NETGEAR Switches Other Solutions Considered

JD
Systems Consultant at DBI Systems

Depending on the size and scope of the project, we might use a different switch. For our smaller, simpler projects, we are typically using Luxul because they are very inexpensive and a decent performing switch. They also have some certain form factor things that we like to have, such as all their ports are on the back. With some of our clients, I would rather not have to touch their network, so not having anything to physically plug into on the front of their equipment practices is a big deal. Then, for some other QSC specific stuff, they have some preconfigured switches from Dell that we've used just from a warranty and service standpoint. E.g., if the manufacturer provides and preconfigures the switch, they'll warranty any switch issues, which is, for us as a company who provides service, a big deal.

For this project, I looked into a few other options, like Cisco. However, all the information that I could find on them, like their pricing, for what I needed was not competitive. Because this was an SDVoE project, I felt much more comfortable going with NETGEAR. knowing they are one of the founding partners of the SDVoE Alliance.

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JC
Owner at Alpha Tech

NETGEARs have been my go-to switches ever since 3Com went away. I've tried other ones too, like TP-Link, a bunch of Intel switches. I tried the HPE switches for a little bit. But NETGEAR has always been easy to use, straightforward, good, and works.

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JC
Information Technology Manager at KING & KING ARCHITECTS, LLP

We evaluated Cisco, Juniper, Dell, and HP but they were all nearly twice the price of NETGEAR. I also had some hesitation to some. There seems to be some hesitation by some IT professionals to use NETGEAR for their enterprise and business networking, but so far, I'm happy.

We also considered Ubiquiti. We have a couple of Ubiquiti wireless access points. So I said, "Well, I'll just look at them." Ubiquiti was a possibility, but a lot of what this came down to was that there seems to be some hesitation in the IT world about using NETGEAR for enterprise and for business use. They do have a pretty large in-home user market. 

I have a couple of older NETGEAR switches that are at least as old as the Nortel ones that I just replaced. They have been on for 15 years and have never been down. I thought that if they're still going, they can't be that bad. I'll try it.

The primary reasons we chose NETGEAR over Ubiquiti, Cisco, and other products are because NETGEAR seemed stable and it frankly seems easier to set up, especially more than something like Cisco.

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Buyer's Guide
NETGEAR Switches
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about NETGEAR Switches. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
SW
UC Deployment Engineer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

It fits into the Pro AV space better than a lot of other competitors. The benefit to that is their ordering structure is super easy compared to their competitors. You have one or two SKUs and don't have to fight to ensure you have the correct licenses, extra pieces, or parts. From an ordering standpoint, this makes it super easy for our different project engineers.

We use a bunch of different vendors depending on customer preference and projects:

  • I do a lot of Cisco, whether it's the Small Business Series or Cisco Catalyst product line. 
  • I do a little with Extreme Networks and their different product lines from switching. 
  • I have done a bit with Dell EMC.

They are on par with other AV switch manufacturers, e.g., Pakedge, Cisco Small Business Series, and Extreme Networks. Though, they are closer in cost to Extreme Networks. They are more in the mid-range from an AV product price, maybe a bit higher. You can't beat their features compared to other vendors in that product range and capacity. AV specific only, they are mid-range price-wise.

Pros for NETGEAR Switches: 

  • The price point and features that they supply/provide in their product fall into an area that's typically missed a bit by other vendors, which is huge. 
  • The web UI is pretty intuitive.
  • It's pretty easy to set up, especially compared to some of the other vendors.

Cons for NETGEAR Switches: 

  • While they have all these features that you can configure, it is a double-edged sword. As you go deeper into the switch, there are so many options that it can become a bit confusing at times. For most of our projects, we don't deal too heavily with a multicast routing between switches or some of the advanced features. However, when you do get into that, that is where it gets a little confusing.
  • They're not quite as heavy in the enterprise side of things. If our customers are standardized upon a particular vendor, like Cisco, it doesn't leave us any room to negotiate, and say, "We want to bring this other vendor in." E.g., NETGEAR isn't used quite as often in enterprise spaces. Most enterprise is either Cisco or Juniper. 
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ES
Chief Technology Officer at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

I'm familiar with many other solutions: Extreme, Luxul, Cisco, Aruba, and Dell, and none of them even come close to NETGEAR.

The others don't have IGMP Plus, that's exclusive in NETGEAR. And balancing PIM nodes and all that other stuff on a large network is a pain. It doesn't work that well. NETGEAR even has functions that the other switches just don't have.

