Cisco Ethernet Switches Scalability
I rate Cisco switches 10 out of 10 for scalability. We design our networks to be scalable. Scaling is only a matter of procuring new devices.
View full review »JW
Julien Wattebled
Network Manager at Telio Management GmbH
I do not like the way the stack feature is done on Cisco. I mostly prefer Fortinet or ESL from Brocade. It's way more flexible and straightforward, and you just need to understand the logic. With Cisco, it's a black box. It's hard to understand.
It is possible to scale. However, you do reach a limitation with eight switches placed together. We have four switches in the data center, so we've never hit a scalability threshold.
We have five admins on the solution, and across the company, we have 30 people that have access to the solution.
View full review »The solution is scalable so I rate scalability an eight out of ten.
View full review »Buyer's Guide
Cisco Ethernet Switches
April 2024
Learn what your peers think about Cisco Ethernet Switches. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2024.
768,740 professionals have used our research since 2012.
For enterprise-sized companies, Cisco is the number one product in the market. The solution is scalable and offers good resilience.
In my environment, we have 2,500 of our clients using the product. We need two to five administrators for the configuration part.
I don't know if my company plans to increase the solution's usage in the future.
The solution is scalable and depends on the desired model. You can create multiple contexts and extend your network by adding Nexus 5000 or 2000 for connections.
I am currently working on a big project with thousands of routers and 70% of them are Cisco switches. Scalability is not dependent on the number of users but is instead about providing access to the network.
View full review »PS
Parimal Sardar
Senior Manager - SBR Technical Services at Reliance Industries Ltd
I can scale Cisco Ethernet Switches when required. For example, when I'm running out of port, I need a new switch, but that only happens sometimes.
View full review »IT
reviewer1619394
Group CIO at a construction company with 10,001+ employees
Regarding the product's scalability, the scalability option will be available as long as the product or the hardware does not reach the end of life or support.
All the people working in my company use the solution, which comes to more than 8000 people.
My company plans to increase the number of users who use the solution.
This is a scalable product. It expands well.
We have about 50 users on the solution right now.
View full review »DS
David Skusek
Senior Project Manager / Systems Engineer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
This solution covers it all. I've done everything from simple 12-port switches for a small facility to a wide area network with core switches and multiple redundant communication lines and there haven't been any scalability issues. There's no one-size-fits-all in terms of maintenance required, it depends on the size of the organization.
SH
SHERIF-HASSAN
Manager (Customer Service) at Raya Integration
The platform is highly scalable. I rate the scalability a ten out of ten.
View full review »RN
Radha Nayani
Engineer -'SF' at NRSC
Our department is quite big. About 50 engineers are accessing different nodes.
View full review »It is a scalable solution.
There are around 3,000 to 4,000 users of the solution, considering that all the students in our university use it.
KV
reviewer2000751
IT Manager at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
Around 3,000 users use the solution in our organization.
I rate Cisco Ethernet Switches a nine out of ten for scalability.
SR
Shankar Raju S M
Senior Technical Director at National Informatics Center
I would rate the scalability of the product as an eight out of ten. About 3,000 users are currently using Cisco Ethernet Switches, and there are plans to increase usage as the hospital expands.
Since Cisco Ethernet Switches can be integrated with different modules, we can have one switch to scale up to 10, 15, or 20 switches. The solution is enterprise scalable and telecom scalable. I've got about 12 to 14 customers using Cisco products.
View full review »The solution is highly scalable.
View full review »I rate Cisco Ethernet switches seven out of 10 for scalability. Unless the switch is submodular, you can remove those modules and plug in better ones. Scalability is harder if it's fixed hardware, but it's easier to scale a virtualized network appliance.
View full review »DD
Domagoj Dujmic
Network Engineer at Dukat d.d.
Around 50,000 users are using Cisco Ethernet Switches in our organization.
I rate the solution’s scalability ten out of ten.
RI
reviewer1193922
Technical Project Manager at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
Ethernet does not scale very well because you've got distance limitations. Ethernet can only run for about one hundred meters or less, so you have to use Couplers. This distance limitation is why we use Fibre. Fibre optics is actually a better technology than Ethernet, but it's more expensive. Everything about it, the equipment, the nature of the way the Fibre cables are prepared, is a lot more expensive compared to Ethernet.
Ideally, everybody would like to run Fiber switches because it's a better technology that carries more bandwidth. The high price is due in part to the components. All the components that make Fibre work are expensive to produce. It can be relatively cheap for what we use it for but overall, it's way more expensive than Ethernet. If it wasn't for that then Fibre would have been the best solution. Ethernet, as it is right now, the cost price point for Ethernet is very good, so it won't be going anywhere fast soon. In terms of scalability, don't have limits. If you want to scale, you need to use Fiber to scale.
