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Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software vs. Cisco Catalyst Switches

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software

    Score9 out of 10
    N/ACisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) software is the core OS for the ASA suite. It provides firewall functionality, as well as integration with context-specific Cisco security modules. It is scaled for enterprise-level traffic and connections.N/A

    Cisco Catalyst Switches

    Score9.1 out of 10
    N/ACisco's Catalyst is one of that company's brand of network switches.N/A
    Pricing
    Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) SoftwareCisco Catalyst Switches
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) SoftwareCisco Catalyst Switches
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) SoftwareCisco Catalyst Switches
    Considered Both Products
    Cisco
    Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software
    Our Palo Altos and Cisco ASAs are pretty comparable. They both seem to work well when used in an HA pair. They can both do IP/Port based ACLs. But the Palos also have APP-ID which helps to make sure that the traffic passing through your firewall is the type of traffic …
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software
    We evaluated other Cisco security devices and other vendors, but chose the Cisco ASA due to it's price point and compatibility. While Fortinet and Palo Alto are leaders in the field, we found that for the price, the features we needed were fully satisfied by the ASA. We …
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software
    Cisco ASA has good performance and capabilities for the most of scenarios. However other brands are good only in specific capabilities. Cisco support is the best compared (in my open cases experience) compared with other brands support.
    Incentivized
    Cisco
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    87%
    Would buy again
    40 Answers
    98%
    Would buy again
    600 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    95%
    Delivers good value for the price
    42 Answers
    96%
    Delivers good value for the price
    531 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    91%
    Happy with the feature set
    42 Answers
    98%
    Happy with the feature set
    600 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    36 Answers
    97%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    490 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    98%
    Implementation went as expected
    41 Answers
    98%
    Implementation went as expected
    568 Answers
    Features
    Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) SoftwareCisco Catalyst Switches
    Firewall
    Comparison of Firewall features of Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software and Cisco Catalyst Switches
    Feature
    Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software
    8.9
    50 Ratings
    4% above category average
    Cisco Catalyst Switches
    -
    Ratings
    Identification Technologies7.932 Ratings00 Ratings
    Visualization Tools7.931 Ratings00 Ratings
    Content Inspection8.433 Ratings00 Ratings
    Policy-based Controls8.446 Ratings00 Ratings
    Active Directory and LDAP8.448 Ratings00 Ratings
    Firewall Management Console9.049 Ratings00 Ratings
    Reporting and Logging8.949 Ratings00 Ratings
    VPN10.049 Ratings00 Ratings
    High Availability9.649 Ratings00 Ratings
    Stateful Inspection10.046 Ratings00 Ratings
    Proxy Server9.032 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) SoftwareCisco Catalyst Switches
    Small Businesses
    SonicWall NSA Series
    Score8.3 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    Barracuda CloudGen Firewall
    Score9.6 out of 10
    RUCKUS Ethernet Switches
    Score1 out of 10
    Enterprises
    F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Cisco Ethernet Switches
    Score9.1 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) SoftwareCisco Catalyst Switches
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (88 ratings)
    9.0
    (774 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    7.1
    (4 ratings)
    8.9
    (40 ratings)
    Usability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.6
    (46 ratings)
    Availability
    7.5
    (2 ratings)
    8.8
    (14 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.3
    (14 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.7
    (8 ratings)
    8.6
    (38 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (5 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    8.0
    (12 ratings)
    Configurability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.8
    (10 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    6.5
    (2 ratings)
    8.1
    (9 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.2
    (14 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.9
    (36 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.2
    (37 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) SoftwareCisco Catalyst Switches
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Cisco
    Cisco ASA's are great for internal network connected access between a firewall and the central management server. And, for complex networks where high security requirements with overly strict compliance are necessary. For networks with limited connectivity to the core or for poor network connectivity these are not the best solution. There are other more stand-alone firewall's that do this better. These firewall's are a little more complex to set up to start with so significant knowledge of these devices is required to set them up and ensure they are best practice installed.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    Well-suited for big companies like mine, where we have a lot of users that we have to connect together. Getting all the switches into one big stack that you can just manage all at one time is fantastic for ease of use. Not suited for maybe smaller mom and pop shops or smaller companies that don’t have as many. They could probably go with something much easier to manage.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Cisco
    • ASA is our VPN concentrator. The client and server are very stable and very easy to use
    • ASA also offers Intrusion Prevention, to an extent. This is also very useful for an improved security posture for a small company
    • ASA allowed us to scale very quickly. We could onboard clients, partners, and consultants and give them a great onboarding experience as well
    • Administrative costs with ASA are low. It's very easy to administer.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    • Easy-to-use management interfaces. The CLI commands go across the whole Cisco Catalyst Switches 9000 series, so it makes it easy, the code being the same on the 9000 series. Just being able to do port channels, trunks, and connecting up edge switches to it with the Cisco Catalyst Switches 9000 Series.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Cisco
    • The ASDM software is at times a nightmare to install because of different java versions[.]
