NETGEAR Switches Reviews

I'm using them for network switching for SMB. The Insight line is the SMB line, that's what they're trying to break into with this line. I've used them at a country club and at a restaurant, both of which have VLANs. We're using them at our office. I've got them in about eight different locations now, in different environments.

It has saved a lot of time. I haven't tried exporting out the configuration and then importing it into another one, so traditional switches might give you a little bit more that way because you can export out the configs (You can now export out configurations). The web management through one pane of glass for all of my NETGEAR switches has made it a lot easier. It makes it easy to compare settings from other sites when you're trying to duplicate what you've done in the past. You can look at it real quick - without having to remote all the way into a machine, and then try and get into the switch, and remember the IP address of the switch and the credentials of the switch. It's all right there for you. I have a single login for all of my switches.

The cloud management has been huge for us. We have 80 clients and they all have switches. We've been migrating them over as much as we can, when it's called for, to the cloud-managed Insight ones. On those sites, we know more information without having to do complicated SNMP traps. We get nice emails, we get a web interface, and we're not having to wait for our RMM tools to get SNMP traffic to notify us. We don't have to do complicated configurations. It's all just part of the simple setup, of joining the switch to an account.

The remote management has been awesome. With the old-school style of switches, you actually had to be on the LAN, plug into it - you could get in remotely but you had to go through a computer and have other trickery to get in. With this, you literally just log in to a website, see all your clients, all your NETGEAR switches, and you can manage them all right there: the VLANs, powering on and off individual ports, rebooting the whole device, the firmware updates. Everything can be done remotely, so it's pretty awesome for an IT company. It saves time which means more profitability.

It's super-easy to use and deploy, probably one of the easiest managed switches I've ever used. I can have it pre-programmed and configured right through the web interface before I even plug it into the customer's site. By linking it to the account and doing the configuration, when I plug it in and turn it on at the client's site it gets the configuration automatically. The web portal is really awesome.

I've had to troubleshoot one out of eight, so that's a pretty good ratio. It's a brand new product, so we haven't really sold tons of them yet. The troubleshooting has been pretty easy because we do it remotely and we can reboot the whole device remotely. The only time it has become a problem is when there were multiple failures. We did have one case where the internet had gone out and it was just that the router needed to get rebooted, but we couldn't do anything to the switch because their internet was down. I had to go out there.

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.

It's worked for the most part, but we've had to power cycle a few devices. We've had to ask customers to manually power cycle them with the power cord, after some of the firmware updates. Their updating needs a little improvement. But if we're talking about a scale of one to ten, as far as hassles go, where ten is a huge hassle, it's been a two.

It would be nice if it came in a couple different colors. Right now, they're just white. Some customers want the whole black setup, they want everything to look black and to be black and these only are offered in white. I had one customer not want it because it was white.

In the very beginning, we had that one problem with the firmware update where it took them all offline. That was a pain, but that's only been one instance. And it was a major update because they were updating the back-side - the web side - and the hardware side at the same time, and it didn't go so smoothly. We had to have people power cycle them. Other than that, they've been very stable. We're using one in our office and we haven't had any technical malfunctions due to bad manufacturing. We've had no hardware failures.

Scalability is there. They have all the different sized switches. There are definitely options, everything from an 8-port up to even a 28-port with the fiber links. We're doing is SMB, so we're not doing enterprise-level. They added the 52-port switch too. Scalability is going to be great. Hopefully I will get a client that needs a 52-port switch, but for the most part, we're doing the 8s and the 16s, so far.

Overall, tech support has been good and bad. The first deployment I did, I needed some help but their tech support didn't even know about the products because they were so new. That was months ago. I needed help because I didn't quite understand the licensing and I wanted to talk to somebody. They were a little mystified too. I got past that.

When I did an install about a month ago, I needed some help with the VLAN stuff. It ended up being my fault because of the way I was tagging things, the way I had set it up. NETGEAR support walked me right through, noticing the problem and helping me get it fixed. The person I got on the phone blew me out of the water. He just knew everything. He said, "Oh yeah, no problem. Do this. Do that." He walked me right through it. And he spoke English, which was good.

I'm a little different than a normal end user because I have a partner relationship. On that one I was getting frustrated and I called my partner rep directly and he put me right into tech support. I don't think I went through the normal channel on that one.

We were using NETGEAR switches and SonicWall routers and access points before, but the price point on those was getting so crazy compared to like what Ubiquity was offering. We started using Ubiquity because they were so cheap. We could do three networks for the same price as one SonicWall, or the NETGEAR enterprise-level stuff, or any of the old enterprise-level stuff, including Cisco. So we went to Ubiquity, did a couple of big networks with it and it was great. But I wasn't super-happy with their web interface. It was getting a little clunky and there were a lot of features missing or labeled as being in BETA when they should've been released already and I didn't like that.

We were using both Ubiquity and the traditional NETGEAR managed switches. We made the switch to Insight mainly because of the WiFi. We liked the cloud-based controller for the WiFi. That's why we did Ubiquity. We've probably got a few hundred Ubiquity access points out there.