In terms of users, the organization right now has more than a thousand, and the previous one had approximately five thousand.
With respect to user roles, some are call center personnel, some platform systems guys, some are software developers, some project managers, some are marketing managers, some are sales managers, and some are professional services. Department-wise you have your legal, HR, and your finance department.
To my knowledge, our business is focused on doing work for clients so I expect that our usage of Ethernet Switches will be expanding.
View full review »We may switch to another solution, although this will depend on the cost. The dollar has multiplied five times over the past ten years, which means that certain things are not affordable in dollars at the moment. I am not saying that the best product would be be cost prohibitive for us. This said, one's budget and the cost of materials must be weighed.
DR
Dhruba Roy
Sr. Information Officer at Merino Industries Ltd (Merino Group)
I give Cisco Ethernet switches 10 out of 10 for scalability.
View full review »KR
Koushik Roy
Tata Medical Center logo Senior IT Infrastructure Supervisor at Tata Medical Center
We have around 3000 users. The tool is used daily.
I am the only one using this solution.
View full review »DM
Davy MANTE
Network Tech Leader at a aerospace/defense firm with 201-500 employees
Cisco Ethernet Switches are scalable.
View full review »HI
Hossam Ismail
Network Team Lead at ElSewedy Education
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.
View full review »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.
View full review »The scalability of the solution depends on the models. I rate the scalability a nine out of ten.
View full review »YF
reviewer975252
sTAM at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
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.
View full review »RK
accountm237963
Account Manager at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
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.
View full review »IP
Igor Pigariev
Cyber Security Consultant at Ukroboronprom
Cisco Switches are scalable.
We have 300 users using it and 5 guys from the IT department that support our network.
They are basically all engineers and some programmers.
View full review »TC
Toni Choroski
Office Ohrid at AGENCY FOR REAL ESTATE CADASTRE
I give the scalability a nine out of ten.
We currently have around 5,000 people using the solution. The amount of people is determined by the license we have. To scale up we need to increase our license.
View full review »AS
Ayman Said
Deputy IT Manager at ICAPP (Americana Group)
Cisco Ethernet Switches are scalable.
We have approximately 250 people using the Cisco Ethernet Switches.
View full review »KS
Ken Simiyu
Manager Infrastructure & Projects at Kinetic Pride
We usually over-spec, and there is no problem with scalability. They're able to handle everything very well. In all the fields where we are using them, we haven't encountered a situation that they are not able to handle. They work fine.
In our company, they are being used at different levels. They're basically serving everyone, and there are about 500 people in our company. They serve right up to the data center.
In terms of our plans to increase its usage, a lot of discussions are going on about moving to the cloud, SD-WAN, and things like that. With the ongoing situation of the pandemic, there have been discussions about scaling down the local network and moving towards service provision for remote workers, as opposed to on-prem. We might scale down the local network and move things to the cloud and other remote access technologies.
View full review »HW
Hamed Wasel
Sr. Security Network Engineer at Children's Cancer Hospital - Egypt 57357
The solution becomes more scalable as more switches are connected to the ACI fabric. We currently have 2,000 users and this is increasing all the time. We just increase our switches as our users increase.
DK
Deepak Khemani
Information Technology Security Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
The scalability is medium, that is, it's neither hard nor easy to scale.
Specifically, it is easy to scale up to a certain network size, but it becomes difficult beyond that.
View full review »RS
reviewer1515924
Network Engineer at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
They're doing the job fine. We have upgraded them when we needed to. We can scale as necessary.
I can't speak to how many users are currently on our switches.
View full review »MA
Mohamed Y Ahmed
Technical & Pre-Sales Manager at GateLock
This solution is scalable. If I want to add switches to the existing one, I can easily do it.
View full review »The solution is scalable. We have 1,000 people using the solution.
View full review »MN
reviewer2078835
Network Analyst at a manufacturing company with 11-50 employees
It's a scalable product. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so. It's no problem.
We've used it in a large company and had no issues.
View full review »BR
BACHI REDA
Responsable Infrastructures, Réseaux & Télécoms at a university with 201-500 employees
The scalability of the product is great, If a company needs to expand, it can. There is a lot of stacking and cascading that can happen.
View full review »CE
Chukwunenye Ekwe Jnr.
Senior Presale Manager at a tech services company with self employed
In terms of scalability, normally you have a 24 port switch or a 48 port switch, which are fixed to scalability. So you can't really go beyond what has been provided. If it's a 24 switch, it's 24 users, if it's 48 it's 48, except if you're using the switch as an extender for a wireless device. That is a different conversation, but if you're using it in a LAN environment and for a connected, wired connection, then you can't scale.
