for a while.

We're looking for a better graphical interface and price. 

My advice would be to look at Fortinet. Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give Cisco Ethernet Switches a rating of eight. 

Generally, we use the product just to switch traffic.

They just work. Their reliability has been great for our organization.

We just need them to run. There's not any feature that we sought out and we bought them. We bought them due to the fact that we needed switching capabilities and Cisco is pretty reliable.

The solution can scale.

Technical support is helpful and responsive.

They can make the licensing model a little easier. I know they've made some recent changes, it's a little confusing. It's more complicated than it once was.

I've been using Cisco switches for 20 years. It's been a very long time.

The solution is quite stable. It's reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.

They're doing the job fine. We have upgraded them when we needed to. We can scale as necessary.

I can't speak to how many users are currently on our switches.

Tech support has always been good. They are helpful and responsive. I'm quite satisfied with their level of service.

We also use Aruba switches and Dell PowerConnect.

The implementation process has a moderate level of difficulty. It's not straightforward or complex; it's somewhere in the middle. Sometimes they change the iOS around, and that lends itself to a bit of complexity. You have to work on updating items.

There were a couple of versions early on where we buy a different model switch and the operating system was different, with different commands and stuff.

We didn't really have a specific implementation strategy.

Initially, some of the switches took about an hour to implement.

I take care of the maintenance aspects of the product. You don't need a lot of people to do it.

Occasionally, we've gotten outside help when we've needed it, however, most of the time I take care of that myself.

When we have gotten outside help, the experience has always been positive.

I haven't specifically witnessed any ROI while using this solution.

The licensing model is difficult to understand.

We get the SMARTnet and one of the switches has that Cisco ONE licensing. It's probably running about $12,000 a year right now. There aren't any add-on costs on top of that that I am aware of.

We're just customers and end-users.

We've had several versions over the years, mostly Catalyst switches.

It's just a really solid product. I'd give the product a rating of eight out of ten as they are really good switches.

We primarily use the solution in our data center or campus connectivity. We're using bridges to connect end-user devices and terminals.

The solution comes from a solid company that always offers good quality products. It's a real market leader in this area and can provide end-to-end solutions.  

The initial setup is straightforward. It's not too hard.

The product offers very good customer support. It's likely the best in the industry.

There is very good distribution around the globe. 

The products are very reliable.

A single switch is very easy to manage.

Cisco doesn't do everything 100% perfect. There are competitors that have developed simpler and cheaper options, for example. The solution really should offer better pricing. It would help them stay competitive.

The product is a bit difficult to manage as there's a different management system now.

The network management system could be improved. 

I've worked with the solution for 25 years now. I've used it for decades. I have a wealth of experience with this product.

The solution is quite stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. The performance is good.

The product scales quite well. It works for any size organization. A company can also expand it out if they need to.

We have around 2,500 customers and half of them use Cisco.

Technical support is excellent. It's the best in the industry.

As an implementor, I've worked with a variety of solutions, including Aruba, Mellanox, Juniper, Ruckus, and more. I've worked with most of the vendors in the industry.

The initial setup is not overly complex. It's pretty straightforward. 

The deployment depends. It can take from a couple of minutes to a couple of months. It depends on the project and it depends on the size of the network.

How many people you need for the deployment depends on the size of the job. Some companies have their own on-site engineers.

The solution does not come cheap. It's quite pricey.

You do need a license in order to use the solution.

I work with the latest version of the solution. I'm an implementor and my company is a Cisco Gold partner.

I would recommend the solution to others. I would rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

Our datacenter is built using Cisco switches. We use Cisco products for wireless access, routing, and switching.

Cisco switches have helped our organization through good connectivity speeds and stability. In particular, it has improved our wireless capabilities.

The most valuable feature is the after-sales support. I like their after-sales support more than anything because it's very good.

The sales experience was good because we deal with Cisco directly and then buy through the partners. It means that we developed a close relationship with Cisco in the process.

Cisco has been adding things on top of their devices, like DNA, which makes managing them very easy.

For people who are new, the interface can be confusing. For me, however, I don't think that there's anything that can be simplified because I'm used to the command line and the old way of working with Cisco switches. I find them simple.

We have been using Cisco Ethernet Switches for between 15 and 16 years, since 2004.

This is a very stable product that we have barely had issues with.

