We performed a comparison between Cisco Ethernet Switches and NETGEAR Switches based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: NETGEAR Switches come out ahead in this comparison. They are easy to set up, flexible, and have excellent customer support. In addition, They are cheaper than Cisco Ethernet Switches.
"What I like the most is the performance and the latency that Cisco provides."
"This is a great solution for network switching and security."
"The performance of Cisco Ethernet Switches is better."
"Good and stable operational experience with nearly no loss of hardware and very few software bugs."
"Cisco switches have several valuable features like VLAN mapping. We seldom use that, but we find the security configurations helpful, like high availability with trading port channels and MAC filtering."
"Cisco Ethernet Switches is a very stable product."
"The solution is extremely stable."
"The features that I have found most valuable are that it is easy to use and it has good technical support."
"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 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 card that 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."
"The stability is good. I would rate the stability a ten out of ten."
"The ability to mix and match is invaluable. So, we didn't have to run massive super extensive switches in the data closets where it wasn't necessary. Being able to manage it all from one place, as all your network configuration settings went live across your entire building from one management console was really handy."
"We have one client that has three Insight switches and when we make a change to their network... we can make the configuration change and push it down to all three switches at once. We don't have to individually log on to each switch to make the change."
"Valuable features include network monitoring and ease of programming for VLANs, etc. I especially like NETGEAR because it's easy to teach system administrators how to use them, how to look at them, how to make changes to them without having the complexity of CLIs, but still having a CLI should we need it."
"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 tool is stable."
"I think the price should be cheaper to be able to afford more."
"We have supply issues when ordering switches. It used to be a minimum of six to eight weeks. Now it has become around six months. That's the only issue we have."
"I would like for the solution to have more more security features and be more user-friendly."
"In the case of an already existing network, we encounter technical issues related to following protocols."
"Better manageability and ease of use would be an improvement."
"I would like to see this solution automatically store multiple versions of the configuration file."
"Cisco has a lot of propriety protocols compared to other products, such as Arista Networks."
"Because of the cyber attacks, they should focus more on VoIP."
"The technical support could be more helpful."
"When the power does go out, or if we do a soft shutdown, some of the transceivers or the monitor don't recognize when it turns back on, so I have to physically unplug it and plug it back in and then it works. We're working with NETGEAR's engineers to figure out why that's happening."
"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."
"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."
"The product's scalability has certain shortcomings that can be improved."
"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."
"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."
"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."
Cisco Ethernet Switches is ranked 1st in Ethernet Switches with 128 reviews while NETGEAR Switches is ranked 4th in Ethernet Switches with 51 reviews. Cisco Ethernet Switches is rated 8.6, while NETGEAR Switches is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Cisco Ethernet Switches writes "It's a solidly stable product from a leader in the field". On the other hand, the top reviewer of NETGEAR Switches writes "You can stack different models of switches which makes the scalability great". Cisco Ethernet Switches is most compared with Aruba Switches, Fortinet FortiSwitch - Secure Access, D-Link Ethernet Switches, Ubiquiti UniFi Switches and Juniper EX Series Ethernet Switches, whereas NETGEAR Switches is most compared with D-Link Ethernet Switches, Cisco Linksys Ethernet Switches, Ubiquiti UniFi Switches, MikroTik Routers and Switches and Aruba Switches. See our Cisco Ethernet Switches vs. NETGEAR Switches report.
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.