Cisco FabricPath vs Cisco Nexus vs Juniper QFabric comparison

Cisco FabricPath and Cisco Nexus are both solutions in the LAN Switching category. Cisco FabricPath is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.3, while Cisco Nexus is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.2. Cisco FabricPath holds a 2.8% mindshare in LS, compared to Cisco Nexus’s 8.5% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Cisco FabricPath users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Cisco Nexus users who would recommend it.

Cisco FabricPath

Read 31 Cisco FabricPath reviews

383 Views
368 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Cisco Nexus

Read 106 Cisco Nexus reviews

2,686 Views
1,209 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Juniper QFabric

Read 10 Juniper QFabric reviews

260 Views
260 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Cisco FabricPath

Cisco Nexus

Juniper QFabric

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cisco FabricPath, Cisco Nexus, and Juniper QFabric based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Netgear and others in LAN Switching.

To learn more, read our detailed LAN Switching Report (Updated: August 2025).

Buyer's Guide

LAN Switching

August 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 865,164 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the LAN Switching category, the mindshare of Cisco FabricPath is 2.8%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Nexus is 8.5%, down from 11.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Juniper QFabric is 2.4%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

LAN Switching

Featured Reviews

SanjitAchary

Program Manager at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

Delivers comprehensive assessments and superior post-procurement service

In Southeast Asian countries like Indonesia and Malaysia, and in the Latin America region, delivery times can be quite lengthy. This is challenging in terms of logistics and customs. Additionally, parts availability in these regions needs improvement to address hardware failure situations, such as the availability of parts like a power cable.

Read full review

DeepakYadav1

Network Engineer at Craw Security

Offers good processing power to users

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a four to five out of ten. I rate the stability of the product as four to five out of ten based on the fact that I have checked the tool's features. I also know that there are many more options available in the market, like Palo Alto, Check Point, Fortinet, and other devices, which offer affordable, configurable, and scalable devices that I should plan to buy. Cisco is not providing tools for everything my company needs, but it is a good product. The market competition is high nowadays. Cisco is still handling some old parts. Cisco's old products make up approximately 67 percent of the devices offered in the networking industry. Despite the competition from products like Palo Alto, Check Point, and Fortinet, Cisco is not very scalable, but all its devices are updated regularly.

Read full review

Suresh Pathipatti

Senior Information Technology Administrator at Aighospital

Performs well, is easy to set up, and the vendor maintains the product well

QFabric is the core switch. We also have two Brocade switches for the Fibre level The product works fine. It is an excellent product. There are different element systems and different options for each generation of the tool. We maintain the data center and analyze issues. I have no negative…

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features are the lead time and the high quality of the product."

"One of the most valuable features of Cisco FabricPath is its protocol freedom, which allows me to use multiple protocols at a time, such as Spanning Tree to prevent loops in the network."

"Cisco is the market leader in this space and it is a product that I recommend."

"Additional bandwidth is available when needed."

"FabricPath's best features are routing, OSPS, ethernet, and performance."

"We have found the solution to be stable."

"The most beneficial feature of Cisco FabricPath for network performance is its reliability."

"The most valuable features are the security, web control, and traffic control."

More Cisco FabricPath pros

"The most valuable feature is that it is high-density, ten-gig."

"Cisco technical support is a good backup team when you have issues with anything. If you open a case they are very good at following up and making sure that the issue's resolved according to the needs of our network."

"A very solid and reliable solution."

"Cisco Nexus and Cisco Catalyst have processing power and offer good utilization of Cisco devices."

"The most valuable features are extensions and recorded scalability."

"We have found that logical tenant segregation to be the most useful feature."

"The interface is as user-friendly as you can make it."

"The flexibility, how accurately the VPCs operate as well as the redundancy built into it with the VPCs are the most valuable features."

More Cisco Nexus pros

"The solution is stable."

"It's user-friendly."

"The most valuable features of this solution are the fabric backplane having upwards of 160 GB of communication. It is a top-of-the-rack solution where you have your directors sitting in the main area and then you have your nodes expanded out to your multiple cabinets. It has a very good design and could be your server backbone."

