Cisco Ethernet Switches Reviews

We use Cisco Ethernet Switches as part of our network infrastructure at two different sites.

Cisco switches has helped provide efficient and stable switching in the organization. Once configured and setup right they work fine without any worries and has helped free up resources to concentrate on other tasks. 

I love the fact that they can be configured to do exactly what you need them to do, which in my opinion is what anyone with Cisco experience would enjoy doing. They can be set up and configured nicely.

Ease of configuration for none cisco experts would be an improvement.

Pricing can also do with some improvement to make it more competitive with competitor products with similar functionality.

We have been using cisco switches for over ten years.

This is a stable product.

Cisco switches are scalable. I manage two large sites and at the first site, we have about 200 people. The second site has about 300 people. We do not have any plan to expand, per se. I do have plans to upgrade the switches and probably redesign the environment for better efficiency. 

Cisco has a good technical support and I love they way the come in to help when you are doing a research on their site. I have not had any serious need for cisco technical support and so I would not be in the best position to give a conclusive evaluation of this but I must say they do a good job with their certifications so people would need very little of such services.  For a few minor challenges I was also able to get answers from the cisco forums. There is a pretty good database online for any conceivable problems one would face with the cisco switches.

We did not use a different solution prior to this, although we are going to be buying a few Meraki switches that we will add to our environment. We are going to test them to see how well they work with Cisco.

The initial set was complex. When I came into the project, the features were just put in with no consideration, whatsoever. This meant that I had to start from scratch to design the network, draw up the configurations and setup vlans to easily manage the network.

It was implemented in-house.

The price of the product is on the higher side, I feel you pay for the  name of the product as well but it's still manageable for corporate customers. Licensing is simple and straight forward which is something going well for cisco switches.

My advice is that if you are going to be implementing Cisco then you should at least have someone in the organization who is knowledgeable and can manage the features. The alternative is to use Meraki because they are easier to manage.

We have some pretty old switches in our environment and some of them are only 100 megabits. I would like to upgrade them all to at least one-gigabit.

Some of our uplinks are on ethernet, but I want to upgrade them to fiber to improve the performance.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Versatility and streamlined IOS

Availability of expertise on the market (resources)

Streamlined IOS helped to develop templates for Ethernet Switches without worrying of compatibility of commands in regards to hardware platforms.

Modularity of Industrial switches (IE3000) provides flexibility in solutions yet based on one platform.

Vast array of Industrial models (IE2000, IE3000, IE4000, IE5000).

Acceptance of open source trends (there is slight move already - just keep going)

10 years overall for all switching/routing products. Industrial switches for last 5 years.

No

No

Well, need more pro-active option to add PoE modules to Industrial switches.

We deal with a Cisco partner - 4.5 out of 5.

We deal with a Cisco partner - 4.0 out of 5. Sometimes we find the solution before we get an answer from the Cisco partner.

Everything is driven by business requirements, which in turn different from one project to another. Major points are: availability of support/expertise beyond internal resources, territorial coverage, performance and support of multiple options from enterprise to industrial environment

Straightforward.

90 % in house. Vendor team has sufficient skills.

Cisco should look into more flexible licensing for hardware/IOS. It is hard to beat some vendors' lifetime warranty even they offer less in functionality compare to Cisco.

There are multiple vendors but they are very specialized and do not support versatile solutions. For example, we had to move from Schneider switches as they were just a marketing move by vendor and did not provided better performance or compatibility with SCADA products.

Start from your business requirements (what would you like to have) and budget (what can you afford).

We use Cisco Ethernet Switches to interconnect the 20 to 25 servers and workstations in our control room.

We use Cisco Ethernet Switches to configure VLANs in the VPN network. We need to put some subsystems in the VLAN so that other terminals will not access these equipment. We do all these configurations on the solution. The solution is easy to configure.

The solution's reliability should be improved. We see that some ports must be reset when in the hang mode. Only after a reset can we make use of those ports. There could be some internal or external reasons for the hang. We are looking for an improved reliability aspect.

I have worked with Cisco Ethernet Switches for over 20 years as an end user.

There are no issues with the solution’s stability.

Our department is quite big. About 50 engineers are accessing different nodes.

The solution’s customer support service is quite good.

The solution is easy to install. They're all plugin modules.

One engineer can complete the solution’s deployment within one to one and a half hours. We are a government department. Our engineers buy the equipment, follow the installation instructions, and do the installation.

The solution’s pricing is reasonable. The solution has a lifetime license because we are not renewing the license every year. It is a one-time purchase.

So far, the failure rate with the solution is very low, and we want to find a spare for the existing unit.

Users must be familiar with the operation and configuration of Cisco Ethernet Switches to use them. They have to familiarize themselves with the solution and know the different configurations and features it supports. Users need to understand the solution properly before using it.

