Ruckus ICX Switches - Good switches at a great price point for E-Rate
January 08, 2019
Ruckus ICX Switches - Good switches at a great price point for E-Rate
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Ruckus ICX Switches (formerly Brocade ICX Switches)
These are in use in two small Catholic schools that I personally service. These units are the only vendor used at one school, and a secondary switching solution. The E-rate discounts for the Ruckus ICX switches were incredibly good (80%), which was a huge drive for the technology upgrades. It addresses issues of port density, speed, and connectivity.
- Port Density/cost per port
- Some models auto-stack, which makes connectivity much easier
- The E-rate discounts for education are AMAZING
- Changing VLANs can be painful
- trunk and port channel setups are quite difficult
- Better web interface
- POE - Needs to be set to auto by default
- It took me longer to configure these switches than Cisco, which increases the overall TCO.
- LOW, LOW-cost switching. We were able to really stretch our budget. 80% off list is pretty darn good, and we ate it up.
- Once it was in place, we've had very few changes, only rare issues with exploits due to it not being actively targeted.
The switching holds up well against HP, Extreme, Juniper, et. al at the edge. Cost is also a huge factor, and played a part in the purchase. Not just for the switches themselves, but also optics can be purchased at a discount. Service delivery has been fantastic, and in 3 years I've not had to replace any of the brocade switches I've purchased.