    • [The firewall] could do with a power button, just to be able to do a hard reboot when needed[.]
    • It would be nice to manage the firewall via the web on port 443[.]
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    • One thing is that these, every time Cisco gets a new switch, they just make an amendment to the power supply, so they'll just put a knob on it. So let's say if you lose any power supply unit, you'll have to purchase another one, which costs a lot of extra money because we have a lot of another power supply units from the redundant, which we can use, but we can't now because they have just tweaked the modeling of that. Which makes no sense, particularly to me because it's an extra money making machine kind of a thing. But that's fine.
    • Another thing is these ports, I believe they are a bit less of, if I can say the quality of the oldest switches, they were quite sturdy. As I said earlier, the new switches, they're very light and when you lift them you feel it. So that's one thing, which I think the quality or the material which we are using has gone down.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Cisco
    To be honest there has been now great products out in the market compared to Cisco ASA. I beleieve Cisco has to do a lot of improvement in this area. The other defeiniete factors is the cost when it comes to renewals which is always a premium on Cisco products
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    They are consistently reliable and this switch in particular is a very affordable solution. We can place the Cisco Catalyst 1000 Series Switches gear in areas that we normally would not place a switch because it is affordable enough to make it justifiable. And because it is a reliable solution, we are confident it will continue to provide service over the long haul.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Cisco
    Cisco by and far does a great job with the Catalyst line. From a layer 2 dumb switch all the way up to ISP carrier grade switching within the Catalyst portfolio. The best part about it is command parity among the various tiers of product. The only differences are going to lie in what features are available per switch.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Cisco
    I generally have not noticed the outages, however since it's a machine it can malfunction, we need to implement the firewall infrastructure in such a way that it is highly available with device failure, region failure etc. Else any solution will be having the issues if they are not build with resiliency.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    We have very few is any outages due to a Cisco hardware failure. Some of our gear is exposed to some pretty harsh environments, and they keep on ticking!
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Performance
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Cisco
    No, the packets flow. Sometimes you will see collisions and broadcast storms can happen which will slow performance but that can be fixed and the packets will flow.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Cisco
    The support is usually very good and gets back to you very quickly. However I had some instances of when two engineers will give me wildly different answers to what I thought was a simple question. Overall however I do rate the support highly and they are generally always very good.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    We rarely have issues with the product. I have only had to contact support one time since we put it in and that was to see if another vendor was giving me accurate information on an issue I was having.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    In-Person Training
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Cisco
    Cisco Networking Academy partners with many local Colleges and High Schools to provide great hands-on training. You do need to drive to learn the topic. The in-class session only go so far. You really need to apply this to the real world. Cisco makes it easy for business to connect via CLC or Cisco Learning Credits.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Online Training
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Cisco
    My own personal research to get the information I want is very handy and helped me many times
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    Cisco
    It was quite a good one, how ever requires an expertise to deploy hence the SMB segment would be finding it difficult to implement this product. The one good reason is that there are lot of ASA certified engineers in compared to the other certified engineers. Hence this resembles positively on the deployment as you have quite a lot of experienced engineer on your deployment
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    The implementation of the Cisco Catalyst 1000 Series Switches is fairly seamless, especially if you are familiar with Cisco products. We have had Brocade switch gear in place too, and the differences between the manufacturers [are] not a major issue.
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    Cisco
    We were using [pfSense] before in our environment but we regularly facing difficulties over it due to software bugs & downtime. After implementing Cisco ASA, it resolved our availability issue & provides us a reliable solution with the best security features & easy to understand GUI.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    2960s, 9200s, 9400s, 3650s, 3800s. I think that this product is a lot better. I know I just complained about the noise, but it’s still much quieter than our other ones. So we do have a couple of public deployments, and once we swap these out, they complained less. Sometimes we have small offices that get the gear in with them, and these sound less like a jet engine. And yeah, these are a lot easier to manage as well. Everything in the same family. It’s a lot.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Cisco
    We are exclusive Cisco at our organization. In truth part of the reason is, with one type of switch and one manufacturer, it is easier to support. It is also easier to give consistent training to our staff in our tech department
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    Cisco
    • Most network engineers have worked with ASA, so there is no need for re-training when adding or turning over staff
    • Current configs from older devices plug in easily, and are operational on larger devices if an upgrade is required
    • Many support options available
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    • energy costs dropped by around 11 per cent on the access layer
    • management has become easier with DNA Center
    • ISSU software upgrades and fabric deployments have significantly reduced "planned" down times
    • network speed has increased, latency is at an all-time best within our own LAN
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Cisco Catalyst Switches Screenshots

    Product screenshotScreenshot of Catalyst 9200 SeriesScreenshot of Catalyst 9300 SeriesScreenshot of Catalyst 9400 SeriesScreenshot of Catalyst 9400 Series Additional ViewScreenshot of Catalyst 9500 Series