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What is Cisco Catalyst Switches?
The Cisco Catalyst family of switches includes enterprise LAN access, distribution, and core switches. The vendor says the switches are designed for an entirely new era of intent-based networking, deliver stellar performance and functionality, and prepares a network for the future with breakthrough innovations for security, mobility, IoT, and the cloud.
Cisco Catalyst switches offer advanced security capabilities, scale for IoT, and cloud readiness.
Cisco aims to transform how people connect, communicate, and collaborate. Cisco and its valued partners sell Cisco hardware, software, and services to businesses of all sizes, governments, service providers, and consumers.
Cisco now offers a two-question, two-minute interactive tool to
identify the Cisco products and services available to help users solve up to 5
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Reviews and Ratings
Reviews
(1-25 of 63)- Popular Filters
Great switches
- Catalyst 2960 X/XR Series
- Catalyst 3560-CX Series
- Catalyst 3650 Series
- Reliability in performance.
- Good warranty period update from Cisco to be competitive against other brands.
- Good customer support and helpful community forums in some cases.
- Some of the switches are somewhat expensive.
- Although the switches are reliable, occasional failures related to components occur.
Cisco Catalyst Switches: Easy to Configure and Manage
- Catalyst 2960 X/XR Series
- Easy to detect switching loops in network.
- We can configure the device using both CLI and GUI.
- Initial configuration is easy; there are advanced ways to configuring the device.
- Provides security features like DHCP Snooping and port security.
- Device rebooting time is less compared to other devices.
- Cost of the device is somewhat high.
- Provides only dynamic routing feature.
Go for Cisco Catalyst Switches
- Catalyst 3650 Series
- Management overhead cost reduced to a minimal extent.
- Docking down the required number of switches also cuts down the cost of the network.
- This system allows our organization advanced modification and manageability.
- SNP (Simple Management Protocol) supports monitoring of many levels and quantifying traffic flows.
- Security provision integrity is the excellent feature of using this Catalyst Series.
- Many of the devices runs down as a Hyper Text Transfer Protocol.
- Other members works together as a consolidate system.
- Apart from reliability this system gives a best support in terms of performance and manageability with our network.
- Input powers issues should be look for this system.
- Cost effective issues should be resolved to the minimum level or some reasonable point.
- Strong routing options should be provided.
- For Licensing Port expensive activation is required.
Best Switches for Large Enterprises
- Other
- VLANs
- SFPs
- RSTP
- NTP
- POE
- Reduce licensing cost.
- GUI based management.
- Cost effective central management tool.
Cisco - Expensive but great product
- Other
- PoE.
- Reliability.
- Switching/networking.
- Feature rich.
- Old switches have unpatched vulnerabilities.
- New equipment is expensive.
- GUI would be nice in some cases.
Short review on Cisco 9200 Series
- Catalyst 2960-L Series
- Catalyst 9200 Series
- Vlan.
- Access control.
- Network integration.
- Installing GUI should be easier.
- For edge switches, surge protection should be standard and components should be more durable.
- Console cable should be USB.
Excellent capabilities and great reliability
- Catalyst 2960 X/XR Series
- Catalyst 2960-L Series
- They are very reliable switches.
- The initial configuration is very fast.
- Managing switches is very easy.
- The price is quite expensive.
- The support needs to be improved because it takes too long until you get a diagnostic.
- Needs to add more information in the website like troubleshooting or configurations template.
Cisco - Rock Solid In Any Environment
- Catalyst 3560-CX Series
- Catalyst 3850 Series
- Switching/Routing
- Stability
- High tolerance to environmental conditions
- Cost!
- Physical size
- Flexibility with port types
Cisco Catalyst Switches which you can trust upon always - Never feel disappointed by using them
- Catalyst 2960 X/XR Series
- Catalyst 2960-L Series
- Catalyst 3560-CX Series
- Catalyst 3650 Series
- Catalyst 3850 Series
- Catalyst 6800 Series
- It does network and VLAN segmentation
- It improves efficiency . A scalable and highly redundant
- Data encryption and security
- GUI can be improved
- Boot time of a stack could be improved
- Many no. of updates and regular license renewals.
Very reliable and secure series of switches
- Catalyst 2960 X/XR Series
- VLAN management
- Bandwidth capacity
- Data encryption and security
- Price
- Cables bundled in the box don’t always work.
- Plenty of updates and regular license renewals.
NIST Cybersecurity DoD Requirement
- Catalyst 3650 Series
- Reliability - No dropout between workstation and server
- PoE - Useful in many areas of our building where power is lacking
- Easy to use GUI - For metrics, analysis, and troubleshooting
- Licensing costs are something to be considered
- Catalyst 2960 X/XR Series
- Catalyst 2960-L Series
- Catalyst 3560-CX Series
- Catalyst 3650 Series
- Catalyst 3850 Series
- Catalyst 6800 Series
- Network segmentation
- Port security
- VLAN segmentation
- Network access
- GUI administration
- SSH interface
- Web security administration
Best Enterprise Switches
- Other
- Dedicated 1/10G uplinks
- Vlans
- CEF for fast switching
- Cisco Smartnet
- Port security
- Expensive hardware
- Licensing for advanced features
- No support for third party SFPs
Cisco Calalyst Review
- Catalyst 3650 Series
- Catalyst 3850 Series
- Catalyst 6800 Series
- Stability and Reliability - We have not had many failures over the past years using Cisco Catalyst switches.
