Cisco Catalyst Switches Reviews

In my organization, we primarily use Cisco Systems Catalyst Switches across the access, distribution (aggregation), and core network layers. They play a critical role in delivering stable and scalable connectivity throughout our infrastructure.

At the access layer, we use PoE-enabled Catalyst switches to power and connect devices such as CCTV cameras, IP phones, wireless access points, printers, and end-user desktops. These switches provide reliable internet and LAN connectivity while simplifying deployments through Power over Ethernet.

At the distribution (aggregation) layer, Catalyst switches connect multiple access switches to the core network. We use Link Aggregation (LAG/EtherChannel) with dual 10Gbps uplinks combined into 20Gbps logical interfaces, ensuring higher bandwidth, redundancy, and improved resilience between access, distribution, and core layers.

At the core layer, Catalyst switches serve as the backbone of the network, interconnecting all segments efficiently. They also handle Layer 3 functions such as routing and DHCP services across approximately 20 subnets, delivering strong performance and dependable network operations.

One of the standout qualities of Cisco Catalyst Switches is their reliability and durability. They maintain excellent uptime, rarely experience failures or freezes, and continue operating effectively even in environments with unstable power conditions.

I have also used Catalyst switches in an ISP/WISP environment, where they were deployed to connect uplink radios, power third-party PoE devices, and perform inter-VLAN routing for customer segmentation.

From legacy models such as the 2960 and 3570 to newer platforms like the 9300 series, Cisco Catalyst switches have consistently proven to be dependable, high-performing, and enterprise-ready solutions for on-premises network environments.

Cisco Systems Catalyst Switches have positively impacted our organization in several key ways.

First, they have significantly improved network reliability and uptime. The switches operate consistently with minimal failures, which has reduced downtime and ensured stable connectivity for users, business applications, IP phones, CCTV systems, and wireless networks.

Second, their strong performance and scalability have allowed us to grow the network efficiently. With features such as VLAN segmentation, Layer 3 routing, PoE support, and link aggregation, we have been able to support increasing business demands without major infrastructure challenges.

Third, they have lowered long-term operational costs. Although the initial investment is higher, their durability and long lifespan mean fewer replacements, less maintenance, and better return on investment over time.

Finally, the availability of Cisco documentation, training resources, and a large support community has made deployment, troubleshooting, and management much easier for our IT team.

Overall, Cisco Catalyst Switches have provided a stable, secure, and scalable foundation for our organization’s network infrastructure.

One thing that stands out about Cisco Systems Catalyst Switches is their reliability and durability. They maintain strong uptime and do not easily fail or freeze, even in environments with inconsistent power supply.

Another notable feature is support for LAG interfaces (EtherChannel), which improves bandwidth, redundancy, and overall link performance between access and distribution switches.

They also support a robust DHCP environment, efficiently serving up to 20 subnets, while providing strong PoE capabilities for devices such as IP phones, CCTV cameras, wireless access points, and other powered network devices. This makes them highly suitable for both enterprise and ISP environments.

From a cost-efficiency perspective, the older Catalyst 2960 series switches that were deployed many years ago have remained operational for nearly 20 years and still perform reliably today. That level of longevity represents an excellent return on investment and highlights the long-term value of Cisco Catalyst Switches.

Cisco Systems Catalyst Switches are highly regarded for their performance, reliability, and enterprise-grade capabilities. My main reservation, however, is the pricing.

The cost of Cisco Catalyst Switches—and Cisco products in general—is relatively high, especially in many African markets where organizations often need to balance budget constraints with required functionality.

There are alternative vendors that offer comparable features at a lower price point. While they may not always match Cisco’s ecosystem, stability, or full feature depth, many businesses still choose them because of the significant cost savings.

Another consideration is licensing, which can add to the overall total cost of ownership depending on the deployment model and required features.

Overall, Cisco Catalyst Switches remain premium enterprise solutions, but when compared with other OEMs, their higher acquisition and licensing costs can be a major deciding factor for cost-conscious organizations.

I have been using Cisco Catalyst Switches for about seven years.

I gave it a 10 out of 10 because Cisco Catalyst Switches does not fail. It is very predictable.

What you tell it to do is exactly what it does. There are no disappointments while using Cisco Catalyst Switches.

It is the perfect switch to use. Cisco Catalyst Switches is very stable.

