NETGEAR Switches Reviews

We use NETGEAR for IT-related tasks such as connecting printers and access points. It's primarily utilized as a layer-two solution. Additionally, one of the NETGEAR switches is deployed at a retail outlet.

It is difficult to quantify the return on investment because it's an unmanaged switch. By having unmanaged switches, we don't need to spend a lot of time on configuration or management, which simplifies our operations.

NETGEAR offers a competitive pricing structure, which is beneficial for cost management. The precision time protocol feature caught our interest for future use in specific settings like churches, where low latency is required.

NETGEAR should focus on eliminating single points of failure. They should introduce features like dual firmware or dual boot that allow systems to be updated without downtime. The user experience on their website needs improvement; it's often confusing which switches support Insight cloud features.

The NETGEAR switch has been in place for a while, approximately three to four years.

NETGEAR stability falls between a six and a seven out of ten rating. We've experienced failures such as a 16-port dying after three to four years.

NETGEAR's scalability through its Insight Cloud system is on par with Ubiquiti's, although it must offer features beyond its competitors. Higher-end switches deploy more advanced features, such as those needed for precision time protocols.

Customer service navigation is not user-friendly; the website is confusing, making it difficult to find pertinent information. There are issues distinguishing which switches support cloud features.

Positive

Ubiquiti solutions were used previously. Their limited customer support and liability issues with their operating system prompted a change.

I did not set it up personally. It was already installed when I began working with it. Since it's unmanaged, we don't have to configure it continuously, simplifying the process.

The installation involved two or three individuals from a different location.

The return on investment is hard to gauge due to the limited management required for unmanaged switches. The switch is operational with minimal intervention, which is expected for unmanaged solutions.

NETGEAR is reasonably priced, between a six and seven out of ten on the pricing scale. Some high-end switches required for specific advanced features, like precision time protocols, can be more expensive.

We are currently testing Grandstream switches and have explored Ubiquiti products. We also have quotations for Aruba Instant On yet have not deployed it primarily due to its dual setup options with limited cloud access. Grandstream is evolving and offers the potential for zero-trust provisioning.

NETGEAR is a viable option if you require cost-effective solutions. However, ensure the product aligns with your requirements for more advanced needs and cloud features. Always look for features that differentiate it, such as AI integration or comprehensive cloud provisioning.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

We use NETGEAR Switches for networking, particularly for switch-to-switch connectivity. We connect them with core switches, especially for camera installation.

NETGEAR Switches have increased the throughput and speed of internal communication, and have improved our network efficiency.

The most valuable features are routing and access control. Integration is very easy compared to other brands, making configuration straightforward even for any IT professional.

They can improve on the commercial part, specifically the cost, as it is higher than other brands.

I have worked with NETGEAR Switches for the last five years.

It is working fine.

The integration part is very easy compared to other brands. The scalability of NETGEAR Switches is easy and very beneficial for us. I would rate the scalability nine out of ten.

There is no issue with the support. If anything arises, we get good support.

Positive

The initial setup was rated eight out of ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy to set up. Initially, there were some challenges because it was the first time, but later it was fine.

The deployment was done in-house. We used three people: one to manage all switches, another for power connection and cabling, and a third for configuration.

The cost of switches is higher than other brands. I would rate the price of NETGEAR Switches seven out of ten, where ten is the highest price.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

We use it for networking. We use the switches from NETGEAR for 10GB internet. We are using the M4300.

We implement our own solutions. We resell to clients in the audiovisual sector. We specialize in audiovisual productions, 3D animation, compositing, and the like. Our clientele is all in the same sector.

We upgraded from a previous, 1GB-only solution so it should be a lot faster but I don't have any benchmarks on it. In the past, there were some complaints from employees that the network was slow but I haven't had any more complaints about it. That's a metric, of sorts.

The most important feature is the failover, the LACP links. That's the dual set it allows. We have redundant core switches and, if one fails or one network adapter fails, the other one can take over without problems.

You have to know a bit about networking of course, but for me the ease of use is about a nine out of ten.

It's very stable. I haven't had almost any issues since it was up and running. 

I had one issue with an extra WiFi deployment that I did, which caused network interruptions, but it had nothing to do with the core installation. It was just the WiFi equipment that brought down the network because of loop creation, but that had nothing to do with the main switches.