My NETGEAR partner rep called me and let me know about the new Insight stuff. He said, "We're coming out with these to directly compete with Ubiquity and Aruba and the like, and would you give it a try?" I said, "Yeah, I've always like NETGEAR," and we started with the access points. We put in about ten for the first install that we did. It went really smoothly and I liked it. I used the NETGEAR switch at the same time, the 16-port Insight switch. It all went really super-smoothly, even though it was my first time working with this newer style of technology. 

I did a few WiFi deployments with them and I really liked the manageability. I've loved it ever since. Now we're trying to migrate over to it exclusively.

It's the same reasons as the switches, I can get into everything, anywhere, any time, even from my cell phone. If a client calls me up and says "Hey, my WiFi's being weird," instead of having to ask him to go find the cords to unplug it, I can literally reboot it from my cell phone. Same with the switches. That's been a time saver for us, as an IT company and a pain-point saver for our end users because we don't have to ask them to do anything. They love that.

The initial setup is straightforward. It's literally: Plug it into a network that's on the internet, go to your NETGEAR account, add the serial number, and it activates the device. If you just want to use it as a regular switch, you don't have to do all that. You could just plug it in and use it. If you want use it as a smart switch with the web functions, the cloud-based functions, you have to license it and activate it, but it's a very straightforward process. You buy a token and when you add the device to your account it says, "Hey, you have an available token. Apply it to this device?" "Yes." As soon as the device goes on the internet, it's licensed to your account. It's that easy.

It's a network switch so if you're not doing anything fancy with it, deployment takes five to ten minutes. If you have the token pre-purchased, it's even faster than that. You literally just plug it in. That's any switch though, unless if you're doing some programming like VLANing. Then it takes a little bit longer. It depends on the environment. There's no operating system, there's nothing to really configure, depending on the environment. Most SMB clients have very simple environments. WiFi is starting to add to that where people, even in the SMB market, want more VLANs for guest WiFis and other WiFi's. Out of the eight I've done with the Insights switches, I had to do VLANs for four of them, and it was really easy.

The most complicated setup was one where I did a 16-port version and I had to do three different VLANs, so that was a pain. It wasn't even that hard. The switch side was very easy; it was the programming of all the access points.

For that one I had to plan a little bit. I had to lay out which WiFi I wanted on which VLAN. When everything is on the switch though, it's very straightforward: Log in to a website, click on that switch, go to the VLAN section and tag it with one of the two or three types of VLAN tagging. I had to figure out which VLAN I wanted on which jacks on the switch, etc. I did it really simply. The first half of the switch was one VLAN and the second half of the switch I split into two more sections. So half of it was one VLAN and the other E-ports I split up into four-port chunks to do a VLAN for each one. I then plugged all my WiFi access points in and my hard-wired computers. So there was some planning. It was more like network development planning than strategizing and worrying about the switch.

If you're trying to do a very simple setup and you're not doing anything too crazy with a bunch of VLANs, and you're just trying to set up your small business with a small A-port and you're plugging in a couple computers and a printer, but you want your switch to be on the internet so you know if something goes wrong - for all of that you don't have to be an expert. It is that easy. I normally type in the serial number, but the app on your phone will take a picture of the QR code on the device to add it to the account. It's that easy. It's making me feel like I might not have a job in ten years. With the old ones you had to have a special cable to plug into the switch to get into the console to manage it. No one could do that. Even as an IT person, I hated doing that. It's a night-and-day difference.

For the price, they're good. If you look at Ubiquity switches (which have cloud features too) or even the regular NETGEAR GS switches, these are still price-competitive and come with the cloud features, which is just amazing.

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 and I got a small piece of that. With NETGEAR I am getting less from the subscription, because now it's only a $10 or $20 subscription per device for the whole year, instead of $300. But it's easier to sell the product because my clients aren't complaining that they're paying for super-expensive support and licensing for a year. To pay $200 per SonicWall access point, that's kind of crazy; or Cisco Meraki where you're paying $300 for the year. Now, you can pay $10 or $20 and you have your license and all your support.

The cost of the hardware and additional services is really low. It's competing with Ubiquity. We're probably getting a little more margin because the price is so low, so we can squeak in a little bit more margin for ourselves. The important thing, though, is that we're able to supply a better solution to the client. Now, instead of the client spending $800 to get one WiFi access point, we can do three access points for $800 and they're just as strong, signal-wise, as the $800 ones. That means we have a better-deployed mesh network. Instead of just one access point placed as best we could, we have a stronger mesh. We can design a better network because it's more affordable for small businesses, and that includes the Ethernet switches and the access points.

NETGEARs have been my go-to switches ever since 3Com went away. I've tried other ones too, like TP-Link, a bunch of Intel switches. I tried the HPE switches for a little bit. But NETGEAR has always been easy to use, straightforward, good, and works.

From an IT vendor's perspective, make sure to get the right licensing. Make sure to get the licensing that allows you to do the tenants and have it all separated. Definitely make sure to get the higher-end licensing, the Pro version and not the Basic or Premium.

