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Juniper QFabric vs NETGEAR Switches comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Juniper QFabric
Ranking in LAN Switching
11th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NETGEAR Switches
Ranking in LAN Switching
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
57
Ranking in other categories
Ethernet Switches (4th), AV Over IP Switching (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the LAN Switching category, the mindshare of Juniper QFabric is 5.0%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NETGEAR Switches is 8.2%, up from 7.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
LAN Switching Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
NETGEAR Switches8.2%
Juniper QFabric5.0%
Other86.8%
LAN Switching
 

Featured Reviews

Suresh Pathipatti - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
Tomas Devriese - PeerSpot reviewer
Teamleader Av Installers at solufak
VLAN support has improved audiovisual installations and secures network traffic for our projects
Our major use cases include audiovisual installations and we mainly use the AV line for that. We work with the VLAN support feature The best things about NETGEAR Switches are the support they provide and the ease of implementation. The ease of installation helps with network performance. It helps…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's user-friendly."
"QFabric supports redundancy and includes all of the enterprise and service provider features that customers would want in data center or service provider network."
"The solution is easy to use and has good performance."
"Juniper QFabric has various advantages including scalability, simplicity, performance, and flexibility."
"The solution is stable."
"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."
"It is known for being agile, flexible, and cost-effective when working with various vendors."
"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."
"We use these switches to help us leverage and connect more devices."
"You are not limited in terms of stacking ports, and especially, if you're using the 96X as a core switch, the scalability, I could see this being very large. If you're using a type of a hybrid topology with a core switch going out to multiple switch stacks, or something like that, I could see the scalability of this being very good, especially considering the kind of backplane switching capacity on the 96X."
"Comes preconfigured and designed specifically for AV."
"The initial setup was straightforward."
"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."
"The remote troubleshooting is pretty easy. You can turn off a port that might have a network loop created, or where there might be a bad NIC card that is creating issues. Being able to turn off that port remotely is fantastic, instead of having to replace the whole switch. Remote management is really easy."
"Out-of-the-box, it works for our main use case. When passing multicast video across the network, our technicians don't have make any changes. Then, if we do need to make configuration changes for a custom scenario, the web interface is user intuitive so it's easy to use and change."
"The tool is crucial in our network setup, especially in our bank's customer service operations. It connects ATMs and links different branches and service centers. Each branch and service center has its network node connected through these switches."
 

Cons

"The pricing structure could be more budget-friendly."
"It works too much on rebooting and there is some memory leakage."
"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."
"It would be nice if Juniper provided the system integrator with training, similar to that of Cisco."
"The stability needs to be improved."
"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."
"I do not use GUI's very much for switch stacks. I am always in the CLI. However, I do know that Juniper in the past has lacked on their GUI's, but they have been working on it."
"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."
"Lacks switches with additional ports that provide room for new protocols of communications."
"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."
"Their old firmware was a problem for us and we're still working on it. It didn't apply correctly so it took about half of our switches offline, which meant we couldn't use some of the functionality like the firmware updates. Unfortunately with that firmware, which they've sorted out, if you don't go through all the firmware and make sure it's past that point and back online, that's an issue with them. It's something to cautious about"
"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."
"It's worked for the most part, but we've had to power cycle a few devices. We've had to ask customers to manually power cycle them with the power cord, after some of the firmware updates. Their updating needs a little improvement."
"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."
"This product lacks a CLI interface."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is high."
"Juniper QFabric is a high-level solution but it could be less expensive."
"The price for Juniper QFabric could improve. There are subscription, maintenance, and add-on feature fees."
"The price is relatively high, but it offers an advantage over its competitors by providing better performance and functionality."
"The pricing is high and it is possible to find better pricing option solutions on the market, but the licensing model is quite flexible."
"In terms of price, the QFabric solution is going to be probably in the middle of the road for a fabric solution."
"There are no licensing costs. It only involves the costs of the devices."
"The pricing is great. The cost of the hardware is low... There are a few solutions that have a lower cost, but NETGEAR is very value-oriented."
"It's a great price-to-performance solution. I think it's singularly the best price-per-performance we can find, if not just straight performance to begin with... The cost of hardware and additional services is lower, absolutely. I wouldn't say "low," but we found it to be lower than other options, and that helps us resell this back to customers who are looking at other things like a Cisco Meraki..."
"Licensing is always a hassle and a pain point."
"They are on par with other AV switch manufacturers, e.g., Pakedge, Cisco Small Business Series, and Extreme Networks. Though, they are closer in cost to Extreme Networks. They are more in the mid-range from an AV product price, maybe a bit higher. You can't beat their features compared to other vendors in that product range and capacity. AV specific only, they are mid-range price-wise."
"From a price perspective, the solution comes in higher than a small business product from their competitors. The solution is a bit higher, but it's a fraction of the cost compared to an enterprise switch. For example, a Cisco Catalyst can run approximately $13,000, where their Small Business Series may run $800 on the Cisco side. With NETGEAR, it falls in around the $1,000 to $2,000 range for most of what we use it for. Essentially, at this price point, you're getting a lot of enterprise grade features (e.g., that you would on a Catalyst) on an M4300."
"The solution is expensive. You need to pay the costs one-time."
"The price-to-performance of the solution is very good. You get very performance for a low cost per port. Compared to standard AV switching, NETGEAR is probably the best value out there."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business43
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise11
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Juniper QFabric?
The most valuable feature of QFabric for network performance is its stability.
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 virtual chassis does not necessitate a separate license.
What needs improvement with Juniper QFabric?
Improvements could be made to QFabric's lifecycle management, particularly in maintaining stable versions and extending product support. The rapid release cycle and short life span compared to comp...
How do NETGEAR switches compare with Cisco ethernet switches?
NetGear switches have a lot to offer. They have high availability, zero-downtime stacking, L2 and L3 functionality, and are AV-over-IP ready. NetGear switches also have a command line interface and...
Which switches are better - Ubiquiti Unifi or Netgear?
Ubiquiti Unifi offers a great set of features. For starters, it is easy to configure and implement, and also doesn’t require a learning curve because it is easy to use. It is also simple to reconfi...
What do you like most about NETGEAR Switches?
Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten. I have not faced any issues with the product whatsoever.
 

Also Known As

QFabric
NETGEAR Insight Managed Switches, NETGEAR GC Series, NETGEAR M Series
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

MCB Bank
Blaze Networks
Find out what your peers are saying about Juniper QFabric vs. NETGEAR Switches and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
882,260 professionals have used our research since 2012.