Huawei Ethernet Switches Reviews

Our primary use case is for peer to peer links and for the ISP. We connect end users to it and
we have over 50 users of this product. I'm a Wireless Network Design Engineer. 

I like getting that CLI syntax, it's quite similar to the Cisco product.  

There could be some improvement in the dashboards and that's something that could be included in the next update.

I've been using the solution for four or five months. 

It's a stable solution.

Scalability is quite good.

The initial setup of the solution is quite simple. 

We looked at Cisco before going with Huawei.

I would rate this product an eight out of 10.

For my own use case, I am a reseller for the switches. For my clients' use case, it is using the products as switches to build out their network connections.  

The most valuable features will be those features that are really considered as basic features of this type of switch. That includes things such as spanning tree protocol, Huawei's proprietary intelligent stacking called iStack, and the routing features that come along with the switch software package.  

Because Huawei does not charge any license fee on extra features I can repackage it. When you buy a switch from Huawei, the switches come along with a lot of features that you do not need to pay extra money for but you can use these features to build out similarly to something like Cisco switches. There are some features that it does not include, so you have to pay some extra license fee to enable those capabilities.  

To improve the ethernet switches, I think first of all that Huawei should improve their knowledge base library. When people like me are trying to look for documents to study about the product to find a solution, sometimes the particular information I am looking for is quite hard to find. It should be an easy task to find a suitable document as a reference. By comparison, it is very easy to locate the information that you need for the Cisco systems. I just type the name of any features or any questions I might have into Google and I can find what I need in a matter of minutes. With Huawei, it is not that simple.  

I think the support also needs to be improved. Right now you have to be able to speak Mandarin in order to communicate with those technical experts and express your problem to make them understand what it is. When they know they can give you a solution to solve your problem, and the support is good in that way it is good. But they need more support for other languages. When I work with Cisco, for example, you can generally speak in English. I am not saying that the support people at Huawei do not know how to communicate in English at all, but find it quite difficult to communicate well with them because they have a very heavy Mandarin accent when speaking in English. It is better to just speak with them in mandarin if you can.  

Because I work only so often with the Huawei brand, I think these might be the only suggestions I have. I spent a long time with the technology but have not gotten very deeply into discovering the smaller details of Huawei switches until recent years.  

I have been using the product for three years.  

The stability of the brand is constantly getting better and has improved over time. Early on, I actually was working with this brand and have experience with it from seven or eight years ago for a short period of time. As I worked with it, I found it was sometimes hard to explain to the customer when the system became unstable. But Huawei seems to have resolved these issues now.  

In terms of scalability, Huawei is catching up to the big brothers in networking. For example, it is doing more to compete with Cisco, i-Tree or Brocade switches. Their scalability is quite good and sometimes they develop proprietary technology similar to other brands, like borrowing from Cisco. But some people say that the brand is just trying to copycat features that already exist in other brands. To copy is good sometimes, but to develop their own new technology is more important than copying something from other companies. It is not quite best practices to steal some technology and ideas from other companies.  

I would say that the technical support responds quite well. Because we are in the same time zone, it is quite easy to find people for troubleshooting or support. Just in case they cannot solve my problem, they can look for other knowledgeable resources within the same time zone who can address the issue. Some other brands, like Cisco, will usually pass the case to another time zone. They work in a protocol which some people call "follow the sun." So sometimes when people are working in one time-zone and they pass the case to people in another time zone, there might be some problem or some information that gets lost about the dialogue explaining the issue. When that happens, you have to repeat the questions and dialogue and it can take the people responding some time to pick up what had already been explained. So it wastes time at the end of the day.  

I believe that the question about setup complexity really depends on which models of the switches are being used. For the middle to low-end switches, it is quite intuitive. But for higher-end models, you must have experience in understanding not only Huawei technology but should also have a very clear concept of what you want to accomplish in networking. So, configuration-wise, I do not personally find any difficulties in configuring Huawei switches provided that I find the configuration guide and read it briefly before I put in any commands into the switch. However, less experienced users could potentially have problems.  

Huawei comes with a lot of features out of the box that you have to pay extra for with other products. They do charge extra in the licensing for certain other features, however, so some of those capabilities are an additional charge.

I have used quite a few ethernet switches. I have mostly been involved with Cisco, Huawei, and Meraki and I primarily use these three brands. It is not really a matter of choosing only Huawei as a solution in my situation. As a reseller, I need more than one option to satisfy client needs.

The advice I would give people who are considering this product as their switching solution is that if you are looking to satisfy the needs of a small scale project and want a pretty good price, then you might go for it. But you might be sacrificing security or risking involvement in a politically unstable situation. China and the U.S. are very tense with their political positions at the moment. They are facing some sort of trade war. If you need some components to produce or manufacture a product like a Huawei switch it is possibly going to be a tense situation. The chips are an important and really a vital component to complete development and upgrades or maintenance. Without that availability, the switch cannot work properly if something happens. So security and material swapping are the major issues to consider as a potential risk of adopting the product.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate the Huawei ethernet switches as a five. I rate it a five, or really average, compared with a product like Cisco switches. Cisco switches really rate something more like an eight or eight-and-a-half.  