Cisco Ethernet Switches is a good solution.

Overall, I rate Cisco Ethernet Switches ten out of ten.

I am using the Cisco Ethernet Switches in the food industry.

Cisco Ethernet Switches could improve if they removed the command line interface and replaced it with a better GUI. It is too difficult at the moment, we always need to figure out the commands.

I have been using Cisco Ethernet Switches for approximately six months.

The stability of Cisco Ethernet Switches is very stable.

Cisco Ethernet Switches are scalable.

We have approximately 250 people using the Cisco Ethernet Switches.

I did not have any experience with the technical support of Cisco Ethernet Switches.

We were previously using Aruba switches and we migrated to Cisco because of the groups' direction, it was not a fault of Aruba switches. Aruba switches are great. We were working with Aruba for 10 years without any problem, and they gave us a lifetime warranty for the switches. If we had a faulty switch they would give us new ones.

The service from Aruba was very good, but I think that Cisco solutions are more professional for something VLANs. I didn't try Aruba with VLANs, however, we make all of our VLANs with Cisco.

I prefer Aruba solutions because they are easier to use.

The initial setup was for Cisco Ethernet Switches was straightforward.

I rate the implementation of Cisco Ethernet Switches a four out of ten.

The implementation of Cisco Ethernet Switches was done with a partner and our experience was very good.

We are in a manufacturing environment running 24 hours a day. We have a dedicated team of three that works on the switches and network.

We have a one-year license to have the Smart Net Total Care service. The license to use the Cisco Ethernet Switches comes with the initial purchase of the solution.

I rate the price of Cisco Ethernet Switches a two out of five.

The cost of Cisco Ethernet Switches is expensive.

I have evaluated other switches, such as Aruba.

My advice to others looking to purchase a Cisco Ethernet Switch is the best use case depends on many factors. For example, the number of users, details of the company, type of network, and how large the network is. If the company is small to medium-sized I would recommend Aruba. For larger companies, I would recommend Cisco Ethernet Switches.

I rate Cisco Ethernet Switches an eight out of ten.

I have been using the newest line of Cisco switches, the 9300 series, for two or three years.

We have two different models for deployment. One is the SDN deployment model, which has to do with Software-Defined Networking and is the more recent.

The other is the traditional three-tier, via core access aggregation layer five switches with an Independent Architecture Designed environment or access layer switches where you just use them to connect users to a specific service. It depends on what the nature of the work would be and the scope of work. But generally, most traditional networks have three layers. You have switches in a core of the network, switches in the distribution or aggregation layer, or switches in the access layer. This is the Three-tier module. If it is a collapsed core then it would be just simply the core and the access.

A primary use case is you could use it to connect mostly end-users and host systems. Systems could be servers, systems could be printers, systems could be telephones, and systems could be video conferencing equipment. That's one end use of it.

Another is the use in the data center. Ethernet Switches can be used in a data center out to provide connectivity, wired connectivity for servers, database systems, platforms, other platforms systems, and storage systems. With Ethernet you could have different speeds, so you can have Ethernet running at 1Gig, you can have Ethernet at 10Gig, you can have Ethernet at 40Gig, and you have Ethernet at 100Gig. So, depending on the nature of connectivity, you have that in the data center, you can have that also in an office environment. Then you go up to have it in industrial space, monitoring of industrial machines and control systems. So again, Ethernet is widely used.

There are several situations where these switches are used. Most times if they want to move off the main site, or they want to move locations, or they want to have temporary spaces, they can use a switch. Temporary means they may want to expand connectivity from their network to a small branch office that is temporary. Temporary means they're going to run something there for six months and then after that the business won't be there.

With switches, you can expand your network with a connection aside but you can extend your network to a particular area. You can also develop a campus network, campus meaning you may have one building in there and then the company acquires another building, and then it's easy to connect the two buildings together with Fiber and a switch if you have that available. 

There is also multi-tenancy, if you're in a building when you have multiple floors, it's easy to extend the premises from one floor to another floor using a switch as well.

In terms of projects, technical projects, they are several, I mean even down to connectivity to third parties inside the data center. For example, you may find out that you need to connect to BT or you need to connect to your telco provider. Switches will facilitate your ability to connect to a third party to allow communications between two separate environments that are managed differently.

I've done projects where the switches are also used for translation. For example, one part is using Fibre, the other part is using Ethernet, and the switch can be used to communicate between the two technologies. The switch will transform the physical characteristics of the link from Fiber to Ethernet.

There are two things about this solution that I find valuable. One valuable feature is that you can string a number of switches together, and the fact that there are various methods to connect them, such as by stacking. A stack means that they operate as one switch spot. You have multiple physical switches in the stack. For example, you could have one particular physical switch and you can have many of them all connected together as if they're one switch.

