Cisco Catalyst Switches Reviews

I use Cisco Catalyst Switches for the connectivity of my client's local area network.

I have found that the protocols that Cisco Catalyst Switches support are beneficial for my customers.

I have been using Cisco Catalyst Switches for approximately one year.

Cisco Catalyst Switches is a stable solution.

I have found Cisco Catalyst Switches to be scalable.

We have five customers using Cisco Catalyst Switches.

The support from Cisco Catalyst Switches is good.

Cisco Catalyst Switches has a straightforward installation.

The pricing of Cisco Catalyst Switches could be better in general. There is an annual license required.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Cisco Catalyst Switches a nine out of ten.

The solution has been issue-free.

The solution is scalable.

The stability of the product is good. We've had no problems whatsoever.

Overall, the pricing has been good.

Technical support is very helpful, even during implementation.

The initial setup is simple.

There are some models that can occasionally cause problems. If a particular switch is made for some specific use case or a particular environment, if you put that in other types of infrastructure or use cases, then you may face problems.

The licensing process could be a bit less complex.

We have dealt with the solution for about three years.

The stability has been good overall. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. The performance has been reliable. 

The scalability has been good. If a company needs to expand it, it can. However, you do need to have the right model, otherwise, you run into issues with scaling. 

We have 15 to 20 clients that use this product.

We have good technical people and an experienced technical team who can install those switches, and do a level of troubleshooting and escalations.

For five years, we've used Huawei. Three years ago we started with Cisco. This was mostly due to networking, as we don't have a team five years back. After that, we got the team specifically for networking and we started that with Huawei, and we got a very good response in the market. Unfortunately, due to the Chinese market, and all that stuff, that didn't last. That said, the customers who are using the technology, are still happy with the support as well as with the product.

We also occasionally use Aruba.

We didn't work with Juniper as an installation system integrator, however, we have with Cisco (including Nexus and Meraki) and Huawei, and we have had a very good experience. 

The initial setup is good. It is easy. If you know the commands, even basic commands, you can do the normal installation. If you want to go for V-LAN and other things, routing, et cetera, level three switches kind of installations, then you may need some time and knowledge. 

For deployment and maintenance, you need a minimum of two people. Three or four is also good if it is enterprise. There are some customers where we have to do installations at three or four sites simultaneously and we have to complete that within one or two days or within a specific downtime. If the network is down, everything is down. That is when you require multiple team members. Otherwise, if that is one site and one installation with one day's worth of downtime, with two people, you can do it easily.

Support is helpful in regard to the implementation process. My team didn't find any issues with installation.

The solution's pricing is pretty good. As far as whatever else is available in the market, for example, if you compared it to Aruba, Juniper, or other enterprise solutions, the pricing is reasonable.  

You do require licenses. There are some licenses that you need to procure separately. By default, the licensing process is good.

Everyone has their own licensing structure. With Cisco, once you do a setup two or three times, the process gets easier and the licensing gets clearer. Until then, licensing is a little bit tricky.

We do not use the solution in our office, however, as Test System Integrators, we have provided the solution.

I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten. It's been quite good overall.

I would recommend the solution to other users and companies. 

We use Cisco Catalyst Switches for networking.

Cisco Catalyst Switches are the best overall.

I have been using this solution for approximately six years.

Cisco Catalyst Switches is stable.

The solution is scalable.

We have approximately 25 customers using the solution.

The technical support from Cisco is very good.

The installation is easy if you understand the Ciscos CLA interface and your infrastructure is correct.

We have CCNA and CCNP certified engineers that do the implementation and maintenance of the solution.

The price of a Cisco Catalyst Switches license is expensive. 

There is a big problem with their pricing structure. For example, there is a system called first come first serve metric for integrators. The person who logs the case gets a better price than what I receive. They give discounts to other people, such as those with certifications, and what happens is people go away from this solution because of it. I do not receive a better price which puts me in a position to promote other solutions. 

I lost a large contact because of their pricing structure. Cisco should give the same pricing to everybody.

I recommend this solution to others.

I rate Cisco Catalyst Switches an eight out of ten.

We use this solution for our network.

I am a system engineer, and we sell the products to our customers.

I like the flexibility of this product.

There is a complexity with Cisco.

They should have unified software that includes all of the licenses. We should not have to pay for different software on the same platform. Each one has a specific use or a specific feature.

