Broadcom StrataConnect vs NETGEAR Switches comparison

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291 views|165 comparisons
100% willing to recommend
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19,288 views|13,717 comparisons
86% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Broadcom StrataConnect and NETGEAR Switches based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, HPE Aruba Networking, Ubiquiti Networks and others in Ethernet Switches.
To learn more, read our detailed Ethernet Switches Report (Updated: May 2024).
772,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"They have some of the fastest speeds available."

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"Netgear switches are highly reliable. We haven't done anything particularly sophisticated with them.""The most valuable feature is definitely the fully functional IGMP snooping and querier, out-of-the-box, that the switch provides. With most if not all switches that we've worked with previously, at a minimum you have to enable a couple of different options... It's really a good feature to have that stuff enabled and fully functional out-of-the-box so that [AV techs] don't have to worry about configuring any of that stuff.""The most valuable feature is the fact that Insight is cloud-managed. The whole reason behind it is that there is one central place to manage it. You can pre-configure everything and you can get access to it without having to get onto the client's network. That makes it easy to use and deploy.""The solution is very powerful and versatile.""The stability is good. I would rate the stability a ten out of ten.""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...""The solution is simple to use. I am also impressed with the tool's GUI and CLI.""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."

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Cons
"Broadcom's biggest issue is that they don't like to share information."

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"The solution needs centralized management and centralized configuration.""NETGEAR Switches could be more secure. Scalability could also be better. This infrastructure is a bit old, and we need something that will be more secure. Something that will introduce WLAN, and we will need the knowledge to go with that. Some of the switches were used for more than seven years. I think it was just their lifespan that was exhausted. But other than that, there haven't been any issues that required us to complain or get concerned.""There are a lot of systems that are moving into different areas. There are a lot of cloud-based things happening. One nice feature that I've seen in other switches is artificial intelligence on the actual porting. They've got AI technology that will tell you when a port is down. They not only tell you when a port is down; they also tell you when a port is running slower. You can do a cable-fault check, or you can do other checks. It would be nice to have this information in NETGEAR. This feature might already be there in a new release of the NETGEAR's firmware, but I haven't seen it.""The tool's price could be better.""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.""Being able to pass AVB traffic over these switches, that would be a huge add. There are not many switches out that support that. The GS728TP NETGEAR switches used to or still do support AVB, but it would be ideal if the 4300 Series could support it as well.""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.""What I'd like to see is more compatibility with virtual stacking, so that 4300-series switches and 3300-series switches will actually stack together and that virtual switch stacks, themselves, are not limited to just six devices, so that they can create larger loops with more bandwidth and more redundancy."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "It's approximately $1,000,000.00 if you want to get a license for the software."
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  • "The pricing for what you get with the Insight product line is very fair and the value is there, including the annual licensing fees for the Insight Pro for each device... the Insight Pro level, which is their highest level, where you get a lot of features with the Insight, is a bargain. You get a lot of good features for what you're paying there annually."
  • "We used HPE previously. The reason I switched to NETGEAR was because of pricing differences, which are huge, when you go into 10GB networking... The pricing is quite good... The total cost of the deployment was about 11,000 euros or so. If I had gone with HPE it would have been at least twice as much."
  • "It's a great price-to-performance solution. I think it's singularly the best price-per-performance we can find, if not just straight performance to begin with... The cost of hardware and additional services is lower, absolutely. I wouldn't say "low," but we found it to be lower than other options, and that helps us resell this back to customers who are looking at other things like a Cisco Meraki..."
  • "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."
  • "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."
  • "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."
  • "There are two parts to the pricing. There's the pricing of the device itself, which is good. Their licensing model needs work, though. The licensing model doesn't fit the way MSPs do business."
  • More NETGEAR Switches Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
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    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer:Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten. I have not faced any issues with the product whatsoever.
    Ranking
    28th
    out of 34 in Ethernet Switches
    Views
    291
    Comparisons
    165
    Reviews
    0
    Average Words per Review
    0
    Rating
    N/A
    4th
    out of 34 in Ethernet Switches
    Views
    19,288
    Comparisons
    13,717
    Reviews
    18
    Average Words per Review
    426
    Rating
    8.0
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    StrataConnect
    NETGEAR Insight Managed Switches, NETGEAR GC Series, NETGEAR M Series
    Learn More
    Broadcom
    Video Not Available
    Overview

    StrataConnect switches support 1 Gigabit, 2.5 Gigabit, 5 Gigabit, 10 Gigabit, and 25 Gigabit I/O speeds covering switch bandwidths from tens of gigabits to hundreds of gigabits. StrataConnect switches integrate optional CPU, Copper PHYs or high-speed SerDes with built-in buffering, traffic management, and L2-L4 processing enabling complete “system-on-a-chip” solutions. The StrataConnect line is designed for low power, optimized Layer 2 switching, and simplicity of design ideal for SMB, SME, industrial, embedded, control plane, and layer 2 data plane switch applications. Market-leading switch products are enabled by pairing FASTPATH turnkey software with StrataConnect switches via a low touch, rapid time-to-market model.

