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Cisco Nexus vs NETGEAR Switches comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Nexus
Ranking in LAN Switching
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
102
Ranking in other categories
Data Center Networking (3rd)
NETGEAR Switches
Ranking in LAN Switching
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
54
Ranking in other categories
Ethernet Switches (4th), AV Over IP Switching (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2024, in the LAN Switching category, the mindshare of Cisco Nexus is 9.9%, down from 11.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NETGEAR Switches is 7.3%, down from 8.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
LAN Switching
 

Featured Reviews

Joe Benítez - PeerSpot reviewer
May 24, 2023
Offer high performance capabilities and enables efficient data transmission and processing
Before Nexus, I used to have Catalyst 6500 switches. Those 6500 series chassis gave us a lot of problems. Too many problems, actually. And we had a Cisco ASA firewall blade within those chassis. And they were running outdated software. So, in fact, it was the firewall blade that caused us too many problems instead of the chassis. The chassis itself was working well and performing fine, but the firewall card was not suitable for our needs. That was one aspect. Additionally, those chassis had been in operation for more than five years. As we are a local government, we have a policy to renew hardware every five years. That's because we need to maintain all the hardware and software in the latest versions and keep up with the technology lifecycle of the technology we use.
Beenish Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Jul 10, 2024
Helps with infrastructure planning and provides flexibility to leverage and connect more devices
The solution helps with infrastructure planning. If you have a point-of-sale system, you can use these switches to connect the internet devices through the right Ethernet cable.  That gives more flexibility instead of trying to get the Ethernet cable in the infrastructure wall. We use these…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It's pretty easy to use and operates at high speed."
"It speeds up the network data transfer time."
"The in-service software upgrade (ISSU) feature is quite valuable."
"The most valuable features are that it is easy to use, provides stability, easy to configure, low latency, and it provides communication to the data center."
"The most valuable features of this solution are scalability and throughput."
"The solution is very expensive. Currently, we pay an yearly licensing cost. I rate the pricing a nine out of ten."
"The most valuable features are the solution is robust, you are able to use it for fabric architecture as well as SPAN on exit with the controller."
"I like the fact that they are a well-supported product."
"The remote management tools are fantastic. The combination of the webpage as well as the app makes life so much easier. I don't need to go and visit sites to do upgrades or any sorts of changes. The firmware can all be deployed remotely. I can see the traffic on each of the switch ports remotely as well, so I can see if we've got problems, down to an individual port. It's very granular."
"The most important feature is the failover, the LACP links. That's the dual set it allows. We have redundant core switches and, if one fails or one network adapter fails, the other one can take over without problems."
"The solution is stable."
"The company provides a lifetime warranty."
"Valuable features include network monitoring and ease of programming for VLANs, etc. I especially like NETGEAR because it's easy to teach system administrators how to use them, how to look at them, how to make changes to them without having the complexity of CLIs, but still having a CLI should we need it."
"Remote management is the most important thing for us. And monitoring, of course, allows us to see when something is wrong with a client. We get notified that an access point is down, for instance, or that there are too many clients on one access point, so that we can log into the portal and manage the solution with the client instantly, from either a laptop or a cell phone, with the Insight app."
"We have one client that has three Insight switches and when we make a change to their network... we can make the configuration change and push it down to all three switches at once. We don't have to individually log on to each switch to make the change."
"This is a cost-effective solution."
 