Currently, I have five Ethernet switches running. I think it scales up to eight within one stack, so that is more than enough for our purposes. Instead of going with discrete switches, which have to be managed separately, one of the big advantages of this product is that you can put it all in one stack. The whole switch stack is viewed as one big switch, which is really good for us. So it's very scalable. In the future, I could even add three more switches and I think they have a new product now that has 96 ports. It's way more scalable than we will ever need in our company.

I have not needed to contact technical support yet.

We used HPE previously. The reason I switched to NETGEAR was because of pricing differences, which are huge, when you go into 10GB networking. It was mainly a price-oriented decision. I also read a lot of positive reviews in the forum I visited, so that was another factor which made me decide to go with NETGEAR.

The setup was very straightforward. I just configured a few IP addresses, maybe a few settings on the ports, and that was it. The whole system was set up in about one hour or so. It went very smoothly.

The whole deployment was in phases. I first set up the core switches and hooked them up to the old switches and then gradually changed everybody over to the new stack. The total time was about a month, before everybody was switched over. It all went very smoothly. It could have been done in a day if nobody had to keep working. There wasn't an option to shut down the company for a complete day, so I had to do it gradually.

I planned the migration ahead of time. I calculated the time it would take to get the units here. We actually did a complete overhaul of our server room. We moved it inside of the building, so I had to switch over to the old switches to the new server room. So there was quite a lot of planning involved, mostly on the timing of when the steps would be taken. I had to do some calculations about how much time every step would take. There was quite a bit of planning, but it all went quite smoothly, so no complaints here.

I don't think anybody without knowledge of networking would be able to set up the system as I did it. Expert is a "big" word, but you have to know something about networking before you can use this kind of product.

I did everything myself. I had some help from people on a forum called Spiceworks. I contacted NETGEAR directly and they put me into contact with the Benelux departments. But I did the integrations myself. We are also a reseller of servers and networking equipment and the like. So I'm quite good at that stuff.

The price-to-performance of this solution, on a scale from one to ten, is about nine. 

The pricing is quite good. We don't have any kind of licensing on the device, as far as I know. There's one product which you can purchase a license for, it's NETGEAR Insight, to manage the switches remotely on the Internet, but we don't need it. I just manage them locally.

It helped us save some money, of course. 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. I think Cisco might have even been more expensive.

At the beginning, I was looking at Cisco vs NETGEAR but I didn't get any response from Cisco. I also looked at HPE, but it was a bit too expensive for a 10GB. I did a minor bit of research about their products, but it quickly became obvious that NETGEAR was the way to go for us.

I didn't consider Ubiquiti. Ubiquiti is okay for smaller deployments but, as I said, we are scaling up in the coming months to about 50 workstations, a few office machines and about ten servers, so I don't know if Ubiquiti would have been an option for us. I know they have high-end gear also, but I didn't look into it.

Just buy it. If the network is the same scale as my network, about 100 PCs and about ten to 15 servers, it's an ideal solution for that. Also, go look on Spiceworks for help. Ask for Kieran. That is somebody from NETGEAR who helped me out a lot.

I don't think anything is missing in the product. I don't think there should be any improvements.

At the moment, we have about 15 users and we will scale up in the coming months to about 50 users. In terms of deployment and maintenance, it's just me. I do everything related to IT in the company.

Everybody uses the product because it's our core switch. I think we have some overhead in regard to the number of clients that are connected at the moment. In that context, I think its usage is about 30 or 40 percent, at the moment.

We don't use the high-bandwidth AV over IP functionality.

Overall I would give it a nine out of ten. Nothing is perfect. If it were perfect, I would just have to plug in some cables and the system would manage itself. Then I would call it perfect. But you still have to put some work into it, and that's normal.

The primary use case is generally small office, and multiple users with the same customer.

For us, the Insight platform is a consistent experience from one office to the next. A user can connect to one access point in one office and then automatically connect to another access point in the office, without having to do any WiFi connections or passwords. So the user experience is seamless.

And that also saves time. It's only a few minutes per user for each office we go to, but it soon adds up and reduces frustration.

The most valuable feature is the Insight application itself, with its ease of management. 

Also, 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.

It's easy to use and deploy. It's just a simple case of assigning a switch to one of the already-configured network offices. Then, as soon as the device pairs up, it downloads the configuration and it's good to go. It's very simple.

