Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Aruba Instant On Switches vs NETGEAR Switches comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Aruba Instant On Switches
Ranking in LAN Switching
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NETGEAR Switches
Ranking in LAN Switching
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
Ethernet Switches (4th), AV Over IP Switching (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the LAN Switching category, the mindshare of Aruba Instant On Switches is 10.2%, up from 8.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NETGEAR Switches is 7.3%, down from 7.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
LAN Switching
 

Featured Reviews

NassifKaleny - PeerSpot reviewer
A very stable tool that needs to offer better startup speed
Speed is an area of the product with certain shortcomings where improvements are required. The product's startup speed is very bad, as it is very slow. It takes around eight minutes to start up the firmware. The tool has to be easy to configure, especially when compared with NETGEAR, Cisco, and HPE. There is an easy way to configure with vendors other than Aruba.
Beenish Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps with infrastructure planning and provides flexibility to leverage and connect more devices
The solution helps with infrastructure planning. If you have a point-of-sale system, you can use these switches to connect the internet devices through the right Ethernet cable.  That gives more flexibility instead of trying to get the Ethernet cable in the infrastructure wall. We use these…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The product's initial setup phase is very simple."
"Setup is easy."
"The solution's pricing is slightly cheaper than that of Cisco."
"The solution has a simple deployment and zero border."
"The tool's best part is the commercials. Its pricing is lower compared to other enterprise products. We pitch the product to customers who have budget constraints. Its implementation is plug-and-play."
"The solution's most beneficial feature is that you obtain A-class equipment for the lowest price."
"The stability is fine. I would rate the stability a nine out of ten. Almost a ten on a ten."
"The solution is suitable for small businesses and small offices."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is easy to use."
"Remote management is the most important thing for us. And monitoring, of course, allows us to see when something is wrong with a client. We get notified that an access point is down, for instance, or that there are too many clients on one access point, so that we can log into the portal and manage the solution with the client instantly, from either a laptop or a cell phone, with the Insight app."
"The remote management tools are fantastic. The combination of the webpage as well as the app makes life so much easier. I don't need to go and visit sites to do upgrades or any sorts of changes. The firmware can all be deployed remotely. I can see the traffic on each of the switch ports remotely as well, so I can see if we've got problems, down to an individual port. It's very granular."
"The solution is very powerful and versatile."
"The stability is good. I would rate the stability a ten out of ten."
"Valuable features include network monitoring and ease of programming for VLANs, etc. I especially like NETGEAR because it's easy to teach system administrators how to use them, how to look at them, how to make changes to them without having the complexity of CLIs, but still having a CLI should we need it."
"SFP, speed, and 10-Gigabit are the most valuable aspects of this solution. We're an architecture firm and we sometimes deal with large files. Anything we can do to eke out even a fraction of a second less time to get something done over the course of a year adds up. If I can get 10-Gigabit running in my server room, which I am right now, even though we're only gigabit to the desktop, due to the client computers we have, I can get more performance from everybody. I'm ready to start bringing in 10-Gigabit Ethernet to the desktop once I get the hardware to do that."
"The solution is stable."
 