But you can connect multiple switches to themselves and stack them and make it one switch depending on your design.
View full review »The solution is scalable.
View full review »AA
Ankar Aung
Student at a educational organization with 201-500 employees
The solution is scalable and we have the ability to upgrade our appliances without impacting our services.
View full review »LM
Lusanda Matyunjwa
Enterprise and Security Manager at University of Fort Hare
This is a very scalable solution. When we started, we didn't have enough switches and other equipment. One of the beauties is that when we add new technologies or buy new switches, it scales.
We are in a university setting and there are new students every year, so we always have to connect more people to our network. It is definitely scalable and we plan to increase our usage in the future.
View full review »JM
Joel Masocha
IT Manager at a construction company with 10,001+ employees
Cisco switches are scalable. I manage two large sites and at the first site, we have about 200 people. The second site has about 300 people. We do not have any plan to expand, per se. I do have plans to upgrade the switches and probably redesign the environment for better efficiency.
View full review »PP
supervis809292
Supervisor of IT Infrastructure & Cybersecurity at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
Cisco Ethernet Switches are extremely scalable and have the broadest line of solutions in the market.
View full review »SG
reviewer1699986
First Assistant Vice President at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Cisco Ethernet switches are scalable. We have approximately 1,500 people using them in the company. We have a plan to increase our usage of Cisco by implementing an SD-WAN.
View full review »JD
Jim DeFilippis
CGO at TMS Consulting Inc
The solution has been absolutely fine so far and I have yet to run into any scalability issues just yet. A company should be able to expand if they need to.
We have about 100 people using the product at any given time.
View full review »TM
Tomasz Mikołajczyk
Telecommunication Team Leader at BIK
It is scalable. I don't have any problem with its scalability.
We have 500 people in my company. They don't directly work on these devices. I configure these devices, and they connect through these devices.
View full review »EK
Ender Kefoglu
Partner / Owner at Bimel Elektronik Mamuller Paz. Ltd.
This solution is scalable.
It depends on the customer, regarding the number of users. Recently we were awarded a contract for the Turkish military, and there will be several thousand people who will be using it.
View full review »NA
Nawaf AlTamimi
Network & System Security Consultant at Zakat House
In terms of scalability, it is scalable. With Cisco we have built-in stacks and stackable switches. And it has a stackable fiber from the main office to the Catalyst and the Nexus switch.
View full review »WK
William Kosinetz
CIO with 501-1,000 employees
DB
Dinusha Bandara
Consultant - Smart Buildings at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Scalability in the sense varies with switching. Some switches are fixed, which we cannot expand with the design, but some switches are those you can expand. It's basically the design. So scalability is good.
View full review »I think Cisco Ethernet Switches are quite scalable, with lots of options. It's not an issue at all for anyone to expand.
View full review »DC
reviewer1026921
ICT Manager/Systems Administrator at a university with 201-500 employees
The solution scales well. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so with ease.
We have about 1,300 users on the product currently.
View full review »DB
DInusha Bandara
Pre Sales Engineer at a non-tech company with 201-500 employees
In my experience, Cisco Ethernet Switches are scalable.
View full review »DR
Dmitriy Ronkin
Network Engineer at Transportation
Well, need more pro-active option to add PoE modules to Industrial switches.
View full review »LW
reviewer1578237
Senior Director of IT and Data Analytics at a performing arts with 201-500 employees
The scalability is pretty good, all you need to do is add more racks. We have approximately 70 people that rely on this solution from my organization.
View full review »SA
Saad Aslam
Senior Information Technology Manager at FAP Marine Terminals Ltd
There are no limitations to scalability. It depends on what you choose. Once you choose the product you want then collaborate with getting that box which is important.
You need to know what your plan is two years in advance, and how you want to upgrade it. You will need to select the box as it is.
If you make your own selection, there may be an issue. Cisco provides many scalable options.
View full review »Once you understand how the product works, it is easy to configure. I do not see any significant limitation on the scalability of the product so long as you have chosen the right product for use in your environment.
View full review »
On the specific cases I used, never. Adding new switches to the networks is painless (but please be careful with the VTP configuration though, as if it’s not configured you do have the possibility of a new switch giving you trouble with the VLAN configuration).
View full review »
MD
reviewer1638543
Network Engineer at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
It is very scalable. We have about 8,000 users.
View full review »
The Chassis can run out of slots as the environment expand further along.
View full review »
SC
reviewer946554
Head Of Information & Communication Technology at a transportation company with 51-200 employees
Sometimes we have issues with certain switches hanging.
