The Pros and Bugs of Cisco Switches
Updated July 25, 2023
The Pros and Bugs of Cisco Switches
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Catalyst Switches
- Catalyst 3560 Series
- Catalyst 3850 Series
- Catalyst 9300 Series
- Catalyst 9500 Series
Cisco 3850's are being used at all levels of my organization. We use them for our access layer switches and also at some locations to do MPLS or for more advanced layer 3 capability. We have some 3850's running as the core of some locations as well since these switches are so versatile in functionality.
- Cisco 3850s are well supported throughout the industry
- Cisco 3850s have some really nice features that can be leveraged for enhanced functionality
- Cisco 3850s have a decent reliability track record (more on this later)
- Cisco 3850s code upgrades have introduced many bugs in the last 2-3 years that have caused some downtime and other issues at our organization
- Cisco pricing and SMARTnet contracts can be very confusing, especially on 3850s
- PoE on 3850s have been less than reliable in the past few years
- I believe our Cisco gear has mostly had a good impact on our ROI, as downtime is still manageable and most switches do a decent job at staying up and running for many years.
- A 3850 (now 9300) can cost upwards of $8,000, so please plan ahead as these can have a negative impact on capital budgets. However, going cheap on switches has never paid off in the long run.
We are currently still in the early stages of planning for a Cisco DNA implementation. Our gear currently supports it, we just have to invest the time in setting up the automation as it does not magically set itself up as some people would lead you to believe. There is definitely a learning curve and lots of work to be done by actual humans before you can automate deployments, switch replacements, etc.
Our organization does indeed benefit from Cisco's ability to bake in a lot of functionality into their products. Need some layer 3 functionality at a location with a 3850? Pay Cisco some money and activate that IP services license! Boom, now you have layer 3 without buying another piece of equipment. This alone makes Cisco a very attractive product for a lot of companies.
We have not really used many other solutions other than Cisco.
Do you think Cisco Catalyst Switches delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Cisco Catalyst Switches's feature set?
Yes
Did Cisco Catalyst Switches live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of Cisco Catalyst Switches go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Cisco Catalyst Switches again?
Yes
Cisco Hybrid Work
- Webex Meetings
- Webex App
- Cisco DNA Center
- Cisco AnyConnect
- Cisco Umbrella
- Working from anywhere (e.g., coffee shop, airport)
- Working from an office or other company space
- Working from home
Since the pandemic, we've had to adjust our infrastructure to support work-from-home/anywhere employees. We have deployed a Citrix virtual desktop solution, but we also use Cisco ISE paired with Cisco AnyConnect to provide users with remote access to our network. We use Cisco ISE to authorize the users connecting to our AnyConnect VPN headend. We are also deploying Cisco Umbrella to all remote machines for enhanced security when users are off the network.
We faced the challenge of how to get all the remote users in a position where they had enough access, but not too much access to the internal network from remote locations. This entailed creating different authorization groups in Cisco ISE in order to segment users depending on their roles. We also faced bandwidth and licensing challenges, but those were solved with upgrades.
We have had good luck with Cisco's hybrid work products. AnyConnect is pretty straight forward and allows us to onboard users easily and quickly. Cisco ISE helped us identify and segment users into different authorization groups for security purposes. Cisco Umbrella is helping us keep users secure while they are off-network, which is great because we don't want them bringing malware onto the corporate network when they are on-site.
We've experienced a mostly smooth implementation and haven't had too many issues using our hybrid work model. We have experienced issues with permissions with 3rd party websites and vendors depending on where the remote users are connecting from, but other than that the issues have been minimal. At times users will complain about slowness, but this is usually due to the user's connection or ISP.
Cisco products stack up well against the competition but fall short in a few areas. Products from Palo Alto offer more configurable access and easier onboarding than Cisco products but also have a learning curve that can be daunting for some users.I have no fully implemented any other hybrid solutions to date, so that's all I can speak on.
- Webex
- Microsoft Teams
Evaluating Cisco Catalyst Switches and Competitors
Yes - We are continuously replacing Cisco switches with newer tier models. We went from 3750s to 3850s and now we are replacing those with 9300 and 9500 Catalyst switches. We replace them due to feature sets, speed, and reliability.
No, I think our evaluations are pretty in-depth and I wouldn't do it any other way. Sticking with Cisco makes things easy for our network technicians and we don't need to learn new products.