For end users, my only advice would be to keep it simple. Don't get too crazy with it. It's hard to not keep it simple with these devices. They are made for small business and they are made to be simple. Don't over-complicate things. Just get what you need. They're pretty easy. A switch is a switch and an end user typically is not doing anything too complicated, other than linking a bunch of devices together. It's pretty much just plug it in, for them.

Our organization is an IT company, and there's only two of us using it inside the building. He's a network technician and I'm a network engineer. And as a technician, he hasn't had any issues using them either. He hasn't even really needed to call me for help, as an engineer. He hasn't needed my expertise. It's been easy for him and he's new to managed switches too. It's been good. I've been able to let him do stuff in them without having to oversee him, because it's been easy for him.

Deployment and maintenance need something like one person for every 100. They're really easy and you can manage them all from one place, in one website. You don't need a lot of people watching over them. It's really easy for one person to watch over hundreds of them.

We're actually going to start using it as our Hardware as a Service and start trying to market it that way and push out these devices where we own them and allow clients to use them as a service. We're going to use the NETGEAR stuff for that.

They just redid their management on the backside. Before it was either Premium or Basic but now they have the Pro version which allows me to group all my clients together. I can group locations by client and I can give clients direct access to their own stuff too. So I can have admin-level access to all my clients and then give the individual clients direct access to their own stuff, so we're not holding anybody hostage either. It's been pretty cool for that. We've just been really happy with it. We're moving to them as our main networking and WiFi products.

I was just at the NETGEAR SMB Council. The Insight product has been out for about a year, and some of the people who got on it when it first came out had a lot of complaints about how it was dumb when it first came out and about the issues they had. They did say it got a lot better for them. I got on the products a little bit later, I didn't get into to it until three or four months ago. For me it's been pretty smooth, other than that one update where we had to reboot stuff. So depending on when someone started using the stuff they might have different opinions. The early adopters might not have liked it as much because of the issues they had in the beginning, issues that NETGEAR fixed, going forward. I noticed that some of the partners there who had been using it longer did have a bad taste in their mouths. That was because they onboarded so early that it didn't really have a chance yet.

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten. I will give some stuff a ten, but it's pretty rare. The updating process has been easy, it works over the web, but it's been a little too often, and that's causing email triggers. We get annoyed by the constant bombardment of emails from their devices - and the more devices you have, the more you get bombarded. Any time there's a firmware update, they have to reboot and there's an email notification, so you start to get a lot of emails. The notifications need to be a little cleaner. But from a functional standpoint it's been pretty solid, if we're just talking about just the switches.

I'm using the switches in small business environments and I'm using them with the cloud management. That way, I can get notifications when there are problems without even being on site, and I can also manage them remotely.

The improvement is that, if there's an issue, I don't have to go onsite to look into it. It saves time, which translates to money. If I'm on the road for any significant time, my clients are going to get trip charges. My being able to remotely manage it means they can save those costs, and it could be back up more quickly because it might be something minor that I can remotely resolve.

The cloud management is the reason I switched to them, although the regular NETGEAR product line that I've used would be less expensive. I love the cloud management feature.`

They are easy to use and deploy. The deployment can be done through the direct interface of the device or through the cloud management if that mode is selected. But 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 - even though most small businesses do have static IPs, you do run into some that don't - is nice. They initiate the contact to the outside world, without requiring a static to get in.

The switch has been really easy. Anybody who has been in the business can hop on there and change stuff right away.

I've used and sold NETGEAR stuff for a long time and I was really excited about the cloud product. But, 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. They just don't lend themselves to a rack environment.

I'm absolutely amazed that they did what they did because they've been building switches for years and this totally violates all of the design parameters on all their other products. You can't have a device that's expected to go into a rack environment - and they ship with the rack mount - yet the jacks are on one side, and all the indicator lights you need to look at are on the back. You usually can't see the back side of a rack. You can't get back there to see, so it's just crazy. It's like they designed it to hang on a wall, rather than to be mounted in a rack. They're really missing their bigger opportunity by doing that. It's so bad that I have to consider whether or not to use them. What good are indicators if you can't look at them? And you can't do so in the current design because they're on the back side.

If you look at their entire product line, nothing is like that. It just makes no sense at all. If they would put the power on the back and the indicators on the front, it would be like every other switch they manufacture, and it would resolve all those issues. 

I want to use it. I just hope that they fix their design.

Another issue, when it comes to NETGEAR's competitors, is that other companies are offering the cloud management at no extra charge, whereas NETGEAR charges for it. You have to pay per-device for licenses.

I haven't had any issues with the stability. I just learned about the cloud model a few months ago and the first ones I rolled out were shortly after that.

In the size of environments I've worked with, it's been working great. For example, I had one where, in some parts of the building they've got some of the 8-ports, and in other locations, they've got the 24-ports and 48-ports. The product line is there. I've interconnected them using the 10-gig cross-connects for the 24s and 48s. It's the 24- and 48-port models that have a 10-gig SPF connection option. That's really nice because you get high performance between devices.