This is a very scalable solution. When we started, we didn't have enough switches and other equipment. One of the beauties is that when we add new technologies or buy new switches, it scales.

We are in a university setting and there are new students every year, so we always have to connect more people to our network. It is definitely scalable and we plan to increase our usage in the future.

The technical support is very good.

I have worked with products from Juniper, HP, and many other vendors that have switching products. Cisco is the best, not necessarily the team, but the after-sale support.

In some places I have been, they were using other brands. Based on their experience after I introduced them to Cisco, they stuck with it because of the support.

I completed the Cisco training in 2008 and from there, the initial setup was simple.

Cisco products are not cheap, which is something that can be improved.

There used to be a problem with programmability, but with the release of the new switches, I don't think that there's anything that needs to be added.

I would recommend them any day.

My advice for anybody who is considering this type of product is that when you buy a Cisco device, you don't just buy the device but the whole organization. Cisco will get people to assist you when you've got an issue, and they will make sure that you get that support. They have the best after-sales support that I have ever worked with.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

We are using Cisco Switches in a data center for access at the core level and the access level as well.

What I like the most is the performance and the latency that Cisco provides.

Once you have the Cisco box, you can put it in its place, switch it on and you can forget that it is there.

The GUI is not that easy. They need to work on the CLI, and to do that you have to have technical resources in-house if you want to do it yourself.

I have been using Cisco Ethernet Switches for approximately two years with this company. I have been using Cisco for two years, but in my entire career, I have been using Cisco for 15 years.

It's a stable solution. There are no issues with stability.

There are no limitations to scalability. It depends on what you choose. Once you choose the product you want then collaborate with getting that box which is important.

You need to know what your plan is two years in advance, and how you want to upgrade it. You will need to select the box as it is.

If you make your own selection, there may be an issue. Cisco provides many scalable options.

It has never been a case of getting support from Cisco directly. I have purchased Cisco from my vendor and receive 100% support. I have no issues with support in my city. From whatever vendor I purchase from, I get full support.

The initial setup is not too complex, but you will need to have technical resources if you want to configure it properly.

They are plug and play. You can just plug and start working with it, but in order to use the full features or basic features, you need some kind of technical expertise.

In Cisco, the GUI interface is not that easy. 

If you are not a technical person, you can install it, but you can't use it to its full potential. You will be working with a simple switch and for what you are paying, you won't be getting anything out of it, as it won't be configured properly.

The price could be reduced. Cisco is costly.

Price is a major concern with Cisco. Companies tend to move away from Cisco because the price is on the higher side. In addition to the fees being high, you pay for support which is also on the higher side.

Many companies tend to go with other options because of pricing.

We did a comparison between Cisco and Ruckus because we were looking at changing our wireless system.

We use Cisco, but have not used Ruckus before and wanted to evaluate which was better.

The PoC that was completed showed that Ruckus was more successful and useful than Cisco. Also, the cost of Cisco is much higher than Ruckus is.

When comparing cost, the ROI, and the cost of support, Cisco is way above Ruckus. We have decided that we will be changing to Ruckus.

I would 100% recommend Cisco Switches to others who are interested in using them.

Being an IT head, and running a data center, my top priority is to have zero down-time.

Once you have Cisco, your mind is at ease, there will be no issues.

If my rating is based on technical and functionality then I would rate this solution a ten out of ten. If you include the cost and the support then I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use Cisco Ethernet Switches as part of our network infrastructure at two different sites.

Cisco switches has helped provide efficient and stable switching in the organization. Once configured and setup right they work fine without any worries and has helped free up resources to concentrate on other tasks. 

I love the fact that they can be configured to do exactly what you need them to do, which in my opinion is what anyone with Cisco experience would enjoy doing. They can be set up and configured nicely.

Ease of configuration for none cisco experts would be an improvement.

Pricing can also do with some improvement to make it more competitive with competitor products with similar functionality.

We have been using cisco switches for over ten years.

This is a stable product.

Cisco switches are scalable. I manage two large sites and at the first site, we have about 200 people. The second site has about 300 people. We do not have any plan to expand, per se. I do have plans to upgrade the switches and probably redesign the environment for better efficiency. 