In terms of scalability, Cisco Systems offers modular switch platforms where you can deploy a chassis-based system and expand capacity as network demands grow.

One of the strongest scalability advantages—especially at the core layer—is the ability to procure additional line cards and install them with relative ease. This allows organizations to increase port density, uplink capacity, and feature capabilities without replacing the entire switch.

For core network environments, this modular design provides a practical and cost-effective path for future expansion while maintaining performance and operational continuity.

The first switch we used was Cisco Catalyst Switches.

I can say in terms of money saved because up until now, in the previous places where I have worked and also now, we still use the older model, the 2960 model Cisco Catalyst Switches, which has been in existence for almost 20 years and up until now it still functions very well.

I would say that is a good return on investment on those devices.

For deployment costs, we handled the network infrastructure setup internally, so there was little to no external implementation cost.

One major advantage of Cisco Systems products is the strong availability of documentation, training resources, and technical knowledge. Cisco provides extensive learning materials, configuration guides, and best practices that make deployment and troubleshooting easier.

In many cases, when issues arise, you can quickly find solutions through the large Cisco community, forums, or professionals who have previously handled similar scenarios—often before needing to escalate to official Cisco support.

We evaluated other options. Other options we evaluated were HP Aruba and Juniper.

Especially in the internet service provider environment, you need network devices that are highly durable and capable of delivering reliable services to customers consistently.

You need equipment that can withstand power fluctuations, operate for long periods without requiring power cycles, and remain stable under continuous demand. In service-driven environments, predictability and uptime are critical, and devices must not fail because of minor voltage instability.

That is one of the qualities that stands out most to me about Cisco Systems Catalyst Switches—their durability and long-term reliability.

While other vendors may offer similar features and functionality, Cisco devices consistently stand out in terms of hardware endurance, operational stability, and lifecycle value. Even today, it is common to find Cisco switches that are nearly 20 years old still functioning effectively in modern network environments.

If you are looking for a long-term investment in network infrastructure—something durable, predictable, stable, and scalable—Cisco Catalyst Switches are an excellent choice.

Based on my experience, I would rate this product 10/10.

I was working with L3 and L2 switches. Currently, if there is new infrastructure, they will work with L3 switches as a core switch. We are in the middle, and at the perimeter level, a firewall will be positioned. From there, they will configure one single interface as a management interface. From the management interface, it will connect to the core switch. In the core switch itself, we are creating multiple interface VLANs and creating a DHCP lease for that VLAN. Then we need to create a return route on the firewall side. Only then will the VLANs get the internet. For IP route, we are going to give the default gateway as the management IP of the firewall. Then all the VLANs will pass through the firewall end. This was the common configuration for the core switch levels.

At the next level, POE switches will release power plus, which means the traffic. It is only used for the access points and cameras.

Currently, I am working in the implementation team. They assign a ticket to me, and I go to a data center or anywhere to work on that. Other than that, if any troubleshooting calls arise, they assign them in tickets. I receive a mail and through that, I take a remote call or a virtual meeting with customers. I remotely resolve issues because I am currently working in a partner company.

I am currently working with Cisco solutions and multiple solutions as well. In Cisco, I am currently in cybersecurity.

The best feature is that we can manage this in the DNA license. If we have a DNA license, we can manage it in that platform. Other than that, Catalyst switches can be converted to the cloud platform as Meraki. We can convert that with the serial number and use it in the cloud console as a Meraki dashboard. That is another use case.

I work with Nexus switches and Catalyst switches, both of them.

I work with firewalls, switches, access points, and SASE.

Cisco Catalyst Switches uses a common protocol. We can see the documents and what the things are in every scenario because Cisco is the enterprise switch. Everyone can see the commands and we can get the commands online. We can find the troubleshooting commands we need to set. But in other competitors' switches, we cannot get those commands. That is the best way. Additionally, Cisco switches rarely need RMA support. If I purchase Cisco Catalyst Switches once, they will be used for more than ten years. We will not encounter anything on the RMA side regarding replacement devices.

Pricing needs to improve. Competitors such as Arista, Aruba, and others are giving lifetime support.

In the enterprise network, we are facing issues at the stacking point. We are unable to stack the switches because of compatibility issues. Other than that, port channels exist. In most cases, the VLANs were not passing to the access switches level. What they will do is miss out on allowing the respective VLANs in the port channel. The spine-leaf concept will be there. In the spines, they do not allow the VLANs in the port channel level. That is why the down switches are unable to ping the upstream switches.

