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Cisco Ethernet Switches vs NETGEAR Switches comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Ethernet Switches
Ranking in Ethernet Switches
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NETGEAR Switches
Ranking in Ethernet Switches
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
LAN Switching (5th), AV Over IP Switching (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Ethernet Switches category, the mindshare of Cisco Ethernet Switches is 19.1%, down from 20.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NETGEAR Switches is 9.7%, up from 9.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Ethernet Switches
 

Featured Reviews

Ronald Van Rees - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers a power stacking feature and enhances port speed with impressive stability
The vendor is presently working with large digital network architectures and additional software, as it is now willing to become a software-focused company instead of a hardware one. Cisco Ethernet Switches presently provide two options, either the user can utilize the basic features or the advanced software. Previously, advanced features were included in the basic package, but now they are provided as add-ons that need to be purchased separately for an extensive period of three or five years. As part of the advanced features in the solution, there is Digital Network Architecture (DNA) that provides insights, multiple dashboards and monitoring capabilities over Nexus and Catalyst switches from Cisco. Sometimes, customers need to buy features for Cisco Ethernet Switches that they do not require or use. The basic switches like the C1000 from the vendor don't have the DNA feature, but advanced version switches like Cisco Ethernet Switches have made the add-on purchases mandatory to avail certain features, which makes it difficult for several users.
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

"It is a scalable solution, and we have more than 35 customers who use it."
"Cisco Ethernet Switches have great enterprise features like Cisco DNA Assurance. Cisco DNA Assurance features advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning. Cisco AI Network Analytics, a capability within Cisco DNA Assurance, allows easy management of all devices and services, prioritizes and resolves network issues, and ensures a better user experience across the network."
"This product is widely available and the warranty is very good."
"When it comes to switching routing, we have no doubts about Cisco."
"The solution is compatible with many brands, such as VMware."
"The layer-2 switching is very fast."
"The most valuable features of Cisco Ethernet switches include plug-and-play capabilities, ease of deployment, and high reliability."
"Cisco is the world leader in these systems. The expertise they have is very good compared to others. We can trust Cisco from a technical perspective."
"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."
"Their online portal is one of the most useful features. The portal is very user-friendly, so even someone with not a lot of tech experience can go in and see what's going on with the switch."
"We have a wide range of switches for various applications, including a collection specifically designed for ProAV, as well as Multi-gig Switches, which are also quite well-known or unique."
"The initial setup is easy."
"It's nice, if there is an issue, to be able to go in through the remote. The fact that the remote doesn't require a static IP... is nice. They initiate the contact to the outside world, without requiring a static to get in."
"The ability to mix and match is invaluable. So, we didn't have to run massive super extensive switches in the data closets where it wasn't necessary. Being able to manage it all from one place, as all your network configuration settings went live across your entire building from one management console was really handy."
"The ease of use of these switches is very good because of the Cisco CLI. If you are familiar with CLI, then you can configure the switch that way. It also has a relatively straightforward web interface. Using the web interface is good for beginners or people who aren't familiar with Cisco CLI. However, having a common command line interface method is great for some of our more advanced guys who are familiar with it."
"The solution is simple to use. I am also impressed with the tool's GUI and CLI."
 