View full review »CC
CornelCristea
Network and Service Development Manager at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
Some versions of the solution can scale with a stacking option. So far, we've been satisfied with the level of scalability we can achieve. We know what we can do using the right point in the network.
View full review »It is a scalable solution, and we have more than 35 customers who use it.
View full review »Cisco Ethernet Switches are scalable, much more than Jupiter.
View full review »SV
Sambasiva Rao Venigalla
Technical Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
This solution is very scalable.
View full review »IM
Ivan Manchev
Network Delivery Lead at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
It is very scalable.
In this company we have a single usage. I first started with Cisco routers in 1997, now we install Cisco routers all the time.
View full review »US
reviewer929688
Owner with self employed
We have not had to scale yet, we are normally working with a fixed size. We haven't had to worry about upsizing or downsizing.
For our purposes, we are not using this, but on the client-side, we have anywhere from two to eight users, they are made up of technicians, support staff, and engineers.
View full review »MN
Manish Nalawade
Owner at it logic
Our customers have between 2,000 and 2,500 users.
View full review »MS
reviewer1069713
Project Manager at a real estate/law firm with 10,001+ employees
Cisco Ethernet Switches is scalable.
View full review »DP
Devanand PR
IT Support Executive at a healthcare company with 51-200 employees
While the solution can scale, it's a costly endeavor. Scaling definitely will cost an organization more money.
We have about 60 or 70 users of the product within our organization.
View full review »PB
Pratap Barik
Data Center Admin at Sysnet Global Technologies
We are using the Cisco 4503-E and these switches are very scalable. There are some models that have plenty of ports.
Users do not connect directly to this switch. Rather, only servers are connected and we have perhaps 20 of them.
GS
Guido-Steusel
Solutions Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
The scalability of this solution is fine.
View full review »SC
Simon Chaba
ICT Manager at a aerospace/defense firm
It's very scalable, as you just need to buy new modules, and slot them in as and when required.
View full review »TM
reviewer1581096
Network Security Expert at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
I have some clients with approximately 1,600 users using the solution.
View full review »AR
reviewer1454613
VP of IT at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
The solution is scalable. We have deployed more than 1000 switches to customers.
View full review »CR
reviewer1305090
IT Manager at a renewables & environment company with 1,001-5,000 employees
This system can accommodate expansion without hampering the existing workflow and ensure an increase in output or efficiency.
View full review »The scalability of the solution, from what I understand, is good. We haven't actually tested the solution for scalability ourselves, however.
View full review »LD
reviewer1693239
IT support network at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
It is not easy to scale. We have between 1,000 to 2,000 users.
View full review »AK
Abdulqader Kaboudei
RF Planning Manager at Sabafon
We have found it to be scalable. We have approximately three million subscribers.
View full review »JH
reviewer1245285
Senior Network Security Advisor at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
Cisco Ethernet Switches can be scaled up.
We are not using this solution extensively, it is not our main solution.
View full review »I think this product is extremely scalable. I am fairly sure everyone in the world who's working with a computer is using it. Even you — whomever you are, and whether you know it or not.
GC
reviewer1042635
Science Technician at a government with 201-500 employees
The scalability of the solution is good.
I am the only one in my organization using the solution.
View full review »NW
reviewer1487706
Head of Technical at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
It's a scalable solution. Our end users are our customers. We have thousands of people using these switches that we have implemented.
View full review »ME
Muhammed Eslami
Solution Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
The solution is quite scalable. They support our stacking feature, which means we can stack up to eight switches together to have scalable port numbers in terms of port numbers and also throughput.
View full review »Scaling and upgrading the solution is easy. Our group has about 500 employees and all of them use Cisco and its switches.
View full review »AD
Adilson Dombaxi
Junior Network Engineer at Easy Systems
It is scalable.
View full review »AS
reviewer780981
Solution Engineer at a tech services company
We have around 500 switches deployed in one network.
View full review »SD
reviewer1196946
Solutions Architect at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Scalability varies from model to model. We have a particular model that was sized according to our use case and requirements. In general, they are very scalable.
View full review »TW
reviewer1386447
Member of Technical Staff at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
I am not sure how well this product scales. Everybody in our company uses it.
View full review »TJ
Tarun Jain
Director at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
I have found the solution to have good scalability. Cisco is the pioneers on switching technology, they are very good. There are approximately 2,500 users using the solution.
View full review »SC
reviewer955029
CTO at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
We don't have much of a demand to significantly increase the workload on network switch so we don't experience any scalability issues.
View full review »Buyer's Guide
Cisco Ethernet Switches
April 2024
Learn what your peers think about Cisco Ethernet Switches. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2024.
768,740 professionals have used our research since 2012.