There is no other advice. These are the only couple of things: the firmware and customer support.

I have been using this solution for four or five years.

There are no challenges. Cisco Catalyst Switches is very easy to configure.

I have not seen new features introduced recently. When they introduce a new feature, such as AI guardrail, we can integrate Cisco Catalyst Switches to the AI guardrail for any AI security. Other than that, I have not seen any other new features in the switches. Viptela Manager exists from previously and we can manage all the switches with it.

Customer service is okay and fine.

If I raise a ticket, they will not come immediately. The time duration they take to come is very high.

I have five years of operational level experience. Currently, I am working fully in the security side, so there are limited calls only for the networking side. In the last one year, I have been working with firewalls and SASE, NetScope, and Zscaler. I switched to a security company one year ago. Previously, I was working in a networking-based company.

I have four years of experience in hybrid setups. In the previous company, I have full experience with Cisco Catalyst Switches.

Yesterday, I implemented one Catalyst 9500 switch. It is a star switch. I implemented it at one of our sites as a Nutanix star switch.

I am part of the implementation team.

The return on investment is positive.

Cost-effective alternatives exist. Arista offers the same switches and same capabilities as Cisco Catalyst Switches. In the data center side, Arista is very competitive to Cisco and they are doing data center switches. Compared to Cisco, they are providing more cost-effective options.

Aruba and Arista have only one common firmware for all switches. If I download one series with firmware version 7.0.1, I can use that firmware for all model switches.

I do not know much about improvement scales because we directly configure things. Currently, every year they are introducing new technology and new features, but on the switch side, nothing is up to mark. There are no new features that I can identify. Cisco Catalyst Switches is good. My overall review rating for this product is ten out of ten.

My use case is for networking purposes. I am using it for network connectivity, specifically for overall WAN network connectivity.

Cisco Catalyst Switches offers user-friendly configuration, making it easy to configure and install. The operational efficiency of Cisco in an IT environment is good.

I cannot identify specific disadvantages with the product. However, the areas that have potential to be better are the timeline for the system and switch delivery. The delivery timelines for the product need to be improved.

I started using it from 2022.

I would rate the stability at 80% rather than 99%. I account for this lower rating because sometimes issues happen related to configuration or misconfiguration, and the expertise is not always present in the product.

The technical support from Cisco is helpful, but the timeline needs to be improved for P1 and P2 cases. Customers are facing issues reaching the technical support team. I would rate the support as a nine out of ten.

Currently, I see no value for money or return on investment. Sometimes Cisco Catalyst does save some time or some money for me. I cannot quantify the savings in time and money, but the product is good.

The price is very high. Compared to others, I find the price a bit high when compared to Juniper and Allied Telesis.

I see the technical differences between Cisco, Juniper, and other vendors. The technical solution is good compared to others and I believe it is better and more advanced technically.

I am working with Cisco products, including Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN, though I usually work with a different product. I am not using SD-WAN currently; I use Cisco Catalyst 9300 and 9500. I work with Catalyst switches or Catalyst Center, where the advancements are in switching and routing. Cisco Catalyst Switches is more advanced because the configuration is easier to understand compared to Juniper, where the configuration is at a different level.

Visibility affects my troubleshooting and end-to-end visibility. Visibility is adequate, and if there is an issue, I can raise a TAC call and the team or partners will support me.

I would rate this review a nine out of ten overall.

My main uses for Cisco Catalyst Switches are as an access layer and distribution core, and we are 100% all Cisco switches.

At the distribution layer with Cisco Catalyst Switches, I appreciate the virtual switch stacks where we can pair a couple of switches together for redundancy, and the stacking capability at the access layer with both power and data stacks, moving away from old traditional chassis-based switches.

Cisco Catalyst Switches scale very well with the growing needs of my organization, again going back to the stacking capabilities at the access layer with both power and data stacks on the back. I love the power stacking, so we have a little bit more PoE redundancy there as well.

My impression of the end-to-end visibility offered by Cisco Catalyst Switches is that it is pretty good. I really appreciate what I get out of Catalyst Center, the integration that it gives there with telemetry and the assurance data, though I would appreciate a little bit better alerting.

I have been using Cisco Catalyst Switches for about 23 years.