    NETGEAR Ethernet Switches is an Ethernet solution that offers businesses of all sizes the ability to easily set up secure and highly scalable networks. Small to medium-sized companies have the option to choose from three different switching options. The three options that are most appropriate for businesses of this size are the NETGEAR Unmanaged, Plus, and Smart Switch solutions. If you're managing a large enterprise network or a campus network, then NETGEAR Fully Managed Infrastructures is the solution for you. All the NETGEAR Ethernet Switches and solutions are innovative, easy to install and use, reliable, and very cost-effective.

    NETGEAR Ethernet Switches have many features that make them a most effective product. Included in these is the ability to virtually stack IP addresses in such a way that users can scale their network up with ease. These IP addresses are grouped together. Once additional data ports are connected, you have only a single switch to manage and you gain both a much higher level availability of data and a greater level of network resilience.

    Benefits of NETGEAR Ethernet Switches

    Some of the benefits of using NETGEAR Ethernet Switches include:

    • The ability to control and track the performance of your network from a single centralized location. NETGEAR Ethernet Switches has a “single pane of glass” interface that enables administrators to track their network’s data in real time, allowing them to manage everything from one place. If a problem is detected, this management interface will alert the appropriate administrator.

    • A wide array of security features allows you to manage user access, filter incoming traffic for potential threats, and monitor your network for unauthorized traffic. The switches have security capabilities built in in an effort to maximize network protection, while at the same time allowing you to minimize the expenditure of resources required to keep you secure.

    Reviews from Real Users

    There are a number of characteristics that make NETGEAR Ethernet Switches extremely effective. Two major ones are its inherent flexibility and its user-friendly nature. 

    PeerSpot user Kevin W., a network delivery architect at a tech-services company, notes that NETGEAR Ethernet Switches gives users the ability to tailor the switches to fit their needs. He writes, "The big winner for NETGEAR is their modular switch: the 96X version. That is something that you don't see in the market anywhere else, except for Cisco who has it at a high level for a high expense. The ability to customize your own switch with their modules is a big plus for what we do in the market right now. Instead of having to piece together standardized switches, trying to make something work, or fitting the design into the mold, the modular switches are aware that you can make a mark in the industry because you purchased one switch and design with different modules added and removed later on for functionality."

    PeerSpot user Chris W., a system engineer at Diversified, notes just how easy they are to use when he writes, "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."

    Sample Customers
    Coty, Banese, Intellinet
    Blaze Networks
    Top Industries
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company22%
    Manufacturing Company12%
    Financial Services Firm10%
    Educational Organization8%
    REVIEWERS
    Manufacturing Company17%
    Construction Company17%
    Computer Software Company17%
    Insurance Company6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company13%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Educational Organization7%
    Government6%
    Company Size
    No Data Available
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business75%
    Midsize Enterprise8%
    Large Enterprise17%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business34%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise51%
    Buyer's Guide
    Ethernet Switches
    May 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, HPE Aruba Networking, Ubiquiti Networks and others in Ethernet Switches. Updated: May 2024.
    772,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Broadcom StrataConnect is ranked 28th in Ethernet Switches while NETGEAR Switches is ranked 4th in Ethernet Switches with 51 reviews. Broadcom StrataConnect is rated 9.0, while NETGEAR Switches is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Broadcom StrataConnect writes "Scales well, reliable, and has good support". On the other hand, the top reviewer of NETGEAR Switches writes "You can stack different models of switches which makes the scalability great". Broadcom StrataConnect is most compared with Cisco Ethernet Switches, whereas NETGEAR Switches is most compared with D-Link Ethernet Switches, Cisco Linksys Ethernet Switches, Ubiquiti UniFi Switches, Cisco Ethernet Switches and MikroTik Routers and Switches.

    See our list of best Ethernet Switches vendors.

    We monitor all Ethernet Switches reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.