Cisco Catalyst 2960-X/XR Series Switches vs Cisco Catalyst 9300 Series Switches

• I haven't worked on many other brands of routers/switches, but I can say with certainty that Cisco's IOS network operating system is very well written. Using the question mark helps you find a command or complete its options very easily.
• Cisco's Catalyst documentation is superb and if you can't find what you're looking for there, you can find a ton of great blogs by certified Cisco engineers.
• Cisco may be notorious for creating their own proprietary protocols, but for every proprietary protocol they also support the industry standard protocols.
• Cisco Catalyst switches are genuine workhorses; we still have some switches on our network that are older than 10 years and still performing great!
• I like the way Catalyst implements vlans; very easy and straightforward
• I like the stacking capability of Catalyst. it's very easy to configure and you are now managing a single switch, composed of multiple switches

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• Using Power of Ethernet to deliver the network connection for IP Phones and Wireless Access Points.
• Catalyst Switch stacking capability makes it easy to use in networking management.
• Hardware ready for Software Defined Access technology will protect the investment while the business decides to migrate to the campus fabric solution in the near future.

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• Cost. Always the downside with Cisco. The competition is cheaper.
• Tech support used to be incredible. It is above average now but not like it was 10+ years ago.
• Better support for third-party cables and SFP/SFP+ would be nice. I hate being warned in the logs that I'm not using a Cisco OEM accessory.
• I wish they could upgrade the stack without taking the whole stack offline. This is a real issue.

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• Ability to do routing network packets.
• Servers, printer and PCs have been able to connect to the each other via the Cisco Switch.
• The price a little bit high.
• Strong security, advanced QoS, comprehensive IPv6 support, Layer 3 static routing, and true stacking.

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• It is very reliable, it has never failed so have never had downtime
• We got a service contract with our partner so we in the case of an incident we are covered
• Great performance, it does a great job managing our network traffic

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• They've definitely been a positive for our bottom line. The reliability and great technical support substantially cuts down on the amount of attention these switches require. Often we find our selves forgetting the switches are even there because they "just work". Dependability like that is in my opinion priceless.
• The flexibility of modules that can be added to both the 9300, 9500 (line cards), and 3850 series Catalyst Switches is awesome. These switches are capable of 10/25/40/100 GB speeds this means that instead of replacing a switch you just upgrade the module. This has saved us tens of thousands over the last few years.

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