I haven't needed to contact technical support.

I was using NETGEAR's switches prior. The Insight is the newer product line. Their sales department contacted me when I first expressed interest in the product and they had one of their sales engineers do a webinar with me, showing me the product and the management.

I ended up going with NETGEAR because I've used their switches for a number of years. I've been around forever. 3Com was the original big company doing all of the switch technology. They didn't even have switches when I started. It was all hub technology back then. 3Com, obviously, was bought out by HP, so I used the HP line. I was introduced to the NETGEAR product line through another company that I partner with on jobs. They do the phone side, I do the data side. Because of IT voice technology, they had been using the NETGEARs. They introduced me to them and I liked them. They were a better price point. They were reliable. So I switched to NETGEAR. When I saw the advertisements for the Insight and the cloud management, it drew me into checking them out.

The concept of cloud management is great. If you could get one vendor that can cover all of the products, so you don't have multiple management windows, it would be nice. That's what I'm trying to do with NETGEAR, if they can just make some more improvements to the product.

I find the initial setup pretty straightforward. But again, I've worked on many pieces of equipment for 30 years, so it's easy for me.

You could deploy a switch instantly. You're not required to set any settings. You could just plug it in and use it. Somebody who doesn't know anything could use it. But if you want to take advantage of the management features, then it'll take a little bit longer. You'll have to set it up in either stand alone or Cloud managed mode and then configure it. But doesn't take long if you know what you're doing. It can be set up within ten minutes.

Most people in the business already know what their network structure is, so they know their IP subnets, etc. It's your option to throw your address on it or let DHCP assign it and then set up a couple things and you're done.

In terms of an implementation strategy, for my managed equipment I will always put a statically assigned address on it within the internal subnets of the company. That way, I'm not dependent upon DHCP being up and running at the time those devices reboot. On a typical network, all of the statics are documented, so I can pull up documentation to manage stuff. Of course, with the cloud management it gives you the ability to name the devices, so you can make descriptive names.

It takes one person to deploy and maintain it. I'm in an environment where I'm working with companies that don't have an IT staff. They're smaller than the size that can accommodate a full-time staff person. So, I'm the one supporting them.

Determining ROI gets tough when you get into some of these more expensive devices. Part of the problem is that it's a newer product line, so they don't have as many options as they will probably have in a couple years. Because there are fewer, there is a tendency to have more full-featured things that cost more, when you may not need all of the features.

The savings from the customer's perspective are when I can work on it remotely, without having to travel to their site. They're saving the trip charges and they can, potentially, be up quicker. That's going to save the customer money. The initial costs are more, but they can reap the benefits in the long term.

NETGEAR is not competitive when it comes to cloud management because Ubiquity is free. Peplink is free but you have to keep the device under warranty. After its initial warranty is up, you have to buy the extended warranty to keep it under cloud management. In that situation, the $10 a year on a router would be cheaper than keeping the device under warranty. But when you get into the access points in Ubiquity, they've got NETGEAR beat because it's free for that service. It's part of buying the product.

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. I'm not quite sure why, because there's not that much on the tech side. It really doesn't cost any more to build a managed device than it does to build a non-managed. That's usually all just in software implementations. Cloud-managed is going to be the mainstay. Everybody's going to go there. It's a matter of time until that's just the standard and everybody will expect everything to work in that environment.

Ubiquity is the one that's doing the free cloud management. I had been using some of their access points toward the concept of trying to get into unified management rather than all these different brands. I've been trying to do that with NETGEAR, with their access points, Ethernet switches, and routers. I'm just finding limitations, or it's not competitive if I have to pay $10 a year per device to manage the NETGEAR when Ubiquity will do it for free. It's part of the benefit of you buying their product. Ten bucks a year isn't much until you start having 20 devices at a company. Then it's an extra $200 that you have to get them to pay, when it's free with the other guy's product.

In terms of advice to someone who is looking into implementing this solution, I would have to know more about what their application was and what they were doing. It is going to cost them more and, if they're rack mounting it, there's definitely a negative on the switches; a big negative, because you can't see the lights.

Some aspects of the remote management tools are good and some need improvement. If you go to the new NETGEAR Insight router, there are features that aren't supported through the cloud management and you have to do them locally. That needs to be improved so that all of those features can be done through the cloud management. I'm using the version where they sell the license for $10 a year. It gives you access to control them. It's just the ability to go in and remote-manage whatever the feature set of the device is remotely, and get notifications when there's a problem on the network.

I've probably only put in ten of them so far. I've more used it for monitoring and initial setup. I haven't done much troubleshooting because they've been up and running. I haven't had the problem of them being down.

As for whether you need to be an IT expert to deploy and maintain the solution, it's tough for somebody like me, who has 30 years of IT experience, to make that judgment. For somebody who has never touched one, if you don't have those concepts, you wouldn't know what to do. You have to have a certain level. Somebody who has never done anything in technology isn't going to hop on there and know what to do, but it's not a problem with the switch, it's because they don't understand the technology.

