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Cisco Catalyst Switches vs. Juniper SRX Series Firewalls

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Cisco Catalyst Switches

    Score9.1 out of 10
    N/ACisco's Catalyst is one of that company's brand of network switches.N/A

    Juniper SRX Series Firewalls

    Score7.3 out of 10
    N/AJuniper SRX is a firewall offering. It provides a variety of modular features, scaled for enterprise-level use, based on a 3-in-1 OS that enables routing, switching, and security in each product.N/A
    Pricing
    Cisco Catalyst SwitchesJuniper SRX Series Firewalls
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cisco Catalyst SwitchesJuniper SRX Series Firewalls
    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 Catalyst SwitchesJuniper SRX Series Firewalls
    Considered Both Products
    Cisco
    Chose Cisco Catalyst Switches
    Cisco switching provides a full set of features without requiring clunky state machines to enable monitoring.
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Catalyst Switches
    Easier to configure and more training options to help get started such as packet tracer.
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Catalyst Switches
    Cisco Catalyst Switches primarily stack up against these other brands by their feature-rich configuration, high bandwidth processing, customization, access control, and scalability. Some of the major reasons are the support for Cisco Catalyst Switches and how quick it is. …
    Incentivized
    Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    98%
    Would buy again
    600 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    5 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    96%
    Delivers good value for the price
    531 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    5 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    98%
    Happy with the feature set
    600 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    5 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    97%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    490 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    5 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    98%
    Implementation went as expected
    568 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    5 Answers
    Features
    Cisco Catalyst SwitchesJuniper SRX Series Firewalls
    Firewall
    Comparison of Firewall features of Cisco Catalyst Switches and Juniper SRX Series Firewalls
    Feature
    Cisco Catalyst Switches
    -
    Ratings
    Juniper SRX Series Firewalls
    8.7
    5 Ratings
    1% above category average
    Identification Technologies00 Ratings9.03 Ratings
    Visualization Tools00 Ratings7.03 Ratings
    Content Inspection00 Ratings8.04 Ratings
    Policy-based Controls00 Ratings10.04 Ratings
    Active Directory and LDAP00 Ratings8.03 Ratings
    Firewall Management Console00 Ratings7.05 Ratings
    Reporting and Logging00 Ratings8.05 Ratings
    VPN00 Ratings10.04 Ratings
    High Availability00 Ratings10.05 Ratings
    Stateful Inspection00 Ratings10.04 Ratings
    Proxy Server00 Ratings9.03 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Cisco Catalyst SwitchesJuniper SRX Series Firewalls
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    SonicWall NSA Series
    Score8.4 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    RUCKUS Ethernet Switches
    Score1 out of 10
    Barracuda CloudGen Firewall
    Score9.6 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Cisco Ethernet Switches
    Score9.1 out of 10
    Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software
    Score9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Cisco Catalyst SwitchesJuniper SRX Series Firewalls
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (774 ratings)
    8.0
    (8 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.9
    (40 ratings)
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    Usability
    8.6
    (46 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Availability
    8.8
    (14 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    9.3
    (14 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.5
    (38 ratings)
    6.4
    (3 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    9.0
    (5 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Online Training
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.0
    (12 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Configurability
    8.8
    (10 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    8.1
    (9 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    9.2
    (14 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    7.9
    (36 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    8.2
    (37 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Cisco Catalyst SwitchesJuniper SRX Series Firewalls
    Likelihood to Recommend
    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
    Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)
    SRXs seem to be well suited at the enterprise level for plain routers, firewalls, and IDP/IDS. They work well on MPLS and Ethernet, including Internet. I have 3 SRXs also performing edge duty, with 2 in a high availability (HA) cluster. The Juniper line of SRXs provides a good range of scaling from small business to extremely large enterprise. Wire speed is a common comparison factor and Juniper shines in that area.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    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
    Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)
    • Edge Device (Tunneling & Routing)
    • Routing Instances
    • Zone Based Firewall
    • L3 Gateway/Vlan termination
    • DHCP Server & DHCP Relay
    • Good support community & Good available documentation
    • Good support by the Vendor
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    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
    Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)
    • My only real criticism of the product is that it's hard to figure out how to upgrade the firmware from the CLI via TFTP via the docs, but it works great once you get it sorted.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    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
    Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    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
    Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)
    No answers on this topic
    Reliability and Availability
    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
    Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    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
    Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    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
    Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)
    This is the one area where I have a beef with Juniper. When I called into Cisco TAC, 90% of the time, the first person I spoke with was able to resolve my issue. With Juniper TAC, 90% of the time, the first person I speak with is not able to resolve my issue, seems to almost be reading from a script, and must escalate my ticket. All of which takes time.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    In-Person Training
    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
    Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)
    No answers on this topic
    Online Training
    Cisco
    My own personal research to get the information I want is very handy and helped me many times
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    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
    Read full review
    Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    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
    Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)
    Juniper SRX stands tall compared to all these products for Large Service Provider Networks, where traffic volume is larger. Also, cost comparison with SRX's few other products can also be another contributing factor while selecting this. As well as Juniper Routers, Switches, and multiple products from the same vendor to maintain one single vendor environment. As well as Juniper Support is also really good.
    Read full review
    Scalability
    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
    Read full review
    Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    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
    Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)
    • It is a workhorse for our field operations. It provides the last touch for an ISP to the customer. The customer has no view of the device, but with the repeatability of the device, they do not need to.
    • The ability to roll out a dynamic routing protocol attached to a security zone allows elasticity to the environment that supports growth.
    • VLAN support on the inside interfaces allow this to be the only device in some smaller deployments we install these in.
    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