We have not had any downtime or crashes with Cisco Catalyst Switches in a while. When we have had issues in the past, it has usually been a hardware failure, and those things happen. Occasionally a software bug occurs, which is frustrating because you think it is preventable, but it has been rock solid for the most part.

For customer service and technical support regarding Cisco, I would rate it an 8 or 9, as it depends a lot on relationships, especially with our account team. I have a phenomenal SE, a really good account manager, and great relationships with other people inside Cisco. TAC really depends on the engineer; you could end up with a three, but then we can reach out to our account team and ask for help, or re-queue the case. If you get a good engineer, you are hitting a 9 or 10. TAC is whoever gets the call.

Prior to adopting Cisco Catalyst Switches, I used Enterasys.

Enterasys did not meet my similar needs compared to Cisco Catalyst Switches. This was 20-plus years ago, and it was not a quality product compared to Cisco, which led us to go with Cisco at the time for the best-in-class hardware. Now, everything has kind of transitioned to more software-based things, but Cisco has always been an industry leader from a hardware perspective.

My experiences with pricing, setup cost, and licensing with Cisco Catalyst Switches show that licensing is a major pain. I complain about it all the time, and then they decide to change it. The same thing applies to SmartNet coverage. You have to have that, you have to have licensing, you have to renew this, and now there are different levels of that. It is just really complex and a pain. I have been around long enough to remember when you bought a switch, and it just worked, but now you have to buy a switch and all this extra things.

The virtual switch stacks in Cisco Catalyst Switches are an optimization in a hybrid or distributed enterprise setup.

The hybrid piece with Cisco Catalyst Switches is really the confusing part of it. I work for a university, so we are a campus, and I do not have a lot of remote locations, but if we are talking about hybrid and remote workforce people, generally speaking, we just offer them VPN, which works great, and then everything that they do at their remote location is completely up to them.

Keeping Cisco on their toes is important. I would rate this review an 8.

Cisco Catalyst Switches are used as access switches for all departments in our organization, and we have created VLANs for each department. The implementation is working perfectly.

In our IT environment, I assess the operational efficiency of Cisco, as we have 80% Cisco Catalyst Switches in our IT network, and they are all functioning well and working great.

Cisco Catalyst Switches feature good switching capacity and are easy to manage and user-friendly.

The end-to-end visibility that Cisco provides helps us in troubleshooting.

Some models of Cisco Catalyst Switches are very difficult to manage, as they are extremely different from their regular models. We have a 110G switch, but its configuration is far more difficult than other standard switches, such as the 2960 or 2960X.

Apart from configurations, I would appreciate improvements in the web interface of Cisco Catalyst Switches and their acknowledgment of other brands. Cisco switches do not work the same way; if you use the command CDP neighbors, which is a Cisco proprietary protocol, it only shows Cisco switches directly connected to the particular switch and does not show any other brand connected to the same switch.

I feel Cisco Catalyst Switches are the best among all of them, but the only drawback I see is that they do not recognize other switches as neighbors, and some of Cisco's proprietary protocols do not work on other switches. CDP is purely a Cisco proprietary protocol, and I believe it should be available on other switches as well.

I have been working with Cisco Catalyst Switches for around 20 to 25 years.

Having used Cisco Catalyst Switches for the last 20 to 25 years, I now face no issues in deployments.

I assess the stability and reliability of Cisco Catalyst Switches as good, as some switches have been working for the last 20 years. I have not changed them and have not even touched them, and they continue to run continuously without any issues.

I assess the scalability of Cisco Catalyst Switches as excellent, as they are scalable. If I want to stack one or more switches, I can do so whenever needed.

Regarding customer service and technical support from Cisco, I have never required technical support for the switches, so I cannot provide feedback on that.

We have some other brands such as Huawei, Nexus, and HP that we have used in the past.

We do not use any other solutions currently; we are using only Cisco Catalyst Switches.

We work with on-premises deployment of Cisco Catalyst Switches and configure them on our own.

I do not have knowledge about the pricing, setup cost, or licensing aspects of Cisco switches, as I am not the manager responsible for purchasing. I raise a request when I need a new switch or something similar, and the pricing and procurement of switches is handled entirely by a different department.

My impression of the end-to-end visibility offered by Cisco is that they provide products to manage a Cisco environment, including Cisco switches and Cisco routers, and it provides good visibility for all products in your infrastructure. I am satisfied with these products.

