Try it you'll like it
June 25, 2018

Try it you'll like it

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Modules Used

  • Cisco Catalyst 2960 - L

Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Catalyst Switches

  • Catalyst 2960-L Series
  • Catalyst 3650 Series
  • Catalyst 3850 Series
We use them in our VoIP network to run our voice equipment. Very pleased with the way things are working for us. We feel that they work better than other brands that we have tried with a lot less effort. We have a Cisco VoIP system so they work very well with our Cisco phones.
  • Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP)
  • Port security
  • Spanning Tree
  • Definitely could improve on the pricing. We are pleased with them but you definitely pay a premium to obtain and maintain support on them.
  • Staffing qualified IT professionals to manage the networks is typically not an issue.
  • Great technical support through service contracts ensures that downtime can be kept to a minimum even when encountering complex issues that go beyond the knowledge of the average IT staff supporting the devices.
  • Cisco products have a great reputation, so it gives us peace of mind knowing we are using a solid industry leading product.
Currently my organization has not taken the leap into SDN, so we aren't taking advantage of the automation capabilities of the Catalyst line yet. We are looking into that and hope to move toward testing some of the automation capabilities in the future though. If we can leverage the features advertised it should turn out to be a tremendous benefit for us.
We feel that we benefit from the abilities of the catalyst line by the leveraging the stacking capabilities of the switches to enable us to achieve the needed port density in a given closet. We like that we can pick and choose the features and various hardware configurations needed for an implementation to get exactly what we need and not have to get extra features that aren't necessary.
We have tried HP switches, Brocade and are beginning to test Juniper edge devices to compare to our Cisco Catalyst switches. The other brands can often match the features that are essential to our networks. They typically can be configured similarly but often take a bit more work to provide what is needed. Some of the brands can even be obtained for lower cost, but the support of the product is where we feel that the value lies in the Cisco product. We are still actively testing and comparing the offering from some of the vendors mentioned but feel that we get good value out of our investment in Cisco Catalyst switches.
They are a good fit for most switching environments. One of the greatest benefits to using Cisco switching equipment is that there are tons of IT professionals out there that are familiar with the Cisco products and are able to step into an environment and hit the ground running with managing the network gear. Selecting Cisco products typically means staffing concerns aren't usually a problem.