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.
"We like the stability and scalability of Cisco Ethernet Switches."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco Ethernet Switches is its hardware."
"This is a great solution for network switching and security."
"The features that I have found most valuable are the core reliability and the switching group. All the features are very generic switching features with high reliability. That is the main key point I can highlight."
"Remote access is a valuable feature."
"I like that it's easy to use."
"The most valuable feature is that we create a network as a villain."
"I'm satisfied with Cisco switches. It's stable and beautiful."
"The initial setup was straightforward."
"The ease of use of these switches is very good because of the Cisco CLI. If you are familiar with CLI, then you can configure the switch that way. It also has a relatively straightforward web interface. Using the web interface is good for beginners or people who aren't familiar with Cisco CLI. However, having a common command line interface method is great for some of our more advanced guys who are familiar with it."
"One of the biggest benefits of the remote management is that it's easy to use and you can use it from a mobile device or tablet with the app they've developed... If one of my engineers is out in the field at a client and an alert comes in from another client, that engineer can take that alert and look at it in real-time."
"The ability to manage them is the big valuable feature. The ease of use is great."
"Since it has a web interface, it is easy to set up. You don't have to take three years of training somewhere for a lot of money."
"The most valuable feature is the fact that Insight is cloud-managed. The whole reason behind it is that there is one central place to manage it. You can pre-configure everything and you can get access to it without having to get onto the client's network. That makes it easy to use and deploy."
"Netgear switches are highly reliable. We haven't done anything particularly sophisticated with them."
"We have a wide range of switches for various applications, including a collection specifically designed for ProAV, as well as Multi-gig Switches, which are also quite well-known or unique."
"One thing we did have to work around is, on the broadcast side, we're reliant on the PTP protocol, precision time protocol, and the Cisco switches in general, don't support that."
"The solution needs to work on lowering the amount of bugs. We find them quite regularly."
"Cisco should strive to improve the software for its switches."
"Integration with third-party products could be improved."
"This may be something that they are already working on, but it would be an improvement if they could add a layer of security to layer two and layer three to protect the server and to protect the data."
"Very highly priced in comparison to other similar products."
"Cisco could also open the API up to work closely with other systems."
"The installation is difficult and requires further training documentations."
"There are a lot of systems that are moving into different areas. There are a lot of cloud-based things happening. One nice feature that I've seen in other switches is artificial intelligence on the actual porting. They've got AI technology that will tell you when a port is down. They not only tell you when a port is down; they also tell you when a port is running slower. You can do a cable-fault check, or you can do other checks. It would be nice to have this information in NETGEAR. This feature might already be there in a new release of the NETGEAR's firmware, but I haven't seen it."
"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."
"An area for improvement would be creating a wizard that can do a lot of common stuff. Instead of having some manual configuration for common features, they may want to have a single wizard that could be put in place which would let you walk through creating multiple VLANs and different routes between VLANs in a wizard. Then, you wouldn't have to dig in so deep."
"The tool does not offer extra firewall security."
"Though the tool's useability is good, it has certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"The tool needs to improve its network management. The tool can be also more simplified."
"What I'd like to see is more compatibility with virtual stacking, so that 4300-series switches and 3300-series switches will actually stack together and that virtual switch stacks, themselves, are not limited to just six devices, so that they can create larger loops with more bandwidth and more redundancy."
"I would like an email notification in case of errors or failures. If it was possible for the switch to email out an error log or notification note, especially in cases where we have the switches offsite (on the other side of town), then if something was to go wrong, it would be great to know about it before our client goes to use it for a big event, and it doesn't work. While I know that it does do SNMP, which is sort of standard, in the AV world, that is not always an option for us. We are usually running our own little network box and don't always have access to an SNMP server. We may just have simple Internet access or something similar."
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.
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