Cons

"They need to offer fibre switches in the 9K series."
"With some of the products we had before, we had a little more downtime than we would like."
"Areas in which the solution have room for improvement are the interface, management, and reporting."
"I would like to see a central management solution in order to have all of the equipment in one place."
"I would like to see more automation and for it to be easier to use."
"Overall, I wish it was a more intuitive OS."
"There is no feature parity between the 9K and the 5K or 7K, which means that it is harder to position the 9K to future proof them."
"The solution is more expensive than other options on the market."
"Support needs to be improved."
"I would like an email notification in case of errors or failures. If it was possible for the switch to email out an error log or notification note, especially in cases where we have the switches offsite (on the other side of town), then if something was to go wrong, it would be great to know about it before our client goes to use it for a big event, and it doesn't work. While I know that it does do SNMP, which is sort of standard, in the AV world, that is not always an option for us. We are usually running our own little network box and don't always have access to an SNMP server. We may just have simple Internet access or something similar."
"The management of them, itself, is not so good. You have to go between many different browsers, even some super-old browsers, to be able to do it. That is a super pain."
"The product could be more robust."
"It's worked for the most part, but we've had to power cycle a few devices. We've had to ask customers to manually power cycle them with the power cord, after some of the firmware updates. Their updating needs a little improvement."
"When the power does go out, or if we do a soft shutdown, some of the transceivers or the monitor don't recognize when it turns back on, so I have to physically unplug it and plug it back in and then it works. We're working with NETGEAR's engineers to figure out why that's happening."
"Being able to pass AVB traffic over these switches, that would be a huge add. There are not many switches out that support that. The GS728TP NETGEAR switches used to or still do support AVB, but it would be ideal if the 4300 Series could support it as well."
"The ‘how-to’ guides could do with some improvements. We got in trouble following the stacking and Dante set-up guides. If these would have been accurate, we would not have lost three days."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The subscription model and price could be better."
"Our licensing costs for this solution are approximately $200 USD per month."
"We use a local distributor for support, which is very expensive."
"Our licensing fees are paid annually."
"I don't like the Smart Licensing models that Cisco uses."
"We have a virtual license."
"The price of the product is reasonable."
"The solution is relatively expensive when compared with Cisco Catalyst."
"It is a slightly expensive product."
"Licensing is always a hassle and a pain point."
"This is a one-time purchase and there are no licensing fees."
"The product is priced economically."
"At its price point, nobody else can compare to what NETGEAR is doing at that 10 Gigabit bandwidth level. We are not seeing a lot of 10 Gigabit need right now in the marketplace. Though, we have done a few projects which have required it. We are still sort of at the 1 Gigabit requirement for the majority of our projects. Honestly, NETGEAR's 10 Gigabit offering has a better value than some of the other vendors' 1 Gigabit offering."
"NETGEAR Switches can be considered a big brand, so its pricing point is a bit higher than that of some of the other players in the market."
"The great thing about the Insight product is that the renewable subscription is much cheaper than the competitors in the market. It is not over $50, per year, so customers buy the equipment and don't have to worry so much about the renewable fees that go along with having such access into their switch, with a cloud-managed solution. There are some other manufacturers where you'll essentially pay the same in hardware as you do in software, just for the cloud solution that supports it; just to keep getting the firmware updates and all of that information. With NETGEAR, you can do multi-year and that is something like 90 percent cheaper than if you're looking at Meraki, for example. It is extremely competitive. It's one of the main reasons we liked it so much."
"The pricing is great. The cost of the hardware is low... There are a few solutions that have a lower cost, but NETGEAR is very value-oriented."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
26%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
7%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco Nexus?
The product's initial setup phase is very easy.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Nexus?
In most cases, there is a need to secure perpetual licenses to be able to use the product. When I set up the product, there isn't just a one-time cost that is involved. If you want to upgrade to iO...
What needs improvement with Cisco Nexus?
In my company, we encountered some challenges since the network was not stable. The network is unstable, making it an area where improvements are required. If you do some kind of configuration on t...
How do NETGEAR switches compare with Cisco ethernet switches?
NetGear switches have a lot to offer. They have high availability, zero-downtime stacking, L2 and L3 functionality, and are AV-over-IP ready. NetGear switches also have a command line interface and...
Which switches are better - Ubiquiti Unifi or Netgear?
Ubiquiti Unifi offers a great set of features. For starters, it is easy to configure and implement, and also doesn’t require a learning curve because it is easy to use. It is also simple to reconfi...
What do you like most about NETGEAR Switches?
Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten. I have not faced any issues with the product whatsoever.
 

Also Known As

No data available
NETGEAR Insight Managed Switches, NETGEAR GC Series, NETGEAR M Series
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Advanced Medical Transport, Banco de Guayaquil, Baylor Scott & White Health, BH Telecom, Bowling Green State University, Calligaris, Children's Hospital Colorado, City of Biel, Del Papa Distributing, Department of Justice, Dimension Data, Dualtec Cloud Builders, Electricity Authority of Cyprus, Grupo Industrial Saltillo (GIS), Hertz, K&L Gates , LightEdge, Lone Star College System, Management Science Associates, Mindtree, NBC Olympics, Quest, Sony Corporation, The Department of Education in Western Australia, Valley Proteins
Blaze Networks
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Nexus vs. NETGEAR Switches and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
814,528 professionals have used our research since 2012.