Cisco Catalyst Switches Reviews

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.

Our main use case for Cisco Catalyst Switches is for remote clinics, remote offices, and hospitals.

What I like the most about Cisco Catalyst Switches is ISSU.

My impression of the end-to-end visibility offered by Cisco is that they have a Nexus dashboard, and it is good.

Cisco optimizes the experience in a hybrid or distributed enterprise setup by using Cisco Edge.

I would assess the operational efficiency of Cisco in my IT environment as good since we are getting all the information we are looking for.

I believe that Cisco Catalyst Switches could be improved by being given AI capability and advanced licensing, which would be beneficial.

I have been in the industry for around 27 years.

I have experienced some downtime crashes occasionally.

Cisco Catalyst Switches will be supported for the next 10 years as they scale with the growing needs of my organization.

On a scale from one to 10, I would rate the customer service and tech support as eight. My issues with them are that time shifting is an issue and the handover issue is what is happening.

Before adopting Cisco Catalyst Switches, we were using Cisco 4500 and 6500.

My experience with deploying Cisco Catalyst Switches is that it worked well and is good to implement.

Those aspects regarding pricing, setup, cost, and licensing are managed by management, so I am not directly involved.

I considered solutions such as SD-WAN support, edge support, and cloud hybrid support before selecting Cisco Catalyst Switches.

I face no specific challenges with hybrid and distributed enterprise networks, only the downside that RMA is taking time. I would rate this review a 10.

Over the past two to three years, we have had pre-installed Cisco Catalyst Switches. We are not configuring or installing them, and we are performing day-to-day duties such as supporting the network. We handle requirements such as configuring specific ports or updating the IOS. These types of tasks are our regular work, and it is very rarely that we have to install a new switch.

AI-driven anomaly detection and baseline recommendations in Cisco Catalyst Switches monitoring tools have been in use for the past two to three years. I do not recall the exact timing, but it has been involving AI.

I have not yet worked on the dashboard or anything similar because we have been managing previously by only interacting with the devices through CLI. Now I have moved to another project where I have the option to interact with the dashboard, such as the Meraki dashboard. I will see how that progresses.

I find the commands valuable because I have been working on this for a long time. It is good whenever we are working with Cisco Catalyst Switches devices. For other devices, we do not have much insight. If we talk about the current situation, everything is managed through the GUI, so I am very familiar with Cisco. I am comfortable with all aspects when it comes to Cisco Catalyst Switches devices.

At this time, I do not feel anything needs improvement for Cisco Catalyst Switches, as patches are coming up over time, so everything is going fine.

I feel they should move toward AI capabilities because everything is moving toward AI. If we are not moving toward AI, then it will create a problem because other devices are embracing AI now.

I have been working with Cisco Catalyst Switches for almost 14 plus years.

I would rate the technical support by Cisco as a ten out of ten. I interact many times with Cisco support.

We sometimes have some issues, but it is a totally different scenario, as we are not on site. We just get a console and push the configuration. Even if we have to replace a switch, we already have the previous configuration, so we just need to push that configuration. It is not a big deal to do that; it is very easy.

Overall, I would rate Cisco Catalyst Switches as a ten out of ten because there are many improvements already going on and it has already improved a lot.

I believe Cisco Catalyst Switches are popular in my region, and I do not think Cisco needs to do anything to promote it more because everybody knows about the brand. Whenever switches and other devices are discussed, Cisco is there. For security concerns, there are competitors, but I believe Cisco is a leader for switches. In the past 10 to 12 years, I have not seen many other devices; a few such as HP exist, but out of ten companies, I see nine or eight companies using Cisco devices.

That is totally based on the services provided by Cisco, such as how they are delivering support and managing their contracts. That is their advantage, depending on the type of services they are offering.

I mostly use Aruba Central, Aruba ClearPass, and the Aruba switching portfolio.

I once provided a review on Aruba ClearPass and I have experience with Aruba.

I don't know products such as Aruba Orchestrator or Aruba VPN, or any others.

I have no idea about Aruba Introspect.

Regarding the features of Cisco Catalyst Switches, I don't have exactly a specific answer to this.

For zero-touch deployment, we have to work around a little bit initially because the switches are not exactly zero-touch provision ZTP.

Currently, I don't see much AI integration with Cisco Catalyst Switches; though they've started, it still needs improvement.

I've been using Cisco Catalyst Switches for almost 10-plus years.

The deployment process has been easy and smooth installation for me.

The time to deploy depends on how big the project is, so we do different projects; small or big, it depends on that.