Cons

"The support needs improvement."
"In general, mostly in Instant On series, if we could have much more control on the switches, at least. We'd like a CLI access so that, when we want to do some advanced configurations we could."
"Its scalability needs improvement."
"You cannot use many VLANs, like VLAN 10, VLAN 20, VLAN 30, and VLAN 100 on Aruba Instant On AP."
"The product's startup speed is very bad, as it is very slow."
"Some customers have made complaints about Aruba Instant On Switches' stability."
"Tracking with instant switches needs improvement."
"The solution’s initial setup is very complex."
"NETGEAR Switches could be more secure. Scalability could also be better. This infrastructure is a bit old, and we need something that will be more secure. Something that will introduce WLAN, and we will need the knowledge to go with that. Some of the switches were used for more than seven years. I think it was just their lifespan that was exhausted. But other than that, there haven't been any issues that required us to complain or get concerned."
"I'd like to see a little bit of slowdown on the firmware updates. They've been doing a lot of them. I don't know if that's just because it's such a new product line, but the firmware updates have been a little annoying because they've been coming once a week. For a switch, that's a little extreme."
"There are some design issues on which they really missed the boat. The problem has to do with rack mounting them because the lights and jacks should all be on the front, and the power on the back. The way they did it makes it really difficult to use them in a rack environment, because when the lights are on the opposite side of the jacks... you usually can't see the back side of a rack. You can't get back there to see, so it's just crazy."
"An area for improvement would be creating a wizard that can do a lot of common stuff. Instead of having some manual configuration for common features, they may want to have a single wizard that could be put in place which would let you walk through creating multiple VLANs and different routes between VLANs in a wizard. Then, you wouldn't have to dig in so deep."
"Their old firmware was a problem for us and we're still working on it. It didn't apply correctly so it took about half of our switches offline, which meant we couldn't use some of the functionality like the firmware updates. Unfortunately with that firmware, which they've sorted out, if you don't go through all the firmware and make sure it's past that point and back online, that's an issue with them. It's something to cautious about"
"Being able to pass AVB traffic over these switches, that would be a huge add. There are not many switches out that support that. The GS728TP NETGEAR switches used to or still do support AVB, but it would be ideal if the 4300 Series could support it as well."
"The product could be more robust."
"There is a lot of delay in the data coming to the servers."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product has good pricing."
"Aruba Instant On Switches is not expensive."
"The pricing is quite low compared to other products, which is good for the customer."
"Aruba Instant On Switches is slightly cheaper than Cisco."
"If one is very bad, and ten is a very good price, I rate the tool's price as a six."
"It is an expensive solution."
"We pay an annual licensing fee."
"The product is not cheaply priced, especially when compared to the other vendors in the market."
"I would rate the tool's pricing a nine out of ten."
"Compared to other large names in the marketplace, the price of NETGEAR's product is extremely cost-effective compared to what Cisco or Extreme offer."
"I sold someone a SonicWall and they had to redo their subscription every year. It was a $300 or $400 subscription they had to pay every year... With NETGEAR... it's only a $10 or $20 subscription per device for the whole year... and you have your license and you have all your support."
"We used HPE previously. The reason I switched to NETGEAR was because of pricing differences, which are huge, when you go into 10GB networking... The pricing is quite good... The total cost of the deployment was about 11,000 euros or so. If I had gone with HPE it would have been at least twice as much."
"The pricing is very good for 10GbE switches and you get a lot of throughput. It is about 60 percent of the costs of other switches from competitive manufacturers, which is really good."
"There are two parts to the pricing. There's the pricing of the device itself, which is good. Their licensing model needs work, though. The licensing model doesn't fit the way MSPs do business."
"Licensing is always a hassle and a pain point."
"There are no licensing costs. It only involves the costs of the devices."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which LAN Switching solutions are best for your needs.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
21%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Educational Organization
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
University
7%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Aruba Instant On Switches?
The solution has a simple deployment and zero border.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Aruba Instant On Switches?
If one is very bad, and ten is a very good price, I rate the tool's price as a six.
What needs improvement with Aruba Instant On Switches?
The difficulty with the tool is in the area of troubleshooting. The problem that we have in our company is that the switches don't get connected properly. In the future, I want to see AI in the too...
How do NETGEAR switches compare with Cisco ethernet switches?
NetGear switches have a lot to offer. They have high availability, zero-downtime stacking, L2 and L3 functionality, and are AV-over-IP ready. NetGear switches also have a command line interface and...
Which switches are better - Ubiquiti Unifi or Netgear?
Ubiquiti Unifi offers a great set of features. For starters, it is easy to configure and implement, and also doesn’t require a learning curve because it is easy to use. It is also simple to reconfi...
What do you like most about NETGEAR Switches?
Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten. I have not faced any issues with the product whatsoever.
 

Also Known As

Aruba Instant On 1930 Switches
NETGEAR Insight Managed Switches, NETGEAR GC Series, NETGEAR M Series
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

KEMET, Vestavia Hills City Schools, Dropbox
Blaze Networks
Find out what your peers are saying about Aruba Instant On Switches vs. NETGEAR Switches and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.