Cisco Ethernet Switches Reviews

I am using Cisco Ethernet Switches for internet usage.

The price of the solution could be reduced.

I have been using Cisco Ethernet Switches for approximately four years.

The solution is highly reliable.

I am the only one using this solution.

The support from Cisco Ethernet Switches is great.

I rate the support from Cisco Ethernet Switches a ten out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup of Cisco Ethernet Switches is straightforward. The deployment took approximately 30 minutes.

The deployment was done by myself.

The price of Cisco Ethernet Switches is expensive.

I would recommend this solution to others. This is the most reliable brand on the market.

I rate Cisco Ethernet Switches a ten out of ten.

We are routing with the Cisco switches, so there are a lot of features, but no single one stands out. 

There's are other products that are better for network programmability. Cisco isn't as programmable as some others vendors. For example, on devices running iOS XE, you  dont have candidate configuration datastore when you use netconf like you would have on arista, juniper or others. Changes are directly applied on running configuration so there is no room for error once you commit changes to devices.

So it will be good for them to implement other config datastores because when it go to programming, review it's important so we need to be abe to have at least a candidate configuration datastore.

I've been using Cisco Ethernet Switches for 15 years.

Cisco Ethernet Switches are stable.

Cisco Ethernet Switches are scalable.

Cisco support is good once you reach a technician, but the website is a mess. I don't like the website.

I didn't use previous solution and then swith, but evaluate others vendors sometimes because their was in use in a company we bought, sometimes because their were shipped as a bundle with some hardware vendors solution for private cloud or storage solutions etc. Thought ome of them have some good features, Cisco got a better average rate when you take the whole thing.

The initial setup is really easy.

The price of Cisco switches could be lower. The cost is growing compared to other products, and it's more segmented. A Cisco switch is more expensive than before. For example, stackable models used to be provided with stacking ports and stacking cable. Now it's split you have to buy stacking kit separately. I don't know if they are the only ones like this or if this is standard now.

Yes other options have been evaluated but Cisco appeared to be the more easy to operate through the years regarding the stability of the product series, the CLI, support and documentation.

I rate Cisco Ethernet Switches eight out of 10. 

We primarily use the solution for our data center and edge switches. Like a lot of companies, we use (in the data center) core switches on Layer 3, and (on the edge) switches in Layer 2. 

Cisco as a whole is flexible. 

The solution can be configured to our specifications.

The solution allows you to monitor CPU utilization and memory usage.

You can only configure both switches and routers via the command-line. They should work to take on the newer HP and Aruba approach where you can configure from a URL or command line.

It could be useful if they developed the GUI interface to enable us to configure all features such as VLANs, port assignment, routing, DSP, through the GUI. That would make it easier for beginners. 

Cisco products are expensive compared to any other solution. Now, there are many competitors that give the same level of services - such as Juniper or Aruba.

We've been using this solution for about eight years. It's been a long time.

The solution is quite stable. Cisco offers very reliable products. All of their hardware is quite reliable.

The solution is quite scalable. However, the pricing is a concern. If I need to add switches, I tend to look at cheaper options like Juniper or HP.

In my organization, there were about 150 switches or more. That covered about 4,000 users and covered both wireless and LAN, wired and wireless.

We may not continue to use it, as it is expensive and there are alternatives.

There are many vendors in Egypt. Therefore, we can always find someone who can help us with technical support.

On top of that, we've found the website to be quite good in terms of finding documentation to help with troubleshooting.

We also use Aruba switches. I've used HP in the past as well.

Depending on the project for configuration, and considering deploying only one switch at a time, it may take about five minutes to handle one switch. Aruba, in contrast, might take ten minutes.  

We had about four people who handled the deployment.

The pricing of the solution is quite high. There are lots of comparable products out there that are nowhere near the cost. 

We're just customers and end-users.

We use Cisco switches at Layer 2 and Layer 3.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend Cisco to other organizations. After using HP, I found that they had just as good of a product with more features and better pricing.

In general, I would rate this product at a seven out of ten.

We are a fiber-optic provider. We have a lot of switches from Cisco and some from Microchip. We have C3750E, which is one of the main Cisco Ethernet switches. All ports of this switch are fiber.

We have a local Cisco partner here who is quite reliable, so we patronize that partner. They do everything on our behalf, especially the licenses.

What we love about the Cisco switches is that they are very reliable. You can deploy them and go to sleep, and you can be sure that nothing is going to go wrong. Our initial equipment was installed by a Chinese manufacturer named Fiberhome a couple of years ago. Their switches were called S engines. They worked, but some days, you just wake up, and the switch has popped up. It was a lot of crisis. Therefore, we are in the process of trying to take out all their switches and replace them with Cisco switches. We are getting good results in terms of reliability and even technical support.

Cisco switches are good as they are, but it would be a major feature if they have built-in routers. Some of the Microchip switches have routers built in the same device. They have a router switch. For some of the sites, we deploy such switches because the client does not want a separate router and a separate switch. So, we go for a router switch with maybe 24 ports. Some of them are fiber, and some of them are ethernet. It would be a major improvement to what Cisco is already doing.

