"The most valuable features are that it is easy to use, easy to configure, it's priced well, and the operating system is easy to understand."
"The functionality is basically the same as Cisco."
"The technical documentation available is very good. The technical support for the customer is also good - I would give it 8 out of 10."
"It integrates well."
"Huawei Ethernet Switches are very stable."
"In terms of the most valuable features, LAN switching is more comfortable and valuable in the network. It is easy to configure and easy to deploy. It is helpful for the installation and it is easy to troubleshoot issues. It's an easy product to understand. It's a good solution."
"Pricing-wise, Huawei is quite good."
"So far, so good when it comes to stability."
"The High Bandwidth AV-over-IP functionality of these switches has been fantastic, especially in leaf-and-spine. We've been able to build redundancy and they seem to outperform even the Cisco Catalyst, which is about twice as expensive as the M-series switches are."
"For what I used this switch for, it did well."
"Since it has a web interface, it is easy to set up. You don't have to take three years of training somewhere for a lot of money."
"The big winner for NETGEAR is their modular switch: the 96X version. That is something that you don't see in the market anywhere else, except for Cisco who has it at a high level for a high expense. The ability to customize your own switch with their modules is a big plus for what we do in the market right now. Instead of having to piece together standardized switches, trying to make something work, or fitting the design into the mold, the modular switches are aware that you can make a mark in the industry because you purchased one switch and design with different modules added and removed later on for functionality."
"SFP, speed, and 10-Gigabit are the most valuable aspects of this solution. We're an architecture firm and we sometimes deal with large files. Anything we can do to eke out even a fraction of a second less time to get something done over the course of a year adds up. If I can get 10-Gigabit running in my server room, which I am right now, even though we're only gigabit to the desktop, due to the client computers we have, I can get more performance from everybody. I'm ready to start bringing in 10-Gigabit Ethernet to the desktop once I get the hardware to do that."
"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."
"Its setup, usage, and access are most valuable. It is a very easy switch to set up."
"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 configuration is very difficult even for someone who is already familiar with the configuration process."
"There needs to be more documentation. If they opened up a bit and shared more information and maybe allowed for YouTube videos about their products and how to work them, it would benefit the users quite a bit."
"I would like to see more training opportunities available."
"It could potentially be difficult to get parts depending on where you live."
"The documentation needs to be better."
"I had issues with patching the IOS. But right now I think Huawei has improved very much in the advanced technology and is more stable now. I think patch and bug fixes should be announced on a scheduled basis."
"It is not easy to use if you need to monitor, patch or update. It needs to be configured by a network specialist because it doesn't have an overall central monitoring tool or anything like that. I'd say no ease of use."
"The technical support is technically savvy, but the communication via English is not so easy."
"An area for improvement would be creating a wizard that can do a lot of common stuff. Instead of having some manual configuration for common features, they may want to have a single wizard that could be put in place which would let you walk through creating multiple VLANs and different routes between VLANs in a wizard. Then, you wouldn't have to dig in so deep."
"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."
"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."
"The technical support could be more helpful."
"They need to continue moving forward with their consulting in the AV realm to find out what is needed. They are some differences in the M4300 line and the larger M4500 line right now. They could produce a 1 Gigabit variety that could be a bit cheaper that might fit into that, since the majority of the projects that we see are still in that 1 Gigabit bandwidth threshold. Along with that, a great option would be if it would provide the same modular ability on a lower level."
"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."
"The web interface has been a little sketchy on occasion. Sometimes I have to reload the page to get things to show up properly, but the switch itself seems fine. The web user interface is a little wonky at times."
"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."
Huawei Ethernet Switches is ranked 11th in Ethernet Switches with 19 reviews while NETGEAR Switches is ranked 2nd in Ethernet Switches with 10 reviews. Huawei Ethernet Switches is rated 7.8, while NETGEAR Switches is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Huawei Ethernet Switches writes "Good pricing and better performance than the competition". On the other hand, the top reviewer of NETGEAR Switches writes "When passing multicast video across the network, technicians don't have make changes". Huawei Ethernet Switches is most compared with Cisco Ethernet Switches, Aruba Switches, H3C Ethernet Switches, HPE Ethernet Switches and Fortinet FortiSwitch - Data Center, whereas NETGEAR Switches is most compared with Ubiquiti UniFi Switches, Cisco Ethernet Switches, Cisco Linksys Ethernet Switches, D-Link Ethernet Switches and Aruba Switches. See our Huawei Ethernet Switches vs. NETGEAR Switches report.
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