The unique ring topology protocol and pricing makes this a unique solution worthy of consideration
What is our primary use case?
I have been a network engineer since the mid-nineties. The company I am in now has19 buildings and 50 plus switches, all Extreme. We use lots of gen one and gen twos — either the X460s or X690s — using the SummitStack. That is our standard variant of the Extreme Networks. We do have a couple of old 460s and a couple of old 480s, but we use the SummitStack for those versions instead of the Black Diamond.Pros and Cons
- "The unique ring topology is actually a handy innovation."
- "The price is low compared to the competition."
- "The training and resources for learning are lacking."
What other advice do I have?
Advice that I would give to people considering switches is that I think Extreme products are pretty feature-rich and they are definitely worth considering alongside the competition. They just have to be aware they are not going to be working like they would with Cisco, which means fewer resources and potentially fewer candidates to work with the solution as engineers. On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate ExtremeSwitching as an eight-out-of-ten.