We performed a comparison between Alcatel-Lucent OmniSwitch Ethernet Switches and NETGEAR Switches based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Ethernet Switches solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The new web graphical interface is much better than before. We now have easy access to the command lines. They're all functional."
"The solution has a very good web interface. It makes it easy to manage everything."
"Enables direct access to clusters."
"The fibre ports that are 10 Gb capacity helped with the travel of a lot of regular as well as video data. Fibre can handle a lot more virtual data than copper twisted-pair, so we got a lot more data and a lot more traffic signals back through the fibre ports, faster, than with copper."
"This is a dependable switch which will help you sleep at night."
"It's easy to extend the stack, We don't use the smaller switches, but it's going well for the rest."
"OmniSwitch Ethernet Switches' best features are it's easy to deploy, manage, and maintain, with services coming through one vendor."
"We are able to customize this solution based on the customer's requirements."
"Comes preconfigured and designed specifically for AV."
"The cloud management has just been huge for us. We have 80 clients and they all have switches... With the cloud-managed Insight ones... 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."
"NETGEAR Switches has valuable cybersecurity features."
"SFP, speed, and 10-Gigabit are the most valuable aspects of this solution. We're an architecture firm and we sometimes deal with large files. Anything we can do to eke out even a fraction of a second less time to get something done over the course of a year adds up. If I can get 10-Gigabit running in my server room, which I am right now, even though we're only gigabit to the desktop, due to the client computers we have, I can get more performance from everybody. I'm ready to start bringing in 10-Gigabit Ethernet to the desktop once I get the hardware to do that."
"You are not limited in terms of stacking ports, and especially, if you're using the 96X as a core switch, the scalability, I could see this being very large. If you're using a type of a hybrid topology with a core switch going out to multiple switch stacks, or something like that, I could see the scalability of this being very good, especially considering the kind of backplane switching capacity on the 96X."
"Out-of-the-box, it works for our main use case. When passing multicast video across the network, our technicians don't have make any changes. Then, if we do need to make configuration changes for a custom scenario, the web interface is user intuitive so it's easy to use and change."
"We have a wide range of switches for various applications, including a collection specifically designed for ProAV, as well as Multi-gig Switches, which are also quite well-known or unique."
"There is a lot of helpful documentation that helps with the configuration process."
"technical support response time is sometimes very slow."
"OmniSwitch Ethernet Switches would be improved if cloud-based technology was provided in the Gulf region."
"The product would be better if it were completely compatible with other switching products."
"The network connection should be improved."
"I could see them possibly creating a more intuitive software. It's very user-friendly, but there are some things that aren't very intuitive when programming the switches."
"I find the CLI hard to use. I wish we could do more in the GUI interface."
"There needs to be better integration with the interface."
"In future versions, I would like to see improvements in networking speed."
"One thing I have asked for, something that NETGEAR lacks that I would love to see — and from what I understand it's in the works — is a REST API to programmatically interface with multiple switches. That would be a great feature."
"Netgear switches could be cheaper."
"Support needs to be improved."
"There are some design issues on which they really missed the boat. The problem has to do with rack mounting them because the lights and jacks should all be on the front, and the power on the back. The way they did it makes it really difficult to use them in a rack environment, because when the lights are on the opposite side of the jacks... you usually can't see the back side of a rack. You can't get back there to see, so it's just crazy."
"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."
"The product could be more robust."
"Their old firmware was a problem for us and we're still working on it. It didn't apply correctly so it took about half of our switches offline, which meant we couldn't use some of the functionality like the firmware updates. Unfortunately with that firmware, which they've sorted out, if you don't go through all the firmware and make sure it's past that point and back online, that's an issue with them. It's something to cautious about"
"If they could come up with ways to look at metrics on it while the video is capping through the system, that would be nice. There could be some interesting uses for that, but it's a long way off."
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Alcatel-Lucent OmniSwitch Ethernet Switches is ranked 21st in Ethernet Switches with 8 reviews while NETGEAR Switches is ranked 4th in Ethernet Switches with 50 reviews. Alcatel-Lucent OmniSwitch Ethernet Switches is rated 8.6, while NETGEAR Switches is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Alcatel-Lucent OmniSwitch Ethernet Switches writes "It's easy to extend the stack, but I wish we could do more in the GUI". On the other hand, the top reviewer of NETGEAR Switches writes "You can stack different models of switches which makes the scalability great". Alcatel-Lucent OmniSwitch Ethernet Switches is most compared with Cisco Ethernet Switches, Aruba Switches, Fortinet FortiSwitch - Secure Access, Juniper EX Series Ethernet Switches and Nokia Ethernet Service Switch, 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 Alcatel-Lucent OmniSwitch Ethernet Switches vs. NETGEAR Switches report.
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My last experience with Netgear wasn't good but it was a long time ago. It may be better now.
As for me, it would be Cisco because it is easier to find network engineer with knowledge of Cisco products and many supervision or orchestration tools will support them well.
Regarding my experience, they are reliable assets but the cost might be sometime a good reason to go for something else.
Depending upon the size and design of the network, it will determine to some extent which brand will be the most cost-effective and reliable solution.
I used Netgear equipment in a simple Layer 2/ Layer 3 setup using their Netgear Smart Switches with stacking and 10GB uplinks for around 380 users and around 400 devices, and ran for around 4+ years without a single issue related to network switches, we then move to our site operation where we used H3C switches. H3C has excellent switches. I also used Brocade ethernet switches which have been running for the past 9 years requiring some occasional reboots.
I recommend all switches get rebooted every two years.
I have used Cisco switches also. They are good but there are better more feature-rich TCO costs over 5 Years Cisco losses out. Honestly, most of the feature sets in switches are not used within business operations.
Also, the best is to follow KISS when it comes to networking.
For an Enterprise?
I would definitely go with Cisco.
Cisco has a wide range of products to accommodate all present and future needs of an enterprise organization.
Cisco support is very professional in case something goes wrong.
Cisco products are very stable, have lots of features to satisfy every need of an enterprise and in my experience, they don't easily fail.