Another valuable feature is that the switches can operate at different layers of the networking environment. You can have switches that operate at layer three, you can have layer four switches and also obviously layer two, data layer, is their normal operation.

These switches are versatile. They can operate as a router, but they can also operate as a switch as well. The fact that you can run routing protocols on them, and you can also run data link protocols, means that they are quite versatile enough.

At the moment the switches that you have can't scale because they've got their control plane and data plane in the same device. The problem with that is you're limited to the number of switches you can string along because of limitations with VLAN. VLAN does have limitations, but with Software-Defined Networking there is no limitation. This is bringing about changes in the networking field that are long-needed. Ultimately, I would like to see all of the switches support SDN.

Switches should be made stackable, even if they are not of the same model. Now stacking is another technology that a lot of switches can benefit from, but not all switches are capable of stacking. There are some switches that are capable of stacking, but not all switches. As a rule, in my view, I feel stacking should work between different switches and at the moment it doesn't. For example, if you want to build a stack, all the switches in the stack have to be literally the same. So that another area of technology which could be different. You could stack switches, even if they're not exactly the same, but they have a way of operating such that they can work together. It would be nice because it means people don't have to throw away things just because they can't meet what they want.

I think this solution is very stable.

These switches have been around for a long time. Before that, all the technologies used couplers, which were called BNC connectors, network taps, all those things that existed. Couplers that existed before the arrival of Ethernet, they didn't last even two, three years, whereas Ethernet has been around for more than fifteen years.

Ethernet will continue to be around, and it's a very stable technology in terms of the operation. As well, Ethernet is the way forward, and it will still be around for another ten or fifteen years.

Ethernet does not scale very well because you've got distance limitations. Ethernet can only run for about one hundred meters or less, so you have to use Couplers. This distance limitation is why we use Fibre. Fibre optics is actually a better technology than Ethernet, but it's more expensive. Everything about it, the equipment, the nature of the way the Fibre cables are prepared, is a lot more expensive compared to Ethernet.

Ideally, everybody would like to run Fiber switches because it's a better technology that carries more bandwidth. The high price is due in part to the components. All the components that make Fibre work are expensive to produce. It can be relatively cheap for what we use it for but overall, it's way more expensive than Ethernet. If it wasn't for that then Fibre would have been the best solution. Ethernet, as it is right now, the cost price point for Ethernet is very good, so it won't be going anywhere fast soon. In terms of scalability, don't have limits. If you want to scale, you need to use Fiber to scale.

In terms of users, the organization right now has more than a thousand, and the previous one had approximately five thousand.

With respect to user roles, some are call center personnel, some platform systems guys, some are software developers, some project managers, some are marketing managers, some are sales managers, and some are professional services. Department-wise you have your legal, HR, and your finance department.

To my knowledge, our business is focused on doing work for clients so I expect that our usage of Ethernet Switches will be expanding.

The technical support for this solution is very good. They're very responsive.

I have also used the Meraki MX switches, but they are more like routers and used to support the wireless systems for Meraki.

With respect to the initial setup, the complexity depends on the topology. Most times they're not complicated. What's complicated is if you need to use them as a layer three switch, then you could have some complex configurations to do. However, if it's layer two, which is data layer connectivity only, then it's easy. If it's layer three then it's a little more challenging because you combine layer two and layer three and it could involve routing protocols. It's a lot more complex. 

Generally speaking, it depends on the manner in which you want to use the switch. Some deployments took maybe two weeks, some three days, some a month, and some even up to three months.

When it comes to my implementation strategy, first of all, you have to get the physical hardware into the data center or location where it needs to be. Make sure the right structured cabling was in place to connect this equipment so that it can work in that environment. Both from a power perspective and from a cabling perspective. I got to cable this switch to other systems and make sure that the right type of cabling is in place. Also, I have to make sure of the configurations that I'm going to use and get them organized upfront. In other words, I have the configurations I am going to put on a device and the software version. 

Another important thing is the software version. Make sure that the version is the appropriate one to put on there. Ensure that it doesn't have bugs or things, the type of configuration I want to put on there doesn't have bugs or anything that could impact the operation of those configurations.

After that is complete, I make sure that all of the connectors or transceivers that I've brought are the right type of transceivers for the systems. I'm able to connect them onto the network. Now that's just the physical connectivity.

There are other things you would do in implementation to test that the switch is working fine once it's operational. There are other tests that you conduct like Ping test, IP test, or whatever to show basic connectivity exists to that switch from the management perspective. You may also have tools, such as monitoring tools that you would use. You would also configure the monitoring tools to be able to recognize that particular device on the network and maybe things like memory, CPU, all the things to do with power, all these environmental conditions around that device are being monitored as well.