The management tools are very straightforward. They're well laid out in terms of the concepts, and configuration and adding new devices are very easy. It's very straightforward.

My one issue with it is that not all the features of the switch can currently be managed via the portal. For some of the more advanced features, you still have to configure the switch. We tend not to use those features, so it's not a problem.

It's coming along. Quite regularly, the platform is being updated so those features are definitely coming. Every month or two, when I log in, there are new features available online. So we can start to implement the features that, historically, we'd have to go to site to implement. They're not features that are critical to our use.

It's the wireless access-point aspect and some of the routing capabilities on the wireless access point that I'm referring to. For example, the peer-to-peer bridging isn't available. You have to configure the access points directly for that.

The stability is very good. We've only had one problem and that turned out not to be the switch. It was another device. But it highlighted where the problem was, so it was very good.

They do come in different sizes: small, medium, and large. From our perspective, the scalability is great. It suits all our needs. At most, I think we have three of the 24-port switches in one location. The scalability is very good.

That would be for 25 people, maximum. Everybody has two devices so there would be 50 or 60 on it, in total, once we add in tablets and phones.

I've never needed to contact tech support. The switches come with a quite extensive warranty of three or five years, and 90 days worth of free initial support. But it is that straightforward to set up and configure that we've never needed to contact them.

We used existing, legacy NETGEAR devices in the past. We were just keeping up to date and seeing the changes in the products they were bringing, and that's how we came across Insight.

At the office, on the Insight platform, the individual switch setup is very straightforward. You just scan the barcode and you plug it in. That said, setting up in an office is very straightforward as well because it's all web or app-driven.

For an individual device, it probably takes longer to put it in the rack and screw it in. To actually install it, have it configured and running, it's less than 30 minutes.

In terms of an implementation strategy, each office is different sized and has different capabilities and different requirements. So there isn't a generic strategy in that sense. But configuration is all centrally managed. The individual switches are sized based on the office. A smaller office might have two or three of the smaller Ethernet switches, just for redundancy. A very small office might just have a single switch. But all that configuration is done centrally so the actual implementation strategy is just: Turn up on site and plug it in.

You don't need to be an IT expert to deploy and support a network. It is that straightforward. It requires no staff for deployment. Because it's all centrally configured, you don't need to have any staff to deploy it. You just need to be able to plug in the cable.

The fact they continue to work and can be managed remotely is all about cost savings. We don't incur travel costs to update switches. None of the switches have been faulty.

We've carried out four or five firmware updates this year, remotely. That has probably reduced travel by 300 or 400 miles. That saves travel costs and travel time.

They're good value. They're good entry-level switches. I know Cisco generally has a lot more capability. But, for an organization this size, we don't need that. So they're good value for the cost and what we need.

The cost of the hardware and additional services is low compared to others. Anything that's cheaper, for the same output, is a good thing for our business.

Go for it They're very straightforward to purchase and setup time is very minimal, especially if you've got a lot of small, remote offices, because you get the central management. The big feature for us that centralized management and the remote capabilities.

The apps for the phones are good. I have an Android phone, and it's also available on iOS. You can remotely manage and monitor even without having to sit at a desk. That is very useful.

The Insight platform itself - for VPN, firewalls, and storage devices - is a good, centralized platform for managing all of that. Although we've only really talked about the switching, it has other features as well, which make it sensible for us as a centralized management platform. It's appropriate for medium to large businesses. 

I haven't really had to use the remote troubleshooting much. The one time I did, it was very detailed regarding the point where the problem was and we could identify the problem. It ended up being on a non-switch device so we had to have an engineer go to the site to fix it. But it was very quick to identify exactly where that problem was, down to an individual port and the device connected into that port. I have been troubleshooting the network as opposed to the devices and, in my experience, it's very good.

In terms of maintenance, it's all done remotely so we've needed only one staff member, with very little overhead. At one of the offices, for example, they turn everything off at night. We get an alert saying the network is down, but when they turn it back on in the morning, we get an alert saying the network is back up. There's very little management on top of that.

The businesses where we deploy them have plants and office locations. As they sign up and grow, we'll definitely deploy more.

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 switches to help us leverage and connect more devices.

Support could be improved.