If you need dynamic routing then you have to purchase the software, if you need basic IP routing, you need different software. Why do you need this type of complexity?

They have their own propriety protocols while other competitors go with other standards and are easy. Cisco is a bit complex.

I have been using Cisco Catalyst Switches for 15 years.

We use several different versions, not just one. If they have different software for universal enterprise services, they will have specific features to use for the specific use case.

Cisco Catalyst Switches is a stable product.

The scalability of this solution needs to be improved. It is not very scalable. For example, if you want to enable the features such as VSS, you have to add other modules and hardware.

Other competitors have this feature available from the beginning. 

Technical support is fair.

The initial setup is straightforward. It is easy to install.

I was not involved in the installation but it is approximately five or ten minutes to deploy.

There is no licensing fee. All of the features are available on the switch from day one.

It's not a complicated license; you have to buy a license for different services or features. This is different.

Most of the features are available without additional hardware.

I would recommend Cisco to other users, along with several other products.

I would rate Cisco Catalyst Switches a nine out of ten.

We use this solution to provide stability between sites. Also for our customers who have multiple branches, Cisco routers and switches are perfect for them. 

As far as technology is concerned, Cisco improves the client-to-client business.

Cisco should support all of the features that are included with the suite.

I have been using Cisco products for more than six years.

I am using the latest version of Cisco Catalyst Switches.

They are very stable.

Cisco Catalyst switches are definitely scalable.

There are a number of models and scalability depends on the requirements. You have to consider how far you want to scale your organization with the different branches.

I work with many different organizations and many different users. Some have 6,000 users whereas others have 3,000.

Technical support is good. Cisco offers the best possible support.

As for the new products that Cisco has acquired it's okay, but not as good.

Previously, I have used Linksys and Meraki Switches.

It's easy to install. 

If you have clear knowledge and design, it's pretty easy to implement.

The time it takes to deploy depends on how large the site is and a number of things. If everything is available it can be configured in minutes.

The size of the technical team depends on the installation and what the customer requires. For the deployment, if you have different sites you will need more people, a larger team. It also depends on the timelines and how soon you have to hand over the project to the customer.

Essentially, it depends on the circumstances.

Price is an area that can be improved. Cisco is pioneering technology and they are definitely charging for their technology.

It would be great for the user if Cisco lowered the prices for their routers and switches.

The price is not really in the market. When the new product line arrives, it's still very expensive. The product has new features, new capabilities, and definitely costs more than the previous one.

The price could be cheaper. Many other vendors provide the main features with lower pricing and better performance than Cisco.

Overall, Cisco prices are high.

We have plans to continue using this product and would recommend them to others.

I would rate Cisco Catalyst Switches a ten out of ten.

We primarily use the solution specifically for our internal network - for our users and some servers. We also have servers on the cloud as well, although largely we are on-premise.

The VLANs portion of the solution is very good. 

The product offers very good routing and ranking capabilities.  It allows for better channels.

The initial setup is very simple. An organization shouldn't have too much trouble setting everything up.

We've found the solution to be rather stable. It offers good performance.

There aren't any features that are lacking from my perspective. It's pretty complete.

The solution itself is quite expensive. It would be ideal if they could lower the pricing a bit.

The product could offer more integrations with other solutions. 

I have had experience with the solution since around 2000. In 2010 I began on the sales-side of the product. Therefore, I have many, many years of experience with the product at this point.

The solution offers very good stability. We've found it to be reliable. It doesn't crash or freeze. It also doesn't seem to have bugs or glitches that affect its performance.

The scalability depends on the layer you are talking about. Layer 2 is not scalable, however, Layer 3 switches offer very good scalability.

We have about 50 people currently using the solution.

We found the implementation to be very simple, and straightforward. It was easy. There weren't any complexities, therefore, we didn't face any difficulty when setting everything up.

Deployment takes a few hours.

The pricing of the product is quite high. It's not the cheapest option on the market.

We're Cisco partners. We have a business relationship with the company.

I'd recommend this solution to other organizations. Over the years, I've found that it works very well.

In general, on a scale from one to ten, I would rate it at a nine.

Typically, the solution is used for a client's official network and several times as a replacement. A client may use it to replace the total network LAN switch. 

Mostly the LAN switching is the most valuable aspect of the solution.

Clients often do not emphasize specifications of Catalyst features. They just need a switch for an office LAN and other segments. 

