Cisco is still the bread and butter of routing and switching
December 09, 2020
Cisco is still the bread and butter of routing and switching
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Catalyst Switches
- Catalyst 2960 X/XR Series
- Catalyst 3560-CX Series
- Catalyst 3650 Series
- Catalyst 3850 Series
- Catalyst 9300 Series
Cisco Catalyst Switches have been a staple in many organizations I have been at. They are a great switch for your access layer that is easily expandable as needed with Stackwise cables. In addition, there are many versions of the Cisco Catalyst Switches line with varying port capacities and port types, so there is something for everyone. At my current company we use these switches to form our access layer.
- Very granular configuration available; IOS of all flavors; is still the tried and true switch/router OS
- Cisco Catalyst Switches are resilient; while probably not best practice, we have switches that have been running for years.
- A lot of options available in switches (copper to fiber ratio)
- As with most to all Cisco products, there is little room for just anyone to rack and stack the device and start setting it up; it is going to take someone with some training and experience, of course. This might make any IOS product (Catalyst or otherwise) not as accessible to smaller businesses without the IT resources or without getting consultants/outside help involved
- Sometimes Cisco documentation/support/tehcnical docs are a bit heavy and become difficult to navigate, much like Microsoft and probably any technical giant. There is just a ton of information that can be hard to go through without ending up in the weeds.
- Contacting support can be slow at times and sometimes language barriers make troubleshooting slow.
- We have had Cisco 2960s in production for 10 years and have only just now started replacing them with 9300s. The 2960s still work just fine as well and are being kept. I'd say we got our money's worth there.
- The reliability aspect of hardware has seen few to no outages for us, which means no downtime for departments. An outage, in my experience so far, is more likely to be caused by an engineer or admin running some bad commands rather than the hardware not performing.
We have done quite a bit with our Cisco Catalyst Switches, including QoS, HSRP, collecting NetFlow data, integrating them with Cisco ISE (802.1x), and participation in EIGRP. These switches can do way more, of course, but that is the scope at my current place of business.
Unfortunately, I haven't had as much experience with competitor offerings. I have used a few Aruba switches as well in one-off scenarios; they have a similar OS at face value (albeit differing command sets), but I couldn't compare them well with what little experience I have with them.
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