With IGMP the querier is not necessarily equal on all switches. And the amount of buffer that NETGEAR has feels like it could take on twice the amount of the bandwidth that we're placing on it. It just feels like the NETGEAR switch was made to do AV multicasting, instead of trying to fit AV multicasting on a network switch. It feels like it was designed the other way around.

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DS
Owner at a tech services company

You have a lot of options. You always have Cisco. You had Nortel. There are many. They have a lot of competition. I'm a NETGEAR shop. I don't consider Cisco products.

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HM
CEO at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees

Before we went to NETGEAR, we had a look at, of course, Ubiquity; we had a look at Meraki vs NETGEAR, and we had a look at TP-Link. All together we had four in the running, and NETGEAR came out as what we thought was the best solution and, in the end, it was the best solution.

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PM
Owner at Komansu Electronics Pvt Ltd

Customers generally prefer Cisco. The general perception is that Cisco is more secure and has better encryption. People who cannot afford Cisco choose NETGEAR and D-Link.

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KW
Network Delivery Architect at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

I'm certified at the professional level in Cisco. I have also used Cisco series switches, Extreme switches, and Aruba/HPE switches. I am familiar with all four different manufacturers of switches.

NETGEAR has a high-level enterprise product in the 4300 series. Comparable to the Cisco Catalyst platform and Extreme Summit platform, NETGEAR has a much higher value option. Therefore, you are getting the same functionality for a better price point than you would with a Cisco or Extreme switch. They also have dedicated AV support which neither of the other two vendors have.

NETGEAR has a very high rating for price to performance compared to other vendors in the market. For example, Cisco's pricing is exponentially higher than NETGEAR for the same performance.

The difference is NETGEAR is a very cost-effective solution with the same internal capacity that some of the other vendors have. Functionality-wise, the switch works just as well as a higher-priced Cisco switch or higher-priced Extreme switch. The reliability is there. NETGEAR is selling a variety of models and the addition of the modular switch is a huge advantage in the marketplace. Other vendors haven't paid attention to the required uplink needs for larger AV and streaming deployments. NETGEAR has a pretty good feel for the pulse of the industry as a whole and their development toward higher capacity uplinks and bandwidth is exceeding what the other vendors are doing right now. 

I am very familiar with Cisco Meraki. It is a great solution. The issue with Cisco Meraki as a solution in an enterprise is the cost and what's needed for the streaming platforms. Meraki isn't as focused on the uplink requirements for the AV collaboration industry like NETGEAR is. 

I'm familiar with Ubiquiti, but we don't use or quote them at all because we feel like they are more of a residential product than an enterprise product. Therefore, we don't quote them for any of our projects.

There are some new vendors who are advertising in the market, like Luxul. These are new brands who have come from the residential side and are trying to push into the AV market. They don't have the name recognition that NETGEAR has and we have seen some issues with their reliability.

Part of the reason that we recommend NETGEAR in our organization is their M4300 platform is equivalent to what Cisco produces in their Catalyst solution and Extreme produces in their Summit series, as far as functionality. The name, NETGEAR, is known worldwide; it's a big vendor with a large support base. It is a quality product because it has the name behind it.

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EG
Owner/CTO at a tech services company

I looked at Cisco Meraki vs NETGEAR, and Ubiquiti as well. I ended up choosing NETGEAR because of the cost, the quality, and the ease of use. Insight makes it easy. I know Meraki is Insight-like: you plug them in, they dial home and you can set it up, but Meraki is very expensive compared to NETGEAR. I also looked at HPE switches.

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CS
System Engineer at Diversified

We have used Extreme, Cisco, Pakedge, Luxul, and Aurora switches. Though, we typically use Cisco and Extreme.

NETGEAR won us over with its scalability, pricing, and specific implementations within AV switching.

We're testing it up against Cisco Catalyst and Extreme Networks 440 and 700 products without having any issues. We can pass the same video over these switches, though the functionality settings are a bit different. Some of the settings are not named specifically the same. So, there is a bit of a learning curve. However, we're able to get video to pass properly functionality-wise.

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KS
VP, Accounting and HR at Parrish Consulting

We have considered Meraki. We've not used Ubiquiti that frequently. 

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BH
Chief Technology Officer at Genesis Technologies

Since we were looking to go to 10GbE, our choices were either Cisco or NETGEAR. 

Ubiquiti wasn't a consideration. When I have worked with them in the past, there have been many issues. Therefore, I would not consider using them as reliable backbone.