The advice I would give to other organizations considering Cisco Catalyst Switches is that they are better than any other brand. They are user-friendly, durable, and have good switching capacity. Their switching fabric is superior to any other switches.

On a scale of one to 10, I rate Cisco Catalyst Switches as a product and solution a 9.

My main use case for Cisco Catalyst Switches is to enable network connectivity for many of our IT infrastructure devices. It is used to establish layer two connectivity for computing devices, switches, routers, firewalls, and other networking devices and IT peripherals.

I can give you a quick specific example of how I use Cisco Catalyst Switches in my environment: we have multiples of Cisco Catalyst Switches where we used them within our three-tier network architecture. We used to have Cisco Catalyst Switches in core, access, and distribution layer of our network topology. We used to have good network connectivity with Cisco Catalyst Switches.

The best features Cisco Catalyst Switches offer include high performance, security, reliability for enterprise-grade organizations, flexible deployment, and simplified management.

Cisco Catalyst Switches provide high performance and security features that stand out in my daily work, where they handle a high volume of traffic with low latency, making them suitable for bandwidth-intensive applications, web applications, VoIP applications, video streaming, and major data center workloads.

Cisco Catalyst Switches have positively impacted my organization by providing major network connectivity for our data center workloads and computing resources. It has improved built-in capabilities such as 802.1Q encryptions and better control over network connectivity and simplified network management using Cisco DNA Center and IOS XE automation tools to help reduce the manual work of the switches. It was actually used to provision devices in a faster manner, and we can automate devices using Cisco DNAC. The scalability of devices is much better, so whenever we have to scale our network and computing resources, it is easy to install a new device and scale our network quickly.

Cisco Catalyst Switches can be improved, especially when we have Cisco licensing models. Whenever we had to renew the license, the licensing model seems to be much more complex. It could have been more transparent and improved whenever we had to renew end-of-license and end-of-support from the OEM's perspective. In most cases, we used to integrate Cisco Catalyst Switches with Cisco DNA Center, so the subscription for Cisco DNA Center seems to be much high. It has a more costly Smart Net support contract.

I would add more about the needed improvements: the energy consumptions could have been better. Compared to other networking devices, the energy efficiency seems to be less. Also, the port compatibility could be higher for 40G ports and larger sizes of ports.

I have been using Cisco Catalyst Switches for the past seven years.

The stability of Cisco Catalyst Switches in my environment is somewhat problematic: legacy Cisco Catalyst Switches, even though they have licenses and support, present many hardware-related issues, such as interfaces going down very repeatedly, SFP modules failing in most cases, and hardware ports becoming faulty. The devices have hardware problems, such as CPU, fan, and power modules getting faulty. In most cases, legacy devices that are more than five or six years old used to have major utilization issues. They repeatedly encountered CPU and memory utilization problems. It is very difficult to perform a firmware upgrade for Cisco Catalyst Switches because we have to manually download the software files from the portal and upload them manually. In most cases, while performing an upgrade for the old devices, we come across system down and system failure issues, making it tough to bring the VM up once again. This is a reliability issue I come across.

Cisco Catalyst Switches are stable in my environment, with no major stability issues, and mostly reliable.

Cisco Catalyst Switches' scalability is manageable when we have to do the configuration manually. However, as new-age networking requires, the auto-scaling and zero-touch provisioning kind of support for Nexus switches is lacking. That kind of facility does not exist, and features could have been introduced for Cisco Catalyst Switches to improve their scalability.

I used to contact customer support for many technical issues, and customer support seems to be good for known issues. However, they take too long to troubleshoot many unknown problems, such as CPU memory utilization issues.

Previously, we used to have Huawei switches and Dell switches linked with Dell hypervisors and Dell EMC host. However, we did not have proper support and firmware releases and upgrades for the devices, so we moved to Cisco Catalyst Switches.

I find the initial setup process for Cisco Catalyst Switches straightforward and simple.

I have seen a return on investment with Cisco Catalyst Switches: they attain the expected outcome of enabling network connectivity to deliver computing resources and services in a proper manner. There is not much compliance; they will do their job.

My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Cisco Catalyst Switches indicates that I am not from the accounts or finance department, so I do not have much insight. However, I heard that the pricing seemed somewhat reasonable to the industry, but compared to other products, it is somewhat high.