The primary use case for this solution is more appropriate for small businesses than bigger ones, and is for internal and distribution switches, as well as for using power apps.

The most important feature that our clients look for in this solution is that it will perform how it says it will perform for the best price and that it will provide good support.

In terms of communication, implementation, and permissioning, we have on-hand implementation documents on the website that you can download if you want some second project in certain kinds of scenarios. Huawei has the advantages here, because with Cisco I can not find it. You have to do it yourself.

Durability is fine. The performance is fine compared with other products

From the customer's perspective, they usually don't care about certain disadvantages because as a technician I am the one who deploys and configures the planning and communication for them. In my opinion, most of the basic configurations of the switches are all the same.

In terms of Huawei specifically, the availability and the speed of the firmware updates are the only things wrong with Huawei. There are some vulnerabilities on the hardware. Cisco is good with releasing the patches. For Huawei, this aspect is problematic.

I would like to see performance improved, including wi-fi flexibility.

We have been working with Huawei Ethernet Switches for about four or five years. Our customers are using it.

Our clients are mixed - small, medium and large companies.

In terms of stability, I think it is a stable product. They are six years old. I haven't seen any hardware failure.

Their scalability is good. All the competition like Huawei or Cisco have their own scalability design. You can expand it.

The technical documentation available is very good. The technical support for the customer is also good - I would give it 8 out of 10.

The initial setup is ok. I think they're all the same common lines, they're all standard configuration. Everything's fine. For me, on the technical side, I didn't find any disadvantages.

The deployment time depends on the size, plan and design of the deployment.

We usually deploy it ourselves for the customer and they will call us if anything happens.

I think Cisco has the advantage in terms of durability because they have been in existence for more than 20 years, whereas Huawei just started a few years back. Cisco has a big track record of experience, R&D, and more.

On a scale of one to ten, I would give Huawei Ethernet Switches an eight. Overall, I would recommend this product.

We use it for architecture, commissioning, provisioning, installation and product shooting, reports and networking from TV, IP broadbands, networks, large networks, longer networks, DWDM systems, IPTV server, SIT Server, POYT, and also CCTV networks for security cameras.

The most valuable feature is the audit systems. I also like that it can synchronize on the alternate configuration of products together at the same time.

What I like about Huawei is that it has a very fast response to troubleshooting problems and regulates reports with very great production. Instead of other manufacturers that are pretty slow sometimes to expand. That is why I work with Huawei and not other solutions. Other manufacturers should speed up their answers.

It's a problem when you have several large networks and the problem is not at a specific point, but many different problems together. 

In the next release, I would like to see an increase in the performance of DDoS protection systems against all kinds of attack packets.

I have around 20 years of experience using Ethernet Switches. 

In terms of stability, I think this is the best on the market. 

I contact two places for support, Romania and China. I don't only use support for troubleshooting but also for conception and networks. I don't have any trouble with them.

I would rate it a 9.5 out of ten. Not a ten because the life span of the solution is too short. 

We use Huawei Ethernet Switches as part of our network.

We implemented 10G and Layer 3 supported switches with a lower cost. Our network connection our network application started to work faster. Also we stacked the switches and our availability increased.

Huawei Ethernet switches are easy to use and can be managed using either the GUI or via the command-line.

This solution integrates well with products from other vendors, such as Cisco.

We have a purchasing procedure. It says that if we want to buy a specific product or service we should get quotes from at least three companies. If we cannot get more than one quote we should find a similar product or service from a different vendor.

We had this issue last year. We needed 15 access points and we wanted to buy Huawei access points because our other devices were Huawei. I wanted a quote from three Huawei partner but only one of them sent the quote. Other partners said that Huawei did not send any quote
information because they send quote only one partner. We talked to Huawei regional sales manager but they said they can not do anything for this situation.

Because of this situation, I searched for the products of other vendors. Aruba sent three quotes from its different partners and their quotes were similar. And also they were cheaper than Huawei. Because of the cost factor, our purchasing department preferred to buy Aruba access points.

We had the same issue for the switches at around the end of 2019. Because I don't have time to search other vendors we canceled the purchasing and our budget for switches.

Now I don't have any spare products and I will be trouble if one of my switches fails.

I have been using Huawei Ethernet Switches for about three years.

The stability of these switches is good. They are very durable because one of the cooling fans in our data center failed and this solution was still working at about 50 degrees Celcius (122 degrees Fahrenheit). There was some latency but it was still working.