In the first organization I implemented the solution in, there are about 40 devices on that network. There are four switches there.

I love the concept, I want to continue to use it. But I'm torn on this issue of whether or not they're going to correct the physical layout so that the lights are on the correct side.

In terms of how I rate it, I'm going to have to hit it, because it has the design flaw. Even though I'm using it, I'd throw it down at a three out ten, because it is really bad that the status lights can't be seen from the front. It's a major flaw. They anticipate rack mount, it comes with the rack mount kit. I can't believe it shipped; that it was designed that way. If that was resolved I'd probably throw it up around an eight. If they got rid of the fees for the management, I'd probably give them a nine or a ten. They have to look at the marketplace. They're not being competitive by charging the $10 per device for management.

I like NETGEAR as a company. I'm hoping that they will actually pay attention to the feedback and make changes to improve the product.

We put them in locations that are far away from us. We're located in Indiana but we've put them is in Kansas. The solution enables us to manage it like we are actually in Kansas and we can do almost anything remotely, so that's why we deployed them there.

We're using the GC728XP, that's their 24-port Insight switch.

In terms of use and deployment, it's really easy because we have the customer set up already, so the configuration gets downloaded right away. Once you have your first customer set up, any switch that you buy for them, going forward, the setup time for that up gets cut down dramatically. Technically, we don't have the set up the switches at our office. We could just send them directly to Kansas. But we always like to double-check. It does go through a few rounds of firmware and we want to make sure that it always gets to the correct one. Sometimes customers don't realize how many times it needs to update.

What we've found is that if you give your customer access to their admin portal, even though, as a managed service provider, they're paying us to manage their equipment, the insight it gives them means they can actually see what they're paying for now. It's really user-friendly. It's very visual, so you can see what ports are being used. Visually, it's much easier for a customer to understand what they're paying for, which helps us, as a managed service provider, retain those customers. That's what we really like about it.

Another way it's helped is, let's say a network is down. Instead of my trying to talk with an end customer to get them to troubleshoot - and that's going very slowly, because they're trying to do their own job - what happens instead is that I can do it remotely and get it done maybe within an hour or so. 

Instead of

1. working with an end user for a couple of hours, and 
2. when that doesn't work, sending someone for a minimum eight-hour drive to the closest one in Kansas and as much as a 14-hour drive to the farthest - that would be almost two days where I lose a tech just driving. Then another day for them to fix the issue themselves and then the time to drive back. So, if it's the furthest location, I could lose a full week of an employee's time, instead of an hour or two troubleshooting within the portal.

Finally, the cost of the hardware and additional services is low and it helps our business because that's exactly what our customers are looking for. We can finally upgrade their old equipment and they can get something newer with all of the features that we wanted to give them and it's actually in their price range. Before, they weren't willing to upgrade their equipment because, if they want it cloud-managed, the solution was too expensive. This has helped our business to provide better service to our customers, and that's what they look for from us.

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. 

The newest release, where we get to schedule firmware updates, is another extremely useful feature. The firmware updates are great for us because we can schedule them in off-hours for the business and at times where we'd rather not be physically at the office waiting for a switch to update.

Those two are the features we use most. But they have a lot of features, all the way down to port-level insight, seeing which ports are being used, what's happening. Cable Test is another one. We haven't used it that often because we haven't had a need to, but it's nice that that feature is there.

The remote troubleshooting is pretty easy. You can turn off a port that might have a network loop created, or where there might be a bad NIC which is creating issues. Being able to turn off that port remotely is fantastic, instead of having to replace the whole switch. Remote management is really easy.

They also have a great app. It's something we've had to get used to using. Most IT professionals are already on our computers and it's easy to use their computers. But the app is great and easy to use, and it has pretty much all the same functionality. Overall, it's easy, once everything is done correctly and you've gotten to the right firmware.

On a scale of one to ten, the ease of use is a nine. I'm not the most IT-literate. Technically I'm the CFO and I do tech work on the side. But it's incredibly easy. It's really straightforward. I don't know how to describe it in any other terms. It's just user-friendly, even for those with little to no tech experience. You don't need to know command lines in this user interface. It's very mouse-friendly. You can just drill down by clicking on things like ports, etc.

I don't think you need to be an IT expert to use the Insight Cloud Portal switches. It's really straightforward. They have a lot of warnings if you do something you're not supposed to, like set up a networking loop. That makes it really great for people who aren't familiar with how to support networks. If you set up a networking loop, that will take down your whole network. Even if you've caused that, it will keep your network up so you can look at the alert and find, "Oh, that's a networking loop," and unplug it and stay on track. This is really user-friendly for people new to networking or for small businesses that are trying to support themselves and that don't have internal IT. I think this would be really easy for them to use.

When they came out with the Insight Pro Edition, a lot of the MSPs were really happy because it allows us to support multiple customers in the same pane of glass. I can have different customers, and different locations under those customers, but keep them so that the customers don't see who else we support.