"The 40 gig backbone InterConneX was valuable for our use case. It is even faster now. QFabric has spine-leaf technology or topology, which basically makes every single hop only one hop away in terms of connecting from one device to another. It is a pretty good and robust solution. It works pretty well in terms of scalability, and their technical support is amazing."

"The most valuable feature of QFabric for network performance is its stability."

"Juniper QFabric has various advantages including scalability, simplicity, performance, and flexibility."

"The solution is easy to use and has good performance."

"QFabric supports redundancy and includes all of the enterprise and service provider features that customers would want in data center or service provider network."

More Juniper QFabric pros

Cons

"Layer 3 does not have higher availability."

"The solution is costly."

"The main issue I face is the cost."

"The pricing could be adjusted to make it easier to sell to clients."

"The cloud version of Cisco Fabric Path could be improved."

"Improvements could be made on specific technical issues such as implementation."

"In terms of the series, I find that the integration with other teleconferencing applications needs to be more seamless. I have suggested to Cisco that the endpoint device should allow joining calls from Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and other teleconferencing applications. Additionally, I appreciate the recent inclusion of breakout sessions in the Cisco Webex application, which enhances its relevance in the networking field."

"The prices for FabricPath are very high, and Cisco also takes a long time to deliver products (in Mexico, the delivery time is eight months)."

More Cisco FabricPath cons

"Cisco Nexus still needs more stability."

"The only issue that I have with this product is finding help on different commands when I'm trying to make a change."

"The pricing must be improved."

"The price could be better."

"I would like to see a lighter platform."

"I would like to see more granularity."

"I would like to see the integration of the products into something where it's seamless where an engineer never touches the switch again, never does CLI and you move to an application based network organization."

"I would like to see some development into the SAE world where you can virtualize. That would be the only thing I would like to see because I need to start virtualizing my infrastructure gear at some of the other data centers that I have."

More Cisco Nexus cons

"It works too much on rebooting and there is some memory leakage."

"The stability needs to be improved."

"The pricing structure could be more budget-friendly."

"It would be nice if Juniper provided the system integrator with training, similar to that of Cisco."

"The disruptive upgrade was an issue for us."

"They are working on the virtualization of the actual fabric layer. They are moving away from the original spine-leaf design to a different infrastructure. Instead of having three tiers, which was the director of the interconnected nodes, they cut them back, and they still have that kind of structure."

"Having support for all OpenFlow versions would be beneficial."

"Improvements could be made to QFabric's life cycle management, particularly in maintaining stable versions and extending product support."

More Juniper QFabric cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"FabricPath is very reasonably priced."

"The price of Cisco FabricPath could be reduced, it is expensive in the market here in Sri Lanka. The solution is subscriptions based, if the customer wants any future integrations, or if there are any future enhancements they will have to pay. There are different license options available, such as one or three years purchases."

"The solution falls under the pricier category, but it provides value for the price charged."

"It is very expensive."

"I rate it seven out of ten on pricing as it's a bit expensive. It would be better if the price were lower, but we prioritize quality over cost."

"Cisco is expensive but offers good-quality features, so I would rate it high on the pricing scale."

"I rate the product's pricing a ten out of ten. Cisco switches cost around 15,000 dollars, and DNS licenses cost around 25,000 dollars. The total amount is 45,000 dollars, which is too expensive."

"The pricing of Cisco FabricPath can be quite high depending on the architecture, but it's justified by the stability it offers."

More Cisco FabricPath pricing and cost advice

"I thought that it would be less expensive."

"We have a three-year subscription for our licensing fees."

"Every Cisco product is more expensive than competitors on the market, which is just a fact, but from my perspective, it is worth it."

"The licensing fees for this solution are approximately $800,000 USD annually."

"Cisco Nexus is not a cheaply priced product."

"The license for Cisco Nexus is one year to three years, in this case for the SMARTnet. It is a price per unit, in terms of this specific appliance."

"Costs more than most, but the reliability pays for the difference."

"The solution should be more cost-effective in general."

More Cisco Nexus pricing and cost advice

"Juniper QFabric is a high-level solution but it could be less expensive."

"In terms of price, the QFabric solution is going to be probably in the middle of the road for a fabric solution."