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Jitender_Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of IT at Somani

Compared to NETGEAR, Cisco has lots of other features within the switch where you can include lots of securities. The switches are very sustainable and can run for  years and years if the environment is okay. There are a few securities that we use to build a firewall or some other level where we can put lots of security on the port, as far as the loop and hacking goes. If anything happens in the network, there are lots of things that can be controlled at switch level. NETGEAR has less of these kinds of options. 

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WW
Developer with 11-50 employees

At the beginning, I was looking at Cisco vs NETGEAR but I didn't get any response from Cisco. I also looked at HPE, but it was a bit too expensive for a 10GB. I did a minor bit of research about their products, but it quickly became obvious that NETGEAR was the way to go for us.

I didn't consider Ubiquiti. Ubiquiti is okay for smaller deployments but, as I said, we are scaling up in the coming months to about 50 workstations, a few office machines and about ten servers, so I don't know if Ubiquiti would have been an option for us. I know they have high-end gear also, but I didn't look into it.

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it_user976371 - PeerSpot reviewer
Operations Manager at DLL Technologies

I looked at a lot of the competitors out there including NETGEAR vs Cisco Ethernet Switches and Barracuda; you name it. I looked at all the different switches. NETGEAR was the one that caught my eye, especially with that modular switch.

I looked into Ubiquiti, but we already had Ubiquiti access points on the property. Personally, I didn't like the way that the controllers and the software were set up. I definitely like the NETGEAR stuff better.

The price point, compared to a lot of the competitors that didn't have the modular switch, was about 20 to 30 percent less expensive. The functionality and the tech support were big things too, in my decision to go with NETGEAR.

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Lixin Zhang - PeerSpot reviewer
Product group manager at GALYET TECH

The M4250 series of Audio over IP switches is much more efficient and cheaper than Cisco. I'm also looking for these kinds of switches from Huawei, but the market is not big enough to allow Huawei or Cisco to produce a new product line for Audio over IP.

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Angel Georev - PeerSpot reviewer
Product Manager at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

I haven't really evaluated other solutions. I'm quite overloaded as it is. 

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JP
Founder/Managing Director at Microtel Netlinks Pvt. Ltd.

We evaluated Cisco which has more features than NETGEAR. As a brand name, Cisco carries added value and more brand awareness than NETGEAR. Cisco doesn't offer the lifetime warranty we get from NETGEAR. The choice between the two is really about an organization's requirements. If you're dealing with audio and video products, then Cisco is definitely the way to go. But if you're dealing with data and camera networks, then NETGEAR comes out on top. 

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PS
Director Of Operations at a retailer with 51-200 employees

I use D-Link Switches and Wi-Fi routers from NETGEAR.

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JM
President at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Ubiquity is the one that's doing the free cloud management. I had been using some of their access points toward the concept of trying to get into unified management rather than all these different brands. I've been trying to do that with NETGEAR, with their access points, Ethernet switches, and routers. I'm just finding limitations, or it's not competitive if I have to pay $10 a year per device to manage the NETGEAR when Ubiquity will do it for free. It's part of the benefit of you buying their product. Ten bucks a year isn't much until you start having 20 devices at a company. Then it's an extra $200 that you have to get them to pay, when it's free with the other guy's product.

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AB
Cybersecurity & IT Operations Professional (VirtualCxO) at BrainWave Consulting Company, LLC

No, I recommended a solution based on my experiences with quality and functionality of switches in the mid-tier market.

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it_user646785 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior System Administrator at a agriculture with self employed

We've looked at Cisco's Merakis vs NETGEAR and HPEs vs NETGEAR and done price comparisons versus manageability, but the NETGEARs, far and away, were better. Merakis are very good, but the price point is way too high, and the required subscriptions could leave some of our smaller customers without connections because they're forgetful or just don't know to do these things or don't want to pay for them, constantly, like that. I like the way that NETGEARs work. They go well with our business model.

We did not consider Ubiquiti. We need something more mainstream and we weren't willing to go with them. We don't think they've been in the game enough.

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SB
Principal Consultant at a tech consulting company with 1-10 employees

We were aware of lots of other options, but we didn't do any formal evaluation of any others.

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JC
President at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

I am currently looking for a replacement because I have recently moved offices and I now have more devices plugged in. I am looking into purchasing a 24-port Ubiquiti switch. I am looking at the Ubiquiti line because I don't want to pay a yearly fee.

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Buyer's Guide
NETGEAR Switches
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about NETGEAR Switches. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.