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. It's something to cautious about. Before you send this to a customer, make sure it's updated to the most recent firmware, otherwise you can't use the features which are the reason you bought the switch. That would be a cautionary tale. And because it's new, there are firmware updates coming pretty often.

One other issue was that we did have was one hardware malfunction where we had to replace a switch, which is unusual for NETGEAR. They have some of the best products out there for small to medium-sized businesses. They do have a warranty replacement for five years on the switches, so we got it replaced. It was a bit of an inconvenience.

So be a little cautious when buying the equipment. It is still new, it's not like the established NETGEAR switches. There might be some hardware problems in your first year.

In terms of the stability, so far so good. We've only been using it for five months. Overall, it's kept up pretty well. We just had that one hardware replacement. It's not as stable as all their other Ethernet switches because it's new and we had that one replacement, but overall it's pretty great.

It's really scalable. As I said before, if you've already had your network configured for a given customer, you're not doing any more work the second, or third, or tenth time to configure a switch if it's like every other switch. It just downloads the configuration from the cloud.

When we have problems using the interface, getting NETGEAR support is a little difficult, but once you get to the right person, they can help you sort things out. They're working on making it easier to get to the right person. They are trying to get their resellers more support and better support more quickly. There's still some room for improvement there.

I would rate tech support at six or seven out of ten. It's not terrible. NETGEAR is the premium product for small to medium-sized businesses, and they need more support than, say, a large business, which has an internal IT department that can support the user individually. So when we reach out to them, it should be easy to get someone on the phone or through chat who really understands the product. They're still trying to teach their own staff about all the different functionalities in Insight, so that's where there's a bit of a disconnect.

We've almost always used NETGEAR, we just never used their Insight product until they came out with it. We have used other switches, of course, depending on customer's needs. A cheaper one would be TP-Link, but we've found that with a little bit of a price increase, NETGEAR outperforms them every time, and NETGEAR has the lifetime warranty, which really is a huge cost savings for our customers in the long run. So we try to recommend them as much as possible.

Right now though, the Insight switches only have a five-year warranty, but that's still better than most of the other switches on the market. So you get a business-enterprise switch at a really good price, and it has this tremendous value with the warranty so that anytime the hardware fails, you'll get a replacement. That's really nice for our customers. They look for value and for savings over the long-term because most of our customers are not in the business of IT, they just need IT so that they can keep up their actual business.

Before they came out with the Insight product, if we had a customer who was really interested in that information - they wanted a cloud-managed solution - if they could afford it, they would most likely go to Meraki or Cisco route. But we deal in small to medium-sized businesses and most of them cannot afford the annual subscription that goes along with having that type of equipment.

The majority of the time, we've recommended NETGEAR for the value that they provide.

We have used TP-Link if the need is for a small switch. Before the NETGEAR Insight, we were just using the normal NETGEAR models, like the M4300. We used those quite often. We used the Cisco Meraki switches if the customer could afford it, but that's on the high end.

To set up the first five switches, took a couple hours, max. We were getting aquatinted with the new portal, so we had to set up our login credentials, but each switch took maybe ten to 20 minutes, max 30 minutes to set up. It was really straightforward.

We used the same strategy that we always do because we're always cautious with new products and want to make sure we fully understand them. We ordered the first six, set them up here, and then physically went out there and installed them ourselves. They're easier, for setup purposes, for non-tech people to use, and tech people, of course, will have no problems using this interface. Now that we have more experience, it's a lot easier to set up than the first time. We could, if we wanted to, just ship these to Kansas already configured and, if there's someone capable onsite, have that person put it in the rack for us.

For deployment, we usually have one to two people go out and run cables but, to be perfectly honest, if we weren't running cables, if we were just installing the switches, it would only take one person to configure it and put it in the rack. It wouldn't take much time at all.

We don't use an integrator or reseller because we're a managed service provider and we do all of that for our end customers. We do it from start to finish. We recommend equipment to our end user, we purchase the equipment, we configure it, and we install it. We do everything for our customers.

I think there's been a return on investment. With the firmware problem there was a little bit of an issue. If we didn't have that problem, we would have already seen a return on investment. It will be a full year before we really see a big impact on our bottom line.

NETGEAR pricing is the best on the market by far. I was shocked when I saw what their price came out as for their subscription. It's extremely reasonable.

The great thing about the Insight product is that the renewable subscription is much cheaper than the competitors in the market. It is not over $50, per year, so customers buy the equipment and don't have to worry so much about the renewable fees that go along with having such access into their switch, with a cloud-managed solution. There are some other manufacturers where you'll essentially pay the same in hardware as you do in software, just for the cloud solution that supports it; just to keep getting the firmware updates and all of that information.

With NETGEAR, you can do multi-year and that is something like 90 percent cheaper than if you're looking at Meraki, for example. It is extremely competitive. It's one of the main reasons we liked it so much. It's one of the reasons we push this so much. We want this information in the cloud and we want this insight, but we didn't want to commit our customers to such a hefty subscription fee.

We have considered Meraki. We've not used Ubiquiti that frequently. 