"The price for Juniper QFabric could improve. There are subscription, maintenance, and add-on feature fees."

"The pricing is high and it is possible to find better pricing option solutions on the market, but the licensing model is quite flexible."

"The price is relatively high, but it offers an advantage over its competitors by providing better performance and functionality."

"The pricing is high."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which LAN Switching solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

865,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

15%

Computer Software Company

13%

University

Performing Arts

Computer Software Company

18%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Government

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco FabricPath?

The tool makes it easy to manage multi-layer networking and increases network efficiency. I haven't faced any challen...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco FabricPath?

Cisco is somewhat expensive, but it provides good quality products and operations, so I can't complain about licensin...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cisco FabricPath?

In future updates, I would prefer to see features such as more AI functionality or better integration added to Cisco ...

See all answers

What do you like most about Cisco Nexus?

The product's initial setup phase is very easy.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Nexus?

All solutions are very expensive and not an economy solution.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cisco Nexus?

All solutions are very expensive and not an economy solution. The solution is on-premises and stable. We haven't trie...

See all answers

What do you like most about Juniper QFabric?

The most valuable feature of QFabric for network performance is its stability.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Juniper QFabric?

Juniper QFabric is not overly expensive. Licensing is required for certain features like vRRP, but setting up a virtu...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Juniper QFabric?

Improvements could be made to QFabric's lifecycle management, particularly in maintaining stable versions and extendi...

See all answers

Comparisons

HPE ProCurve vs Cisco FabricPath

Compared 37% of the time

Arista Campus LAN Switches vs Cisco FabricPath

Compared 32% of the time

More Cisco FabricPath Competitors

Juniper QFX Series Switches vs Cisco Nexus

Compared 38% of the time

Arista Networks Platform vs Cisco Nexus

Compared 17% of the time

Cisco Catalyst Switches vs Cisco Nexus

Compared 7% of the time

ExtremeSwitching vs Cisco Nexus

Compared 5% of the time

VMware NSX vs Cisco Nexus

Compared 5% of the time

More Cisco Nexus Competitors

No data available

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco FabricPath

August 2025

Download Cisco FabricPath product report

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Nexus

August 2025

Download Cisco Nexus product report

Buyer's Guide

LAN Switching

August 2025

Download Juniper QFabric product report

Also Known As

FabricPath

No data available

QFabric

Overview

Cisco FabricPath is a Cisco NX-OS software innovation combining the plug-and-play simplicity of Ethernet with the reliability and scalability of Layer 3 routing. Using FabricPath, you can build highly scalable Layer 2 multipath networks without the Spanning Tree Protocol. Such networks are particularly suitable for large virtualization deployments, private clouds, and high-performance computing (HPC) environments. The benefits of Cisco FabricPath include: Minimal commands per switch ease configuration and operation, Autodiscovery simplifies addition of new links and switches, Provision additional network bandwidth without impacting network, Supports one-, two-, or three-tier architectures, VLAN extensibility across the data center.

Cisco

The Cisco Nexus family of switches is designed to meet the stringent requirements of the next-generation data center. Not simply bigger or faster, these switches offer the following characteristics: infrastructure that can be scaled cost-effectively and that helps you increase energy, budget, and resource efficiency, transport that can navigate the transition to 10 Gigabit Ethernet and unified fabric and can also handle architectural changes such as virtualization, Web 2.0 applications, and cloud computing and operational continuity to meet your need for an environment where system availability is assumed and maintenance windows are rare if not totally extinct.

Cisco

Juniper QFabric System is composed of multiple components working together as a single switch to provide high-performance, any-to-any connectivity and management simplicity in the data center. The QFabric System flattens the entire data center network to a single tier where all access points are equal, eliminating the effects of network locality and making it the ideal network foundation for cloud-ready, virtualized data centers.The highly scalable QFabric System improves application performance with low latency and converged services in a nonblocking, lossless architecture that supports Layer 2, Layer 3, and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) capabilities.

Juniper

Sample Customers

Bellevue, Calligaris, Electricity Authority of Cyprus, Management Science Associates, Multi-Customer, Oediv, Roper St. Francis, SNAM

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

MCB Bank

Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Netgear and others in LAN Switching. Updated: August 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

865,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.