Before choosing Cisco Catalyst Switches, I evaluated other options such as Aruba, FortiSwitches, and Huawei switches.

The advice I would give to others looking into using Cisco Catalyst Switches is that if we have an enterprise-level network where we do not require high-throughput computational resources, and we need reliable network connectivity, we can use Cisco Catalyst Switches for better connectivity, reliable network performance, and throughput. I gave this review a rating of 7.

I work with Cisco and Huawei. I use Cisco Catalyst Switches. I am the admin. Around 20 people are using Cisco Catalyst Switches in my company.

The main feature is that you will get many more people trained on Cisco Catalyst Switches than other solutions in the market. When you hire someone, you will find that they have already been trained on this product.

Power over Ethernet is very good. It can provide power for all types of cameras and is very powerful and effective.

Cisco Catalyst Switches Software-Defined Access is good in my network configuration.

It is friendly and easy to use. Everyone is familiar with their commands.

I am not aware of anything else that needs to be improved in Cisco Catalyst Switches.

The cost is not reasonable. It is the highest cost in the market. The pricing needs to be reduced.

I have been working with Cisco Catalyst Switches for around 10 years.

I am planning to increase usage in the future.

We have Smart Net, so if we have any issues, we call Cisco directly. They provide excellent support through Smart Net. We maintain an active Smart Net account at all times.

Their support quality is outstanding. When requesting an RMA, they replace defective items in just one day.

Positive

I have worked with different solutions, but not throughout the entire company. This was not my first experience with LAN switching and Ethernet switching.

We use Huawei wireless, and it is good. When you use a system, you need to have all the monitoring systems integrated with it. We built a new server for the Huawei monitoring system to use Huawei.

Huawei devices are priced around 10% less than Cisco Catalyst Switches. The main consideration is about industrial switches that connect to the Wi-Fi access point. These industrial switches are priced at about 70% less than Cisco Catalyst Switches pricing.

I am not looking for a new solution at this time. I did not work with Cisco TrustSec for enhancing security. My overall review rating for Cisco Catalyst Switches is 9 out of 10.

The main use-case for Cisco Catalyst Switches is access layer, core, and distribution.

I appreciate the flexibility of the features most; I can turn features off and on quite easily. They are only 1U, so they are much smaller and have significantly more capabilities than they used to. Cisco Catalyst Switches scale with the growing needs of my organization very well.

Cisco Catalyst Switches could be improved because they are far too deep. The design is excessively deep, so when I put them in racks, they sometimes sag in a cabinet. I do not prefer that. I also do not appreciate the fact that some of them have console ports on the front, some have console ports on the back, and some have RJ45 connections while others use micro SD. They do not seem to have consistency among the people who design them. They are all designing in silos and are not always on the same page. I do not always get that consistency.

I have been using this product for approximately 10 years.

I assess the stability and reliability of Cisco Catalyst Switches as very good.

I evaluate customer service and tech support as very good; we have our own account team, so we are satisfied with that service.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is good; I received good pricing, and the licensing is easy with no problems.

I did not consider any other solutions before selecting Cisco Catalyst Switches because we are a Cisco shop. There are no other solutions; you cannot mix and match very well and be successful. You are either in Cisco switching or you are not.

My impression of the end-to-end visibility offered by Cisco is fair.

Cisco Catalyst Switches does not optimize the experience in a hybrid or distributed enterprise setup for us.

There are no specific challenges I face with hybrid and distributed enterprise networks that Cisco Catalyst Switches addresses; nothing stands out. We are pretty happy with it.

I would give Cisco Catalyst Switches a rating of nine out of ten. I hope you have a lot of money because they are expensive; you get what you pay for. It is comparable to any other purchase where you can choose between different price points and quality levels based on your budget.

I am still using Sophos products, and I have upgraded to an XG 2100 from the XG 210 that I was using previously. I use Cisco Meraki for my Layer 2 infrastructure, including access switches, core switches, Meraki access points, and Meraki switches. For security, I use Sophos exclusively across the board because of the ease of communication between Sophos endpoints and firewalls. I have two firewalls—one on the cloud and one on-premise. The communication between the endpoint and the two firewalls makes it easier for me to stick with Sophos rather than use another vendor to complement it.

I stick to Meraki's layer switches, access points, cameras, and some other thermostat equipment. I do not use Meraki for SD-WAN because Sophos already has that functionality.