- Flexibility - Cisco Catalyst switches offers a wide portfolio of switching equipment which can address a variety of needs. This includes switches with stacking and non-stacking capability, fixed rackmount and chassis options which can be mounted in data centre racks and and also compact switching which may be more feasible for small SOHO offices.
- Scalable Performance - Cisco Catalyst switches offers various port speeds from 1Gbps 10Gbps, 100Gbps etc. This is available in both copper (RJ45) and fibre (SFP). Many models also offer a variety of uplink speed options which future proofs the invest in Cisco technologies allowing us to upgrade depending on our changing business requirements and available budgets.
- Pricing - Cisco Catalyst typically costs more than other brands.
- Ease of Use - Cisco Catalyst still rely a lot on command line. Having a power GUI interface will be welcomed.
- Catalyst 2960 X/XR Series
- Catalyst 2960-L Series
- Catalyst 3650 Series
- Affordable gigabit connectivity for your endpoints with Cisco Catalyst 2960 L switches.
- Great reliability and easy implementation.
- Catalyst 2960-L make your network administrator life easier.
- Deliver exceptional switching performance.
- The Cisco Switches Catalyst improve efficiency.
- Faster core, faster access.
- Faster core, faster access.
- Switches improve network security.
- Switches improve efficiency in the production area.
- Switches help maintain a fully converged, quality-of-service network.
Switch it up
- Catalyst 2960 X/XR Series
- Catalyst 2960-L Series
- Maintain a high bitrate for sustained data connection.
- Mitigate connection disruptions by optimally routing data.
- Provide future flexibility and extensibility for businesses to grow and add more hardware switches or equipment.
- Better built in cooling.
- Cost is a factor.
- They are heavy.
- Catalyst 6800 Series
- Compact (as far as core switches go) but with lots of expansion options.
- Typical good Cisco hardware quality.
- A strong Support team (Cisco TAC) to stand behind the device.
- The disparate expansions and plugins can be hard to mange license-wise.
- The costs for a fully loaded Catalyst core switch is massive.
- Doing upgrades and patches can be a major project.
Cisco, the reliable switch
- Catalyst 2960-L Series
- Catalyst 3850 Series
- Catalyst 9300 Series
- VXLAN gives us the ability to present the same environment over a L3 connection
- L2 traffic
- L3 traffic in the retail locations to cut back on the amount of equipment needed
- Cost is always an issue
- DNA licensing required when not needed
- Command line interface
Good perfomance and capabilities
- Other
- They are reliable, i have never seen a catalyst switch fail
- They do what they are suppose to do, they are reliable and easy to setup
- Lots of resources available: vendors, professional services, training
- Some of them does not offer power supply redundancy
- Web interface is not the best, you need to use cli
- They are not easy / cheap to stack
Some of the best switches in the business!
- Catalyst 3560-CX Series
- Catalyst 3650 Series
- Absolutely solid switches that run for years
- Cisco TAC (Support) is fantastic and knowledgeable
- Compatible with the majority of connected devices
- Cisco is always going to be toward the top price wise
- Could use more intuitive GUI for newer users not used to command line
- More accessories could be included
Best for core and access layer of an enterprise network
- Catalyst 3650 Series
- One thing that is fascinating about Cisco Catalyst Switches is that they really do last
- The CLI configurations is fun once you get used to it
- It's effective in securing access layer devices with ACLs
- The IOS is very stable and can be trusted
- Overall cost--Cisco licenses are expensive
- They could bring some uniformity to the design for ease of integration
- The command line is very complex if you're not familiar with it
You can't go wrong with these switches!
- Catalyst 9500 Series
- Great performance. Incredibly fast and reliable.
- Automation. Template based, programmable pipeline.
- Scalable and highly redundant.
- Better cloud integration
- More automation features
- Better compatibility with ACI
Cisco 3850 A Love Story
- Catalyst 2960 X/XR Series
- Catalyst 2960-L Series
- Catalyst 3850 Series
- Catalyst 9200 Series
- Catalyst 9300 Series
- Catalyst 9500 Series
- Catalyst 2960-L Smart Managed
- CATALYST 3850
- Utilizing the layer3 routing functions to have both our router/switch converged into one platform
- VLANS
- BGP
- EIGRP
- LAYER3
- LAYER2
- MULTICAST
- MULTICAST WITH AV
- 2960
- Using them as strictly LAYER2 devices with layer3 ip mgmt and ip vlans only
- Simplicity / scalability (stacking) @ remote locations where simple switching is only thing that is needed, and some intervlan routing.
- 9500 series @ datacenter
- 40gbit throughput is huge for us.
- Layer3/Layer2 functionality really helps us in the datacenter space with these switches
- VLANS
- LAYER3
- EIGRP
- BGP
- DYNAMIC ROUTING
- MULTICAST
- STP
- STORM CONTROL
- ACL
- 3RD PARTY SFP TRANSCIEVERS
- SUPPORT
- TAC
Robust and reliable Switches for enterprise network core
- Catalyst 9400 Series
- Dual supervisor, dual power for resiliency.
- Ease of changing out switch blades.
- Network segregation abilities.
- High network bandwidth.
- Software updates and patching.
- GUI can be improved.
Cisco is a good investment
- Catalyst 2960 X/XR Series
- Catalyst 9200 Series
- Solid performance, even with questionable wiring.
- Great reliability; I had a switch that had a AC unit dripping on it for weeks before it failed.
- Stacking allows greater backbone bandwidth between switches.
- More or expandable flash storage.
- Faster software bug fixes.
- Ordering process is cumbersome.