If you buy Cisco Ethernet switches, they last seven to ten years comparatively. Cisco is more prompt in resolving issues.

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

The interface is comfortable for the new employees of our company. I think it's not a problem because our IT team, with probably only two hundred staff, handles our network well. We've tested our recovery systems, and everything is working fine. I don't remember any accidents or issues on our IT network in the last year.

The tool is good, but we probably need another model with PoE connections. Our office plans to switch from analog phone lines to VoIP next year, and we need a model that supports this transition and can handle the required technology. Additionally, improved support for newer technologies like Wi-Fi would be beneficial.

I have been using the product for five years. 

I rate the solution's stability a nine out of ten. 

About 50 percent of my company relies on NETGEAR Switches. I rate its scalability a seven out of ten. 

I have only contacted technical support twice, and they have resolved my queries. 

Positive

I have worked with HPE and Cisco switches. We chose NETGEAR Switches because we didn't have the budget to change the equipment.

One engineer was enough to handle the deployment. 

I haven't had any issues with the product, and it's worth the money. 

NETGEAR Switches' pricing is low compared to other brands. I rate it an eight out of ten.

NETGEAR Switches offers good value in terms of price and quality. I rate it an eight out of ten. I think this is because I suggested this solution for our company, but for a larger company, other types of equipment might be better. For example, equipment with a lifetime guarantee might be better. We don't have a contract, so I didn't rate it higher.

It’s video data, and the throughput required is high. We have 24/7 communication from the cameras to the recorders and servers. We require switches that have good buffering capacity and very low latency. There should be no latency in the video data we receive from the cameras.

The solution helps transfer data.

There should be absolutely zero latency in the data transcriptions. Bottlenecks occur wherever we place aggregation switches. There is a lot of delay in the data coming to the servers. We require faster throughput.

The product must be more stable. There may be scenarios where we don't have a good UPS. When there are glitches on the line, the switches hang up. It is a major problem. The stability of our appliance is much higher. They don't generally hang up.

I have been using the solution for a few years.

We do not have any issues with stability.

The tool is scalable. We have a team of two engineers who deploy the tool in most of our network. The technicians do the cabling.

The setup is straightforward. We receive support for optical fiber installation.

The product is priced economically.

Customers generally prefer Cisco. The general perception is that Cisco is more secure and has better encryption. People who cannot afford Cisco choose NETGEAR and D-Link.

My organization is involved in the integration of surveillance cameras. We propose solutions to our clients. Generally, in IT networks, the data comes in parts. There would be no activity for a few moments, and then the data would be transferred in a second. In our case, there is a continuous data stream. We require 10 Mbps bandwidth for a 4 MP camera. I recommend the solution to others. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

The solution is very powerful and versatile.

The firewall has many options for add-ons.

There is a lack of documentation, and the documentation I have is unclear, so I have to rely on Google for information.

The customer support is a paid add-on; you must buy it to get help.

I've been working with the solution for 15 years. 

One aspect of the scalability is that there is no option to upgrade the device. Netgate discontinued the 3100 model, which had a little more than a GB of throughput on the firewall, and replaced it with the 2100, which has less than a GB of throughput. Replacing a 1,200MB device with a 700MB one is illogical; if anything, the replacement should be higher end.

Our customers are generally unwilling to pay for the support, so we go with the light package. Once connected to the internet and working, the only help available is for refreshing devices and new firmware. We can exchange a device if it's under warranty, but we have to ship it, and then they send a replacement, which means we're out of a device for a while.

I can't comment on the full level of support, as our only experience has been with the light version. They help us get online and respond quickly to new firmware requests, usually with a download link within 24 hours, and that's the only assistance if you don't pay for more.

The setup is relatively challenging; the solution has a GUI, but it isn't as clear as other routers. The product will write some rules on the firewall, but I've seen firewalls that are easier to set up, and you need to know what you're doing, especially if you want to go into the more advanced features such as NAT, dynamic DNS, etc.

The product lacks remote access support, so the maintenance is Plug and Play; we go in about once a year to ensure we do the firmware upgrades properly. That's the extent of the maintenance; the solution runs by itself and doesn't require much interference from us.

The price is very fair for this type of device, especially for what it does.

I rate the solution nine out of ten. 

To fully leverage the solution, you need to understand your router.