From Cisco, I primarily use Meraki. I still have some traditional switches, but I am trying to phase those out. I mostly use Cisco for switches, routers, and voice.

Beyond Meraki, I have Catalyst switches as well, specifically the 9600 models. I am trying to phase out Catalyst switches and completely move the entire infrastructure to Meraki because of the ease of configuration. I am still using some Cisco Catalyst Switches, but only some, not all of them. These products are mostly used for the access layer, while all the core layers have been moved to Meraki completely.

I appreciate the ease of granularity in configuration where I can go in and configure as much as I need. The positive aspect is that cloud solutions have made configuration easier and faster. Rather than spending one or two hours configuring a switch, I can easily do that in one minute on the cloud. That is one reason I appreciate Meraki and also one reason why I am moving away from traditional switches.

With Meraki switches, I can easily configure from anywhere, such as creating additional VLANs or restricting things without getting close to the device itself.

There are scripts that we wrote that we use to automate the product, especially when it comes to configuration management. Regardless, it is still not as appealing to me anymore due to the overhead. When there are new upgrades, some scripts might not work anymore, which means I have to make additional changes to them. With Meraki access points, I do not have to have a wireless controller for them. I can configure the wireless device directly from the switch, making the setup cleaner, and that is a major reason for my preference.

For Catalyst, I am satisfied with the IoT integration. It works well after all configuration is completed. The main issue is having to tweak every time and spending valuable time on the network, which becomes problematic when competitors are moving fast with cloud solutions while I am stuck with lengthy configuration products.

There is a lot of overhead, and I have to have so many technology people to manage so many Catalyst switches. Management is also difficult because I have to console into each of the switches in order to configure and make changes.

In my opinion, Cisco should provide some level of software that I can bring on-premise where I can add all my Catalyst switches for central management. I am not asking them to create it as a cloud; I would prefer software that I can put on-premise, such as a Linux solution, to manage all switches centrally. Configuration management might do some of that, but if it comes directly from Cisco, it will maintain adequate patches. This way, when there are new upgrades for Cisco Catalyst Switches, the software will be updated accordingly, so I do not run into issues or debugging because of unupgraded switches.

If I am starting from scratch, it is complex. However, if my network already follows a certain configuration, I can duplicate that from one switch to another, which makes it easier. Creating different VLANs within those switches is not as simple because I have to do a lot of terminal configuration to ensure that I can get things working. With Meraki, I could do that in one second versus spending an hour on Catalyst.

I have been using this solution for about ten years.

I would rate the stability of Cisco Catalyst Switches at about eight out of ten. It is actually quite stable.

I would give scalability about seven out of ten because if I have to take a switch off my network and provide a new switch, I might run into issues, especially if the network increases. Configuration is not going to be fast, and I cannot swap configuration or add an additional switch within two to five minutes at most. Unlike Meraki, where I can bring a switch online, join it to the portal, and it becomes operational immediately.

I would give Cisco technical support about an eight out of ten based on my recent experience with a request for a new access point.

Positive

I am not working with Fortinet products anymore.

There are new competitors coming up, but none of them is actually close to Cisco Catalyst Switches. I have a bias for Meraki right now, so I would say that Meraki is actually way better to work with.

My main uses for Cisco Catalyst Switches are end-user ports, mostly.

The features I like the most about Cisco Catalyst Switches are improved management plane, such as Catalyst Center and integrations.

Cisco does optimize the experience in hybrid and distributed enterprise setups.

Regarding the impression of end-to-end visibility offered by Cisco, I would love to have more visibility.

What I want to see in the future regarding Cisco Catalyst Switches is more integrations between different kinds of products, such as data center and campus.

I have been using Cisco Catalyst Switches for over 20 years.

Generally, my experience with deploying Cisco Catalyst Switches works well. New features always come with a price, but in general, it is fine. Since we operate medical infrastructure, we try to avoid downtime as much as possible.

Cisco Catalyst Switches scale quite well with the growing needs of my organization.

I evaluate customer service and technical support as getting worse.

Before Cisco, I considered Aruba and Hewlett Packard.

I have not seen any ROI yet.

My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing was not all good. Licensing is quite a nightmare in the Cisco world, and I wish we had simplified licensing.

There are specific challenges that I face with hybrid and distributed enterprise networks, such as the growing need for security, and Cisco does address that. I give this review a rating of 8.