If you're in a small to medium-sized business, if you're a business owner, or if you're an IT company providing services to small and medium-sized businesses, this is a great solution. Seriously consider it, especially if you're looking for a cloud-managed solution that's not very expensive.

Overall, the remote management tools of the GC switch are good. There were some issues at the beginning with the initial firmware, getting it updated. We've pretty much sorted those out. This is a new product for them, so we knew that there were going to be some speed bumps but, overall, it's still better than having no easy portal to see through. The normal way you would log in to a switch is much more difficult than what they're providing.

The only thing that I didn't realize when I was setting these up is that you need to make sure that it gets to the right firmware. It doesn't get online as easily as possible, as easily as some other Ethernet switches. It does go through a few rounds of firmware updates. But everything else is really easy. Even the VLAN setup is pretty straightforward. I didn't have any issues besides that firmware. I haven't set up a new switch in a few months, so this could be a moot point. I'm just cautioning new users.

We only have one customer currently using this, with nine locations. There could be some 50 users total. They don't have a high concentration per building. We've gotten the 24 ports for all the locations, and it seems to be handling the traffic very well. We're still testing it every day, and NETGEAR has been great about working with us if we see any issues. They've been on it to get feedback addressed.

I would give it an eight out of ten. The only reason is that it is a new product. They're working out some kinks. Otherwise, in a year it's going to be the best solution out there in terms of price and value. When we first got it, they didn't even have a 52-port switch. Now they do. They're coming up with all of these additional products to give the full solution. They're coming out with a cloud-managed router as well, connecting all of those things into a full solution: they have the access points, now the switches, and the routers. That, and the consistency of the network, making sure the devices are always connected to the cloud reporting correctly, would make it a full ten. 

I know they are working on it. I was out there with NETGEAR telling them my concerns and they heard me, and I know that they've already addressed a few of those things and were just working on the last few.

We use it for the SMB market, small and mid-size businesses. In Belgium, compared to America, a small/mid-size company in Belgium has 50 to 100 people. It's a little bit different than in the U.S.

We're using mainly the GC728XP, that's a 24-port switch; and the GC752XP, that's the 84-port switch. For the smaller ones, we use the GC110P.  For the access points, we only use the WAC510.

We recently had a problem with a client, a restaurant in the city. We had installed the Insight management solution for the switches and the access points, and another solution for the router. On Sunday, a day we don't normally work, we got a call from the client that there was a problem with one of the access points and one of the switches, regarding their table-booking solution. Through the Insight app, I was able to quickly look at possible problems at the client's location. We determined that the switch that the table-booking system was connected to was down. It was offline. I told the boss of the restaurant to have look at a particular cabinet because there is one switch that's stored away beneath the point-of-sale system and the booking system. There was an adapter that was not inserted in the power plug.

It was pretty easy to determine the problem at the client's, without going to the client and having a look at it myself. It was solved in five minutes and that's something we couldn't do in the past without Insight.

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. That's the most important feature for us.

I also find it very easy to use and deploy. I have a few colleagues who aren't so involved in technology and they can set it up pretty easily with a cell phone or with a laptop. They scan the serial number or the QR code on the device, it gets automatically assigned to a client, an Insight portal, and the configuration and firmware updates happen automatically. It's very easy to use, very easy to config. You just to put in the configuration once, and all the devices that you scan and assign to that client or that location will be updated and installed automatically.

The remote troubleshooting is easy to use, intuitive. The alerting is very clear. It's very apparent when you have an alert on a device. It comes to the foreground and it says that device has an issue and then you can directly look at the issue of the device.

The Facebook login is very important for our clients.

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.

Up to now we haven't had any stability issues with the Insight application. We have been using the Pro version for the last four or five months and we haven't had any stability issues with it.

We have a restaurant here in the city that uses something like 22 access points, so it scales pretty well. I don't think there is an issue on that side. It's still a small business solution, it's not a large-enterprise solution. NETGEAR has other products for that. But for the SMB market, it's a pretty nice, scalable solution.

We did have one problem with an access point. It was defective. We sent it in and three days later we had a new product, so the tech support was really helpful. They had us do a few things and then they said, "Okay, send it in and we'll send a new one." That took three days and we had a new device. The tech support is pretty good.

We used Ubiquity. The main reason we switched was because we had a lot of defective products from Ubiquity. The main problem was that, in Belgium, there was only one year of warranty on Ubiquity products. It was not such a good deal. They're cheap. They're pretty good. We had the devices for three years and then we had something like three, four, or five defective access points, and they were all out-of-warranty. The first one that went down was one-and-a-half years old. With the one year of warranty, we couldn't do anything about it except buy a new one.

With NETGEAR hardware, we have lifetime support and lifetime trade, so I didn't see any reason not to change. They're better products, the management platform looks better than the Ubiquity Unify version. The price was good, the support as well, and, I must emphasize, the warranty is a lot better than with the Ubiquity products.

Setting up the Ethernet switches Is pretty simple and straightforward. They have a device, they create a client, they create the location in the Insight portal, they scan the device, and it gets automatically assigned to that location. Firmware updates, setup, and the configuration are automatically deployed. It's very easy to deploy a new client.