Deploying a particular switch depends on the day; if you're deploying 95K, that's mostly used as a core switch, then that will take some more time than 92 or 93.

They are mostly used as stable even in network operations.

The scalability of Cisco Catalyst Switches is very much scalable, as it supports the stacking feature and growth; for instance, with 94K modular switches, based on the requirement, we can even increase modules for more bandwidth.

I'd rate the scalability around seven to eight.

Cisco support is very good and responsive.

Positive

We do use Cisco, Palo Alto, and Fortinet.

For a big project, usually three to four persons take part in deployment, while one to two persons will be enough for a small one.

I'm talking about engineers.

From an investment standpoint, deploying Cisco Catalyst Switches offers tangible benefits, including cost reductions; the licensing part is mainly for the SD-WAN feature, but other features are integrated, which gives a pricing advantage.

For pricing satisfaction, I'd say it will be six to seven because Cisco usually is costly compared to other vendors.

Regarding pricing, there is indeed room for improvement.

Customers often compare Cisco with Juniper and HP; those under budget constraints usually opt for Juniper, HP, or Aruba instead of Cisco Catalyst Switches.

Challenges I've encountered mostly involve the RMA part for hardware replacement, which doesn't happen regularly, but sometimes I face challenges due to limited parts in India; they offer different model devices as a stopgap arrangement.

It's quite difficult to specify features I would want to see in future updates because that varies from model to model.

I would definitely recommend Cisco Catalyst Switches to other users.

We do maintenance for Cisco Catalyst Switches.

For maintenance, we usually need three people from different regions working as a single team; our engineers handle both projects and maintenance, so there isn't a specific engineer just for maintenance.

I work with firewalls and next-generation firewalls.

Overall, I would rate the solution as an eight out of ten.

I use Cisco Catalyst Switches for the whole environment across everything including the access layer, core switches, manufacturing facilities, and IT offices.

Cisco Catalyst Switches are reliable. I put them in and they run. They are easy to manage.

Cisco Catalyst Switches are getting better. They scale well because I can simply add more switches without any problem.

There are too many vulnerabilities lately. Too many updates need to be done every week, which is crazy.

I want Cisco Catalyst Switches to be more reliable because in the past, you could install them and they would run for ten years. That is not the case anymore.

Support and vulnerabilities are the biggest issues regarding Cisco Catalyst Switches. All these updates coming out every week create a headache for us, as we have to perform the updates.

Usage went down from ten to probably three.

Juniper

I do not deal with pricing, so I do not have a preference.

Cisco Catalyst Switches are easy to implement. I want Cisco Catalyst Switches to be more reliable because in the past, you could install them and they would run for ten years, but that is not the case anymore. I give this product a rating of 9.

I use one Catalyst Switch as an edge switch and another as a core switch. The setup includes using all the SFP ports, and I intend to fully utilize them in the future. The environment is complex, with various components like virtual servers connected to physical servers that are linked to the switch.

Catalyst Switches are efficient and swift, which is valuable for my organization. I experience optimal speed and effective configuration, making them stand out compared to other switches. The PoE switches offer more ports on SFP, and it is efficient in use. 

Overall, the switches provide me with the value I expect in terms of speed and efficiency.

There could be improvements in the repeat configuration with some file integration that is currently missing. 

Additionally, I must consider the cost and benefits related to the feasibility study of my environment before purchasing the switches.

I have been using the Catalyst Switches for one year and a few months.

Since installation, I have not experienced any performance issues with the Catalyst Switches.

I have not exhausted the system, indicating no scalability issues, and the network growth is supported by the switches. I plan to use all the SFP ports in the future.

I am paying for Cisco support and would rate it nine out of ten.

Positive

I previously used Cisco 3750 switches. I received a notification from Cisco about its retirement, prompting me to purchase Catalyst 9300. Before that, I bought 9200, but 9300 is currently in use.

The initial setup was quick, taking about forty-eight hours to transition to Catalyst 9300. The configuration was done by the vendor, ensuring what I had on 3750 matched that of 9300.

The setup and maintenance are handled by the vendor.

Other switches are considered for smaller expansions like MiniFX yet not for the core infrastructure. I have been using Cisco Switches for over six or seven years.

Before choosing Cisco Switches, it is important to consider the cost and benefits. Proper feasibility studies of the environment should be conducted to avoid underutilization. 

I would rate Catalyst Switches nine out of ten. 

They are recommended for environments where security is crucial and efficient performance is required.