Cisco has a good technical support and I love they way the come in to help when you are doing a research on their site. I have not had any serious need for cisco technical support and so I would not be in the best position to give a conclusive evaluation of this but I must say they do a good job with their certifications so people would need very little of such services.  For a few minor challenges I was also able to get answers from the cisco forums. There is a pretty good database online for any conceivable problems one would face with the cisco switches.

We did not use a different solution prior to this, although we are going to be buying a few Meraki switches that we will add to our environment. We are going to test them to see how well they work with Cisco.

The initial set was complex. When I came into the project, the features were just put in with no consideration, whatsoever. This meant that I had to start from scratch to design the network, draw up the configurations and setup vlans to easily manage the network.

It was implemented in-house.

The price of the product is on the higher side, I feel you pay for the  name of the product as well but it's still manageable for corporate customers. Licensing is simple and straight forward which is something going well for cisco switches.

My advice is that if you are going to be implementing Cisco then you should at least have someone in the organization who is knowledgeable and can manage the features. The alternative is to use Meraki because they are easier to manage.

We have some pretty old switches in our environment and some of them are only 100 megabits. I would like to upgrade them all to at least one-gigabit.

Some of our uplinks are on ethernet, but I want to upgrade them to fiber to improve the performance.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We are a fiber-optic provider. We have a lot of switches from Cisco and some from Microchip. We have C3750E, which is one of the main Cisco Ethernet switches. All ports of this switch are fiber.

We have a local Cisco partner here who is quite reliable, so we patronize that partner. They do everything on our behalf, especially the licenses.

What we love about the Cisco switches is that they are very reliable. You can deploy them and go to sleep, and you can be sure that nothing is going to go wrong. Our initial equipment was installed by a Chinese manufacturer named Fiberhome a couple of years ago. Their switches were called S engines. They worked, but some days, you just wake up, and the switch has popped up. It was a lot of crisis. Therefore, we are in the process of trying to take out all their switches and replace them with Cisco switches. We are getting good results in terms of reliability and even technical support.

Cisco switches are good as they are, but it would be a major feature if they have built-in routers. Some of the Microchip switches have routers built in the same device. They have a router switch. For some of the sites, we deploy such switches because the client does not want a separate router and a separate switch. So, we go for a router switch with maybe 24 ports. Some of them are fiber, and some of them are ethernet. It would be a major improvement to what Cisco is already doing.

Behind the scenes, a lot of scripting and stuff like this is happening. A lot of workload can be lifted if Cisco had a good GUI. If you look at Microchip switches, they have a good GUI in addition to the CLI.

I have been using Cisco Ethernet Switches for four years.

We've been using them for a couple of years now. They have been running from day one after we installed them. Besides general maintenance issues, we never really have to turn them off.

They're very reliable and stable. These are the most stable switches that we have. In a country like ours, Cisco switches are the only devices that have second-hand value. You could go to a second-hand shop and buy a second-hand industrial version, not the small business or domestic version, of the Cisco switch or router. It will still serve you well.

We've not really used much of the technical support even though for the new switches, we pay for it. The main benefit is the updates on iOS. We've never really had a situation where something went wrong with it, and we had to get in touch with technical support.

The initial setup is straightforward. I wonder why some of the new Cisco switches still come with anterior port RS232 and why do they still maintain that. 

Price is a pain point for us. We've lost a lot of bids, and the reason has been that we majorly quoted Cisco devices. Some of our competitors quoted other devices like Ubiquity or Microchip. Some even quoted this Chinese product TP-Link, and they won the bid over us because we quoted Cisco. Meanwhile, the major reason why we quoted Cisco is reliability and stability from day one. They also last longer. The prices could be worked on so that they become more affordable.

We had to deploy a city-wide WiFi network, and we were working in conjunction with Google. Because of the price, even Google recommended a product called Ruckus, so we used Ruckus over Cisco. Its price and license were the main reasons. You have to pay to renew the license every year. Even though you also renew the licenses for Ruckus, but they are much cheaper than Cisco. So, while I would recommend Cisco any time, the trouble remains with the pricing.

I would highly recommend it, especially for people who are doing wide-scale deployments like campus networks or a city-wide network square. 

I would rate Cisco Ethernet Switches a ten out of ten. I don't see any product that performs better. We had a Chinese company coming in to do a bunch of presentations and stuff like that, but at the end of the day, those of us who are at the back doing the configurations understand that it is nothing closer to what Cisco offers.