We performed a comparison between Cisco FabricPath and NETGEAR Switches based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two LAN Switching solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."It is stable and reliable."
"Cisco is the market leader in this space and it is a product that I recommend."
"The best features of Cisco FabricPath is performance and reliability."
"We have found the solution to be stable."
"The tool makes it easy to manage multi-layer networking and increases network efficiency. I haven't faced any challenges in integrating it into our existing infrastructure."
"We can also enhance our service line with disaster recovery."
"The solution has excellent stability."
"The setup is straightforward."
"The solution helps transfer data."
"With this, you literally just log in to a website, see all your clients, all your NETGEAR switches, and you can manage them all right there: the VLANs, powering on and off individual ports, rebooting the whole device, the firmware updates. Everything can be done remotely..."
"The ease of use of these switches is very good because of the Cisco CLI. If you are familiar with CLI, then you can configure the switch that way. It also has a relatively straightforward web interface. Using the web interface is good for beginners or people who aren't familiar with Cisco CLI. However, having a common command line interface method is great for some of our more advanced guys who are familiar with it."
"The most valuable feature is definitely the fully functional IGMP snooping and querier, out-of-the-box, that the switch provides. With most if not all switches that we've worked with previously, at a minimum you have to enable a couple of different options... It's really a good feature to have that stuff enabled and fully functional out-of-the-box so that [AV techs] don't have to worry about configuring any of that stuff."
"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."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is easy to use."
"Its setup, usage, and access are most valuable. It is a very easy switch to set up."
"The solution is complex to set up."
"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)."
"Cisco FabricPath's pricing is expensive."
"The price is a little bit too high."
"The solution is costly."
"While Cisco products are excellent, the problem is the cost. Cisco products are product, Cisco products are very expensive. I rate Cisco FabricPath three out of 10 for affordability."
"The initial setup is a little complex."
"Improvements could be made on specific technical issues such as implementation."
"The M4250 switches needs more SFP models."
"The solution needs centralized management and centralized configuration."
"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."
"Netgear switches could be cheaper."
"I'd like to see a little bit of slowdown on the firmware updates. They've been doing a lot of them. I don't know if that's just because it's such a new product line, but the firmware updates have been a little annoying because they've been coming once a week. For a switch, that's a little extreme."
"If they could come up with ways to look at metrics on it while the video is capping through the system, that would be nice. There could be some interesting uses for that, but it's a long way off."
"There are a lot of systems that are moving into different areas. There are a lot of cloud-based things happening. One nice feature that I've seen in other switches is artificial intelligence on the actual porting. They've got AI technology that will tell you when a port is down. They not only tell you when a port is down; they also tell you when a port is running slower. You can do a cable-fault check, or you can do other checks. It would be nice to have this information in NETGEAR. This feature might already be there in a new release of the NETGEAR's firmware, but I haven't seen it."
"Perhaps in the future, we will have even more different types of switches and be able to fulfill more collections."
Cisco FabricPath is ranked 8th in LAN Switching with 22 reviews while NETGEAR Switches is ranked 5th in LAN Switching with 50 reviews. Cisco FabricPath is rated 8.2, while NETGEAR Switches is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Cisco FabricPath writes "On overall effective product with good performance and a simple setup ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of NETGEAR Switches writes "You can stack different models of switches which makes the scalability great". Cisco FabricPath is most compared with Juniper QFabric, Cisco Nexus and Arista Campus LAN Switches, whereas NETGEAR Switches is most compared with D-Link Ethernet Switches, Cisco Linksys Ethernet Switches, Cisco Ethernet Switches, Ubiquiti UniFi Switches and MikroTik Routers and Switches. See our Cisco FabricPath vs. NETGEAR Switches report.
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