Behind the scenes, a lot of scripting and stuff like this is happening. A lot of workload can be lifted if Cisco had a good GUI. If you look at Microchip switches, they have a good GUI in addition to the CLI.

I have been using Cisco Ethernet Switches for four years.

We've been using them for a couple of years now. They have been running from day one after we installed them. Besides general maintenance issues, we never really have to turn them off.

They're very reliable and stable. These are the most stable switches that we have. In a country like ours, Cisco switches are the only devices that have second-hand value. You could go to a second-hand shop and buy a second-hand industrial version, not the small business or domestic version, of the Cisco switch or router. It will still serve you well.

We've not really used much of the technical support even though for the new switches, we pay for it. The main benefit is the updates on iOS. We've never really had a situation where something went wrong with it, and we had to get in touch with technical support.

The initial setup is straightforward. I wonder why some of the new Cisco switches still come with anterior port RS232 and why do they still maintain that. 

Price is a pain point for us. We've lost a lot of bids, and the reason has been that we majorly quoted Cisco devices. Some of our competitors quoted other devices like Ubiquity or Microchip. Some even quoted this Chinese product TP-Link, and they won the bid over us because we quoted Cisco. Meanwhile, the major reason why we quoted Cisco is reliability and stability from day one. They also last longer. The prices could be worked on so that they become more affordable.

We had to deploy a city-wide WiFi network, and we were working in conjunction with Google. Because of the price, even Google recommended a product called Ruckus, so we used Ruckus over Cisco. Its price and license were the main reasons. You have to pay to renew the license every year. Even though you also renew the licenses for Ruckus, but they are much cheaper than Cisco. So, while I would recommend Cisco any time, the trouble remains with the pricing.

I would highly recommend it, especially for people who are doing wide-scale deployments like campus networks or a city-wide network square. 

I would rate Cisco Ethernet Switches a ten out of ten. I don't see any product that performs better. We had a Chinese company coming in to do a bunch of presentations and stuff like that, but at the end of the day, those of us who are at the back doing the configurations understand that it is nothing closer to what Cisco offers.

We use this solution for our university campus network.

The most valuable feature of this solution is the stability.

The solution is simple to configure.

The layer-2 switching is very fast.

We would like to have the option of two power supplies on these switches. It is important for us because these switches are installed in our data center and critical departments. These units have to be available all of the time.

I would like to see this solution automatically store multiple versions of the configuration file. For example, Juniper switches will save forty versions of the configuration, while Cisco will only store one. If you want to keep more than one then you need to make it manually. If you need to restore it then you will have to use the saved file to do that manually, as well. In the large switches, they do keep one primary image and the backup image, which is good, but it is not like Juniper. I can roll back to any version within the last forty that have been committed. It's a very, very nice feature that I would like to see in Cisco equipment.

This is a very stable solution. You install it and then you don't have to touch it for many years.

At this level, the edge, we are not concerned with scalability. We will be able to update the edge using the new uplink port module if we need to.

The core switches are scalable. You can add another slot of forty-eight ports with 10-gigabit each. 

On the university campus, we have approximately thirty thousand users. These are not concurrent connections. We have more than twenty thousand students, about six thousand employees, and there are guests. I can say that more than twenty thousand connections may be active at one time.

We have about one thousand switches, and we have four people in charge of maintenance. They do the installation, repairs, and all of the other tasks in the data center. Three are technicians and one is a manager.

We work with our vendor, who in turns works with the Cisco support. There are times, however, when we need to get support directly from Cisco as well.

We are satisfied with both the local vendor support and support from Cisco. When we have problems, they put the effort into it until the problem is solved.

We had a problem with the structure of the switches in the core. We weren't sure what the problem was, but we were helped at every step of the process. Cisco was in contact with us every day until the problem was solved. We are very satisfied with the support.

I have experience with Juniper LAN switches, but that was with a previous company.

The university campus had bought Juniper switches about six years ago, but they are moving completely to Cisco equipment. Cisco is more expensive than Juniper by perhaps double. The price is higher because they are more stable.

We still have about one hundred Juniper switches out of our one thousand in total.

The initial setup of this solution is very simple.

You can copy the image to the switch using FTP and run a command to install it. The process is very simple and we always upgrade our switches without any problems.

This is an expensive solution, but you are paying for stability.

We evaluated Meraki switches but they were not suitable for the university campus.

We are looking forward to the 10-gigabit uplink port, which is an improvement that we have waited for. We expect to have this new module in one or two months.

Cisco has a family of Small Business Switches called SG. For example, the SG300 model. This is a cheaper model, and although they are missing some protocols, they are very good. Out of our one thousand switches, we have about one hundred SG models. The price of these is lower than Juniper switches.

