Cisco Catalyst 6800 Series Switches vs Cisco Catalyst 9400 Series Switches

Likelihood to Recommend

These are excellent in a large environment that does not have a nice central software to roll out firmware automatically. With the 6880 paired with the 6800ia switches, you can configure all the ports centrally from the MDF switch. Not a good place would be an environment that already has a large-scale rollout of 2960x switches with Prime for management.

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Tim Lillis

Sr. System Engineer

Kent Intermediate School DistrictEducation Management, 501-1000 employees

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Cisco Catalyst Switches are well suited for those that enjoy software headaches and double-dipping support contracts (SmartNet and DNA Advantage). Cisco introduced the platform without clear documentation on licensing (our involvement was the onus for Cisco to create clear documentation at the cost of our time and frustration), configurations (dropping GLBP yet allowing it to be configured), features (selling us Stack Wise as replacement for GLBP) or intentions (we purchased the 9407 to replace a currently supported 6509 and literally a week or two after purchase, Cisco dropped the 9600 series as the replacement for the 6500-E series). The pains in Cisco licensing, software quality and lack of transparency in regards to hardware and features is disheartening

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Verified User

Supervisor in Information Technology

Utilities Company, 10,001+ employees

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Pros

Access switches
Colapse Core switch
Many redundancy functions, depending on the model, there are stacks, VSS, even working separately provide L3 redundancy with HSRP for example

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Bryan Valverde Piedra

Network Engineer

EmersonElectrical/Electronic Manufacturing, 10,001+ employees

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Dual supervisors and up to 6 power supplies keep them running continuously.
Multigig ports and a high throughput backplane keeps the data flowing as fast as users need.

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Eric Stearns

Network Engineer II

Regional HealthHospital & Health Care, 1001-5000 employees

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Cons

More comprehensive statistics and debuging tools in the IGMP and IGMP snooping area.
Better ways to apply logging filters (messages you want to ommit being logged in the system) - based on regex.

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Ivan Tushev

CIO (Chief Information Officer)

UltraNET LtdInformation Technology and Services, 51-200 employees

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We've run into a few bugs on IOS-XE, particularly earlier versions.
Many of the cool and necessary features being touted by Cisco require newer versions of IOS-XE (16.9.X and up). As of 6/15/19, the recommended MD is still 16.5.X, which we prefer to use for stability.

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Verified User

Technician in Information Technology

Insurance Company, 1001-5000 employees

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Likelihood to Renew

Cisco Catalyst 6800 Series Switches 9.1

Based on 3 answers

Because they work well at what they do. They are highly innovative with their hub and spoke firmware deployment. Once again Cisco was extremely stupid to stop R and D on them.

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Tim Lillis

Sr. System Engineer

Kent Intermediate School DistrictEducation Management, 501-1000 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Usability

Cisco Catalyst 6800 Series Switches 8.6

Based on 2 answers

Cisco Catalyst switches are the standard for usability. The Cisco command line is 1 of 2 formats for a command line interface in the computer networking industry. They literally define the standard for the industry, so naturally the usability is going to be high -- simply because that's what everyone uses. I rated them as 9 because they have some consistency issues within the IOS for different versions/platforms.

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Government Administration Company, 1001-5000 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Support Rating

Cisco Catalyst 6800 Series Switches 8.7

Based on 2 answers

They are easy to get a hold of and are very effective.

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Verified User

Manager in Information Technology

Banking Company, 5001-10,000 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Alternatives Considered

When 9500 switches were introduced, it gave us more processing power, more reliability and more features than Cisco Catalyst 6800. It's even ready for DNA implementation.

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Girgis Hady

IT Network Manager

WadiDeglaSports, 1001-5000 employees

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Due to the good performance and simple operation, as well as the good price-performance ratio, we quickly decided on these models.

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Verified User

Consultant in Information Technology

Professional Training & Coaching Company, 51-200 employees

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Return on Investment

Able to quickly deploy these as we use them throughout our entire infrastructure.
Saves us time from learning other vendors switching products as we already know how Cisco products operate.

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Greg Fuller

Network Manager

SUNY OswegoHigher Education, 1001-5000 employees

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Don't need to buy services - lifetime warranty
Stability - even 10 year old devices are still running and doing the job
Sometimes lines of products are on the market for a very short time (eg. 6800 instant access) - it is hard to buy equipment to make the network bigger.

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Verified User

Team Lead in Information Technology

Oil & Energy Company, 10,001+ employees

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Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

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Free/Freemium Version

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Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Entry-level set up fee?

No

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No