Despite having a high cost, the possibility of using a low-end equipment with the operating system RouterOS to support the management of the MikroTik allowed this to prevail as an option like most of the solutions offered in the market, in addition to the possibilities …
Our access infrastructure. If you want to bring many devices into your infrastructure and you don't want to bring the devices direct on the core routers, something like that. Or to the routers, the catalyst switches are perfectly suited for that or for top of direct switches.
MikroTik is suited for large companies that require advanced distributions in terms of contracted bandwidth, and in the same way, allows a single device to specify filtering and firewall rules without acquiring an additional device. There is a range for small companies which is more economical and less robust, but in case it's not necessary, such a strict control over the data consumption of the company is not a feasible solution.
I think particularly for the 2960-Xs, these are quite sturdy. I believe they don't get, even if there's a power outage out at Cole's, we usually do some electricity work just to do the electricity redundancy. We just power off the, let's say, the transformers and then see if the mains can handle the power supply. So these 2960, these switches are quite sturdy, I believe, and they don't die on us, but I've seen with the 9200s and the other switches, they don't come back usually when there's a power outage or something like that. So we have to replace the power supply units and all those things to get them working again.
I wouldn't fault the product per se. I think it's just more its integration with the SSD access network that there could be room for improvement. I think the 9300 has been a solid device by itself, and I can't think of anything that I could fault on the device itself. It's probably been doing a very good job and we are happy with it.
Some of the wiki articles have not been updated or are not accurate enough. We spent a couple of days trying to find an example of implementing a mobile IPSec client solution. But once this has been implemented, it has been solid (always worked). A bigger community would help, and I am finding it hard to find the time to contribute to these articles.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There is no SOC, NOC, where you can contact to try to resolve any difficulties. The problems that these devices have are solved largely through the community, with workaround alternatives, or if the support team responds to a request, the response times are too high for the current needs of technological communications.
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.
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.
I use some Aruba switches as well and some Huawei products as well. That's the reference, honestly, that's really all the products that are quite good are mostly copying what Cisco does. And when it does not copy, it's not as good. The only other competitor that does the same kind of project, but differently in a good way is Juniper. For me it works quite as well, but that's the only vendor that I would say is really different from Cisco and in a good way. I mean both are good but not the same way.
Cisco Routers are one of the best in the market, however they are also very expensive and not suitable for a small deployment or any deployment which requires just a couple of routers. MikroTik on the other hand are less expensive and provides many features that you require for a small scale deployment. they fit in with the budget and do what you need them to.
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