I surely recommend this product, and the new Cisco line seems to be even stronger. There are improvements in terms of new modules and power supplies, and the price is not increasing.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

I use the product for endpoint and server connectivity. I also use it as a core switch.

The product is the best in the market. It always works whether the environment is cold or hot. The product is pretty much reliable and stable.

The technical support should be improved.

I have been using the solution for seven years.

I rate the tool’s stability a ten out of ten.

The scalability of the solution depends on the models. I rate the scalability a nine out of ten.

I have contacted support many times. The support is good, but not that good.

Neutral

The initial setup is very straightforward and simple.

The solution is not too expensive.

If someone uses the solution for the first time, they must know that network design is the most important part. They must pick the right models. Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

We primarily use the solution in our data center or campus connectivity. We're using bridges to connect end-user devices and terminals.

The solution comes from a solid company that always offers good quality products. It's a real market leader in this area and can provide end-to-end solutions.  

The initial setup is straightforward. It's not too hard.

The product offers very good customer support. It's likely the best in the industry.

There is very good distribution around the globe. 

The products are very reliable.

A single switch is very easy to manage.

Cisco doesn't do everything 100% perfect. There are competitors that have developed simpler and cheaper options, for example. The solution really should offer better pricing. It would help them stay competitive.

The product is a bit difficult to manage as there's a different management system now.

The network management system could be improved. 

I've worked with the solution for 25 years now. I've used it for decades. I have a wealth of experience with this product.

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

The product scales quite well. It works for any size organization. A company can also expand it out if they need to.

We have around 2,500 customers and half of them use Cisco.

Technical support is excellent. It's the best in the industry.

As an implementor, I've worked with a variety of solutions, including Aruba, Mellanox, Juniper, Ruckus, and more. I've worked with most of the vendors in the industry.

The initial setup is not overly complex. It's pretty straightforward. 

The deployment depends. It can take from a couple of minutes to a couple of months. It depends on the project and it depends on the size of the network.

How many people you need for the deployment depends on the size of the job. Some companies have their own on-site engineers.

The solution does not come cheap. It's quite pricey.

You do need a license in order to use the solution.

I work with the latest version of the solution. I'm an implementor and my company is a Cisco Gold partner.

I would recommend the solution to others. I would rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

We have them set up for customers, including SMB, Kindergarten through grade 12 schools, higher education organizations, and some enterprises. It's pretty much been used for everything except the federal government.

The Cisco software does everything under one umbrella better than the competition. HP kind of has the capability. I'm not sure if they still have it, however, they used to license Cisco's iOS software for their own switches, which were decent switches as well. Now, there's Aruba, however, they've been through a bunch of different changes over the years. ThreeCom was part of HP for a while. In any case, Cisco offers sort of a one-stop-shop of options.

It's all-encompassing and can help you in all these different areas. If people realize that they want something that's going to work, that's pretty foolproof, then Cisco's always worth the investment.

The initial setup has gotten easier over the years.

The stability is excellent.

The solution is very scalable.

Technical support is quite helpful and responsive. 

The thing that people usually complain about is that they're a little bit more expensive than other options. That said, you get what you pay for and it's such a good solution.

You do have to buy into the Cisco architecture to be able to use them.

You have to make sure you size appropriately at the outset. They're for the smaller markets usually, and you just want to make sure you don't purchase something under what you might grow to. Users should try to think a little bit bigger than what they want just so that they can have extra ports if they need them, instead of having to buy another one quicker than expected.

Our company has worked with Cisco probably for more than 20 years. The company is 31 years old, and we've actually always worked with Cisco Switches since the beginning. We have the same master engineer that has been with us for probably 28 of the 30 years. He's always been working with that.

The solution is very stable. That's one of the main benefits of it. It's super stable, and it's been proven for years.

They've got many solutions for small companies, which we work with, and some of our biggest customers, and even multinationals can use Cisco probably better than anybody else. That's why the fact that international community likes it so much. They can use it anywhere in the world in companies of any size. It scales very well.

Technical support is usually very good. You're paying for the best, so the tech support is really good as well. We are quite satisfied with the level of service provided. 

We also have experience with solutions such as Juniper, Aruba, and Ruckus. 

If the people want to save some money, they'll go with a Ruckus switch or something else as it's less expensive. With Cisco, it has you covered, however, it's a little bit more expensive, and if you don't like the fact that it's got the closed infrastructure, it's a closed architecture, you're not going to mix and match it with switches from other companies.

In terms of the initial setup, I'm never really involved in it. It's our engineers that do that. It's a definite effort to get everything set up and working correctly. It's not just out of the box, however, these days they've all gotten so much better. The Cisco products of today would be much easier to put together than the ones in the past.

The pricing is high. It's expensive, however, you get what you pay for and it is an excellent solution.

I would advise new users to work with a reseller that has a good history of working with Cisco and that can do a good game plan upfront with what your actual long-term goals and needs will be.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. The product is excellent, however, nothing is perfect, which is why I haven't rated it at a perfect ten. There are always ways to improve.