You can scale up this solution very easily. If you have enough ports at your core switch or main switch, then you can attach other switches. You have to write a couple of simple commands and then add the other switches.

There are 24 switches with about 400 devices and 200 users connected to them.

Local support is available in Turkey from two or three different partners. However, we rarely ask for support from Huawei because when you set up a deice it works properly and we rarely need to change anything. If you add a new device, such as an access point, then you may need to configure some ports but it is very rare. It happens two or three times a year in our organization.

Prior to this solution, I was using devices by Cisco. They are very nice but they are also very expensive. The cost is the reason that we switched.

Deploying this solution is easy. You just connect the cables.

One person is enough to maintain our 24 switches.

Huawei Ethernet switches have a price advantage over other solutions. You can buy about four Huawei switches for the price of one Cisco switch.

The exact pricing varies based on how many units you purchase. For example, if you buy one then it is expensive, but if you buy ten or more then there is a discount. I would expect the same would apply to larger purchases, such as a bulk discount for buying 100 or more units.

We also looked at network solutions by Aruba and HP. Our Huawei warranty will expire in 2023 and we may change the product, but we do not yet know. Before that time we will test other devices and decide whether or not to stay with Huawei. Replacing the switches would not be a problem for us.

This is a very nice device and I recommend it.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for user accessibility.

The HTTP features for security are very good. We use all of the regular features.

The software could be more stable. There are a lot of bugs reported for the IS portion.

The GUI could be improved. It could be much more adaptable.

We've been using the solution for six or seven months.

We haven't faced any issues with scalability yet. There was one issue on the client-side where our mainframes weren't working because of a change on the packet side. The solution needs to add overhead to the packets. We have about 10,000 users on the solution currently. We don't have plans to increase usage on the appliance.

We've had contact with technical support and they are okay. The amount of assistance they provide is average. The response time they offer is typically too long and should be shortened. A lot of issues take hours.

We use a variety of switches. Depending on the requirements, we use Huawei, Cisco, HP, or Aruba. 

Most of our IT team members have a background in Huawei, so the solution is easy to set up.

We have contractors from Huawei come and handle the implementation for us since the solution is on-premises.

We use the on-premises deployment model.

I'd rate the solution four out of ten. The OS, features, and usage aren't great. There's a lack of resources and support. There's also a lack of implementers and very few partners.

The solution is an IoT router but we primarily use it as the layer for industrial switches for CCTV video transmission.

The solution is very inexpensive. The documentation is very good. 

Technical support is also very good.

They have the ability, since they have a very big R&D team, to create an upgrade for any feature or patch very easily.

Troubleshooting documentation should be improved.

The interoperability of the devices, in general, on the Huawei switches is not good and is known to be not good. Maybe they can improve this a bit.

In terms of being able to patch quickly, if you have both a quality device, a quality switch that has a specific capability, Huawei won't necessarily have the same capability until a patch is created for it. 

I've been using the solution for approximately one year.

I'm satisfied with the stability of their equipment. There are no crashes, unexpected events, outages, or reboots.

We've never tried to scale the solution, so I can't speak to how scalable it is. We do have a client with 1,000-5,000 employees.

We've been satisfied with the level of technical support we've received from the solution. We've used technical support a lot, and it's one of the main advantages of the solution overall.

The initial setup is straightforward. It's very easy. Initially, the implementation took longer than we thought. We set it up over a period of two or three weeks.

We deployed the solution ourselves.

We use the on-premises deployment model.

When compared to Cisco switches, the Huawei switches are a bit lower in quality. They have similar properties that the Cisco switches have. Often Huawei brings in the features to match the competition later, and, in general, the overall quality a bit lower. Sometimes, because of this, you might have some unexpected results. The documentation is generally good, but troubleshooting documents for some unusual bugs or glitches are never created.

I generally recommend Huawei switches because although they are lower quality, they are cheaper than other switches. If you compare the price to quality ratio, it's pretty good, which is why we bought them.

Initially, many users are tempted by the idea of getting something that's that cheap. I recommend users to explore and investigate how they will use the switches and what they will purchase. Huawei is both good and not good. It depends on how you look at. If you really want to go with Huawei, then just be aware that Huawei has interoperability problems with many other vendors. In this case, I'd recommend going with all Huawei products to avoid issues.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

We use the on-premises model for our internet company. We only use it for that situation.

The velocity of the process is the most valuable feature. 

Integration could be improved. The price could also be lower.

The solution is stable.

Huawei Switches are scalable. We have ten people that work on this solution, including engineers and other personnel.

Their technical support is very good, although I haven't been in touch with them directly yet.

The initial setup was straightforward. It took us one month to deploy this ourselves.

We have a one-year license. There are no additional costs besides the licensing fee.

The stability is good. I also find value in the recollecting the materials.

I would rate the switches as eight out of ten. Not a ten mainly because of the price.