Cons

"Better manageability and ease of use would be an improvement."
"The price is an area with a shortcoming in the solution."
"Currently, we have to wait up to eight months for a switch."
"The platform's management features need improvement."
"Previously, advanced features were included in the basic package, but now they are provided as add-ons that need to be purchased separately."
"In terms of features, all features are there. I can't find anything new that needs to be added. Its price, however, is a bit higher than other brands and can be improved."
"To keep up with the market, the solution should have better evolution and innovation."
"An improvement would be to change their market intention. Almost all the Cisco switches are now coming with a license called DNA. D for Delta, N for number and A for apple. That feature is required, he must purchase it and it is a mandatory thing that has been introduced. This is not matching with the Asian market."
"Perhaps in the future, we will have even more different types of switches and be able to fulfill more collections."
"The main negative thing is the speed. When you use the portal, if you have a lot of customers and locations in the portal, and you need to scroll through those clients or those locations, it takes a pretty long time to load those pages and to select the client. That's the problem in the portal on the laptop, and it's the same problem in the portal on the app."
"They can improve on the commercial part, specifically the cost, as it is higher than other brands."
"I would like an email notification in case of errors or failures. If it was possible for the switch to email out an error log or notification note, especially in cases where we have the switches offsite (on the other side of town), then if something was to go wrong, it would be great to know about it before our client goes to use it for a big event, and it doesn't work. While I know that it does do SNMP, which is sort of standard, in the AV world, that is not always an option for us. We are usually running our own little network box and don't always have access to an SNMP server. We may just have simple Internet access or something similar."
"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"
"The scalability and warranty should also be improved."
"NETGEAR should focus on eliminating single points of failure."
"There is a lot of delay in the data coming to the servers."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is highly expensive compared to other solutions. The prices get tripled when they arrived in my country of Angola."
"I pay a fixed price on it. I'm not the person on the pursing, so I don't really compare."
"The price is on the higher side."
"Pricing for this product is high but the cost is worth it if you can afford it."
"It is an expensive product."
"The product is expensive."
"In addition to the fees being high, you pay for support which is also on the higher side."
"Cisco offers annual and three-year license options."
"NETGEAR's new product is definitely more expensive than their standard product line. It's a new product line for them, so I'm hoping with the maturity of the product that those costs will come down. The standard product line is considerably cheaper."
"In terms of the NETGEAR stuff, there weren't any surprises. The costs were definitely fair, especially considering what we were replacing. For the equivalent performance from a non-AV over IP solution, it would have been easily been in the $40,000 range. Comparing it to standard AV video switching, the price was very good, especially considering now they can add-on without any massive additional costs."
"The price to performance of this solution is very good. When it comes to pricing, as far as I'm concerned, they're very comparable with Ubiquity. NETGEAR has pricing that is as good as it gets. That's why I use them."
"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."
"The solution is expensive. You need to pay the costs one-time."
"There are no licensing costs. It only involves the costs of the devices."
"I would rate the tool's pricing a nine out of ten."
"Insight pricing is okay. It's very competitive. The costs of the hardware and additional services weren't low because Unify is much cheaper, but the costs conformed to the market. When you look at the hardware specs, the price and the warranty, the complete package was much better than any other vendor. If you consider those three main aspects of Netgear Insight and Netgear Insight devices, and you put them next to Ubiquity or Cisco Meraki, or even TP-Link, in our opinion, it's better hardware, it has a better warranty, and for the price you have to pay, it's a pretty good product."
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Comparison Review

it_user82779 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 29, 2014
Benefits of Juniper vs Cisco
Both are decent products. I prefer Juniper for the following reasons: 1) Cleaner separation of data plane from control plane. Higher end Cisco devices are better at this but most of the lower end products still seem to be more integrated than I like. 2) The Hierarchical config design means I can…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
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

Would you recommend replacing a Cisco Catalyst Switch by a D-link one?
Hello Mesfin It depends on the real scenario, the cisco 2960 is a very good device and they usually have routing functions but there are many different models within the same 2960 line, and on the ...
Which would you choose - Fortinet Fortiswitch secure access or Cisco Ethernet Switches?
We researched Cisco but ultimately chose Fortinet FortiSwitch Secure Access, mostly because of the price. Fortinet FortiSwitch is an ethernet switch solution that provides security and performance...
In terms of ethernet switches, would you go with Cisco or Juniper?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Cisco or Juniper Ethernet switches were the better fit for us. We decided to go with Juniper. Juniper ethernet switches are a lesser-known...
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

Cisco Industrial Ethernet Switches
NETGEAR Insight Managed Switches, NETGEAR GC Series, NETGEAR M Series
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Linz AG
Blaze Networks
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Ethernet Switches vs. NETGEAR Switches and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.