There are several versions of Catalyst, and yet, they are quite similar. If, in the simplest one, they could create a Catalyst segment where all the possibilities like QSFP, SFP, 10G, that would be ideal. MikroTik, a Latvian company, has that as an option. They include 1G and 10G and QSFP all in one switch. Cisco, however, divides it into several switches across these features. Cisco is likely doing it to make money. However, clients sometimes don't want to pay more for the switches and they ignore Cisco and grab other brands like MikroTik. As distributors, it makes it hard to sell Cisco when features come at such a high price. 

Another issue is the restrictions on the product. Cisco applies restrictions in relation to renewals on a yearly basis. Many other brands don't have restrictions. If Cisco lifted them, they wouldn't lose so many clients to competitors.

We've been using the solution for a long time. It's been about seven to nine years.

The product is quite stable. It doesn't crash or freeze and there aren't any bugs or glitches. It's quite reliable.

You can scale the solution and you can choose different versions that fit the sizes of a variety of organizations.

Our clients range in size. Some are smaller organizations. Others are enterprise-level companies.

We talk with the support that is based in Bangladesh. They have an office in our country and provide support as necessary. We have contracts for one to three years and they provide technical and phone support to us. The support is fine, but it takes time sometimes to get the assistance we require. 

As resellers, we work with other solutions, including Huawei, Juniper, MicroTik, and some other brands in China (as well as Cisco).

Recently, Huawei has been doing good in switching segments. They're bringing some new features that are better than or compete with Cisco, and they are very aggressive in pricing. 

The problem is they're doing only Enterprise segments. They are not doing SMB.

The initial setup isn't too complex. However, we have very well trained technicians that really understand the process. For them, it's easy.

If our clients request it of us, we can maintain the switches for them after implementation.

We can assist our clients with implementation if they request the service.

The pricing of Cisco products is quite expensive. Huawei, for example, costs much less.

There aren't extra costs for additional features. All features are standard.

We are resellers and distributors. We're partners with Cisco.

We use a variety of different versions of the solution, including 3003, 29603, and 9003. Those are three of the most popular. Which we use depends on the client and their particular needs. Sometimes we only resell the product to our clients and sometimes we also provide the solution and install and configure the Catalyst for the clients. It depends on the client's query.

Overall, I would rate the solution eight out of ten. Overall, our clients have been quite happy with the results they get from Cisco products.

Our primary use case is system integration on the client end. We propose this solution to our customers based on their individual capacities and requirements. We have also been using the basic functionalities of the tool internally, very basic not to any high-end degree. 

I personally have never faced any kind of issues. The system is running very well and does what I need it to do. If there are any failures or problems we can resolve them quickly. We are able to get things up and running again and accomplish tasks after a failure within a few hour's time. We are very happy with what we are getting from our Cisco Catalyst Switches solution.

The new series has lots of great features; it's really lovely. From a management perspective, a policy creation perspective, and a utility perspective; the functionality we are seeing in the Catalyst 9000 series is great.

The current catalyst is probably outdated so we will most likely move to the newer version of the solution soon. 

Some additional features that should be included in the next release could include the ability to create real integration, standard policy pushing, and optimizations.

The product is very stable in all environments. We haven't experienced any problems.

The scalability is great. I have to say that the Cisco Catalyst solution provides the scalability directly in line with our needs.

Our technical support experience has been very good. We have mainly relied on our internal team for technical support and maintenance.

In the past, we used a different solution but it was a long time ago and I really can't remember what it was.

Since we are all certified engineers we found the initial setup to be straightforward. 

The implementation was done in-house.

I believe that our return on investment is excellent mainly due to the fact that we haven't experienced any downtime, no issues at all. This is one of the reasons I believe the production is a good solution; it's a sound investment. We are not losing any time.

The pricing and licensing are fine. To be honest we have found that this tool is able to meet all of our expectations at this time. This solution is agile and meets our expectations.

Overall, I can say that the Cisco Catalyst Solution is a very stable product. Technical support is good from our experience. Everybody seems to know and work well with the tool, including management cross-functionally it's a tool that we enjoy using.

I would rate it an eight out of ten. The only reason I'm not giving this solution a slightly high rating is due to the fact that we are seeing improvements in the new series of this solution. What we are seeing and what we are expecting are great improvements; the management team likes the new type of architecture we are seeing in the new series of the tool.