On average, for the setup and the Insight portal, deployment takes about ten to 15 minutes. In general, the deployment of a switch and, let's say, five access points, including the firmware updates and pushing the configuration, takes about an hour.

For our team, internally, we had a webinar for training. All the guys followed the webinar and they started directly with the approach of installing the Insight environment. It was all explained on the webinar from NETGEAR.

In terms of needing to be an IT expert to deploy and support the network, you do have to know something about IT. If you don't have any knowledge of IT, I don't think that you can deploy the Insight Pro - I'm not talking about the Basic or the Premium versions. For the Pro version, you do need some IT knowledge, but for the Basic or for the Premium version, no IT knowledge is necessary, because all the setup is done through the mobile app. The entire process is very, easy for the Premium. With the Pro version, you have the extended portal on the internet, and you have a lot of more features than in the Basic and Premium versions.

If you look at our customer with the restaurant, the return of investment is less than one year. You can put in these devices, have the latest software, the latest features, and especially in summer, when the restaurant has a lot of people, it's an attractive solution for doing some marketing around it. You have a good WiFi solution, and you can extend it to your guests.

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.

Before we went to NETGEAR, we had a look at, of course, Ubiquity; we had a look at Meraki vs NETGEAR, and we had a look at TP-Link. All together we had four in the running, and NETGEAR came out as what we thought was the best solution and, in the end, it was the best solution.

Just try it. It's a good product, it's a good solution. If you come from Ubiquity, it's a little bit different but, in the end, it's all about the devices and the reliability of the devices. With NETGEAR you get that good device reliability and you get a little cheaper price than Cisco Meraki.

As for the remote management tools, the general look and feel are okay, but the speed could be increased. That's one of the minor points of the Insight portal, is that it sometimes lacks in speed when loading certain pages for certain clients.

In general, there are about 18 to 20 internal users. For the guests it ranges from, let's say, from one to 100 or 120.

We require no staff for deployment and maintenance. With Insight, if you look at it from the standpoint of a reseller, you don't need to have one dedicated person for management of it, because it's all done on one portal, one application. When there is an alert from a device or a client, you can have a look at it, but you don't need a dedicated resource for management of the environment.

For the moment it's not necessary to increase usage. It's pretty brand new.

I rate the solution a nine out of ten. They could make it a ten by making the interface faster, providing more devices to choose from to put in Insight, and by adding a few more features to the Insight portal; software features, like reporting and alerting. Those two things should be extended with extra features.

Support needs to be improved.

I have been using NETGEAR Switches since January.

We contacted support, but they didn’t reply.

We are using Cisco. We worked with IBM too.

The initial setup is easy.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

NETGEAR Switches has valuable cybersecurity features.

NETGEAR Switches could provide local technical support services.

I have been using NETGEAR Switches for ten years.

The product is stable.

The product is scalable.

The technical support documentation is good.

We also use Aruba, and we have subscribed to the Aruba program.

The initial setup is easy.

The product has the best price in the market.

Overall, I rate NETGEAR Switches a nine out of ten.

We use the solution for enterprise LAN connectivity. 

The solution is simple to use. I am also impressed with the tool's GUI and CLI. 

The tool needs to improve its network management. The tool can be also more simplified. 

I have been working with the product for more than 10-15 years. 

I would rate the solution's stability an eight out of ten. 

I would rate the tool's scalability a nine out of ten. 

I have not used support much since we get the information from websites. I know the representatives of NETGEAR, so I get the information faster.

Positive

The solution's setup is simple. 

I would rate the tool's pricing a nine out of ten. 

I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

It's the cheapest when compared to other switches. That is good for a small business customer.

The initial setup is simple.

The solution offers good stability.

There is a lot of helpful documentation that helps with the configuration process.

The solution needs centralized management and centralized configuration. If it is possible to add this to their switches, that would be most valuable for the customer. If the customer has multiple new system architectures, it would be ideal as they wouldn't need to go to each switch for relay and configuration. It would make management easier.

We've used the solution for the last three or four years. 

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

We haven't done any scalability with these switches. I've never really tried to scale. I don't have much experience with it.

Technical support is okay, although I haven't really dealt with them too much.

We have referred to the documentation and once the switch is configured we will not require any technical support. 

If there're any hardware-related issues, we can create a ticket for the return process. We can get a switch back and we can restore the configuration. Therefore, I have not had much experience with technical support.

I'm also familiar with Cisco and Juniper. People mostly prefer Cisco and Juniper if they have a big organization. However, a smaller business user likes the product very much. The pricing is great for them.

It's an easy setup. There is no complexity. We are using many small devices. We haven't had any issue regarding it yet.

We are integrators and can install the solution for individuals and companies. 

The pricing is reasonable for small business owners. it's not overly expensive. 

I'm a reseller. We are a solution integrator. We give products to the customers as per their budget and their ability to use the product.

I would rate the solution a ten out of ten.