Then obviously you've got documentation as part of it. If you're putting a new set of equipment in there, the site probably has existing documentation that needs to be updated to reflect the fact that the typologies changed or you're introducing new equipment into that topology. In some cases, you've done this all upfront before you start the implementation. While in some cases, some companies, for the rush of time they want you to implement first and then do the documentation later. So again, it's still part of that strategy. Implementation wise, that's the approach you would go with in my opinion. Obviously there are different implementation approaches, and the stuff we're talking about here is just hardware.

I am a specialist, and in most cases, I handle the implementation and deployment.

The time I would use another person is if the data center was far away when it's not conceivable that I would travel to that location. I'd probably use somebody from the data center or use a data center engineer who would set up the hardware. He would put the hardware in the rack, the network cage, or rack where the equipment is going to be located. He would help me physically screw the equipment, take it out of the box, and connect it into the cage, and then I'd give him instructions on where to put cable or where to plug the various cables that come with the equipment. So once he's done that, I'm able to remotely connect to the device.

Those are remote working situations where you're not physically able to go to the site and do the work there. Then yes, I would work with other people sometimes and give them some instructions on what I want to have done at that location.

What is happening in the industry is that they are separating two things that traditionally held back the growth of switches, which is the control plane aspect of the switch from the data point. What you're finding is that the newer generation of switches, you can control them with a different device separately from the switch itself. In terms of the improvements, the improvements that are going on right now, Software Defined Networking creates the basis for you to have switches that can scale, and can scale very well.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We recently replaced the BGP router and L3 switches. We're planning to replace some other switches also. We are having 22 switches distributed through my location with 24 ports. All the users are connected to those. We will increase our usage as we expand all over India. 

Cisco switches are trouble-free. They are reliable, and their performance is excellent. 

We have supply issues when ordering switches. It used to be a minimum of six to eight weeks. Now it has become around six months. That's the only issue we have. 

I have used Cisco Ethernet switches for more than 10 years.

I give Cisco Ethernet switches 10 out of 10 for stability.

I give Cisco Ethernet switches 10 out of 10 for scalability.

Cisco support is excellent.

Setting up Cisco switches isn't too complex, but it isn't easy. It could be more straightforward. One engineer can complete the setup in two to four hours.

We engaged the vendor who supplied us and helped deploy the switches.

I rate Cisco Ethernet switches 10 out of 10.

We are routing with the Cisco switches, so there are a lot of features, but no single one stands out. 

There's are other products that are better for network programmability. Cisco isn't as programmable as some others vendors. For example, on devices running iOS XE, you  dont have candidate configuration datastore when you use netconf like you would have on arista, juniper or others. Changes are directly applied on running configuration so there is no room for error once you commit changes to devices.

So it will be good for them to implement other config datastores because when it go to programming, review it's important so we need to be abe to have at least a candidate configuration datastore.

I've been using Cisco Ethernet Switches for 15 years.

Cisco Ethernet Switches are stable.

Cisco Ethernet Switches are scalable.

Cisco support is good once you reach a technician, but the website is a mess. I don't like the website.

I didn't use previous solution and then swith, but evaluate others vendors sometimes because their was in use in a company we bought, sometimes because their were shipped as a bundle with some hardware vendors solution for private cloud or storage solutions etc. Thought ome of them have some good features, Cisco got a better average rate when you take the whole thing.

The initial setup is really easy.

The price of Cisco switches could be lower. The cost is growing compared to other products, and it's more segmented. A Cisco switch is more expensive than before. For example, stackable models used to be provided with stacking ports and stacking cable. Now it's split you have to buy stacking kit separately. I don't know if they are the only ones like this or if this is standard now.

Yes other options have been evaluated but Cisco appeared to be the more easy to operate through the years regarding the stability of the product series, the CLI, support and documentation.

I rate Cisco Ethernet Switches eight out of 10. 

I'm a senior security network engineer and we have a gold partnership with Cisco. 

The valuable features of this solution are bandwidth, speed, low latency, and performance. Those are all features we need for our data center. 

I'd really like to see more programmability for the switches. We need more Python scripts because what we currently have doesn't cover all the configurations in the switch configuration. It would be helpful to have ASIC fast switching. I'd like higher speed and we're always looking for additional bandwidth.

We've been using this solution for over three years. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution becomes more scalable as more switches are connected to the ACI fabric. We currently have 2,000 users and this is increasing all the time. We just increase our switches as our users increase. 

If there are issues regarding the iOS or something similar, we open a ticket with Cisco tech support and they are very helpful. We're able to deal with most issues ourselves. 

The initial setup is relatively easy although I'd prefer if it were automated. If we have 100 sites and every site has nine or ten switches, it's a lot of work. For a small or medium implementation, it doesn't take long but for the enterprise sites, it takes some time. The initial configuration on one switch takes about 30 minutes. 

We pay an annual license fee and there are no additional costs other than when there is hardware failure. 

I recommend this solution, it's very dependable.

I rate this solution eight out of 10.