ExtremeSwitching Reviews

My current company uses Cisco routers and ExtremeSwitching switches. 

ExtremeSwitching switches are highly reliable. 

ExtremeSwitching switches are not prevalent in the industry, so it's harder to go online and research how to deploy their APs or switches. There is a broader user community for Cisco and Juniper because they've been around for a while and everybody has a bit of knowledge they can publish online.

I rate ExtremeSwitching support eight out of 10. They did the job, but I couldn't say it was the best support because I never did a call. It was by email. I had to open one case to get information about scanning the devices with more vulnerabilities and versions 

Positive

Setting up ExtremeSwitching is relatively straightforward if you have some experience. You can do it with some help from online sources and probably don't need tech support to set it up.

I rate ExtremeSwitching eight out of 10 because of the reliability factor.

These are the LAN switches. They are mostly the 440.

These are stable switches. Once we've deployed them, we haven't find any issue in the system configuration and have had no problems.

We can go for other licensing, like iCloud. We can control it remotely. 

The simple configuration has been great. 

The switches are fast. What they mention in their specs is not like Huawei or other switches. Its flexibility and scalability are excellent.

The solution offers reasonable licensing fees. 

Technical support is good, although I haven't really used it.

They should have proprietary protocols, like UTP or Cisco protocol VTP. If that was available, that would be ideal. That way, users can just configure and go. We could configure one switch as a server, and it should push the configuration on all of the switches. This would be good and bad as Extreme does not recommend this configuration. 

Their pricing could be a bit cheaper, as Huawei switches offer better pricing. 

The delivery time right now is too long. 

In the WiFi system, there are some systems where we cannot access the WiFi devices, controllers, et cetera. Some of our customers, after one year, need us to contact Extreme, and I have to delete the software from the management software. They become a little problematic. And then, if they do need to be replaced, there is a delay in the delivery there as well. 

I've been using the solution for two years. 

The solution is stable. It's reliable. The performance has been good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. There have been no breakdowns. 

I supply more than 200 systems.

It is very scalable and quite flexible. You can scale it up or down according to your needs. 

Technical support is good. They're responsive. I haven't really had to deal with them that much since the solution has been good. 

I've also worked with Cisco products and they are quite good. Huawei products are something I'm aware of as well and they are less expensive.

It's very easy to set up. On top of that, one can easily configure it.

I'd rate the solution a four out of five in terms of the ease of implementation.

The pricing is fair. It's quite good overall. 

I'd rate it a three or a four out of five in terms of affordability. It's not quite as cheap as, for example, Huawei. However, it's reasonable. 

We have clients that work with this solution. We're a reseller and integrator. 

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. 

We use the solution as a switch. It is deployed on the hardware. It's a hardware box. 

We generally use it to connect to our systems and also connect to our users. That means it opens connections between the systems and the users. Of course, they also connect to the internet, connect to the printer, et cetera.

So far it is working quite well. It doesn't give us problems.  

The solution is stable.

If you plan, you can scale the product.

Our vendors are great and they offer very good support services. 

This pricing was pretty reasonable when we originally purchased the solution. 

Sometimes there are some issues with the hardware, however, it is not very considerable. 

We noticed over the years that the price of the Extreme Switches has been rising and this will become a concern in the future. Down the road, when I'm going to upgrade, when I purchase new Extreme Switches to refresh my current aging ones (which are already seven years plus old already), I'm worried about the pricing. It may require us to look into another product. Extreme should keep more to the pricing that is on a competitive level.

While technical support is okay, it could always be a bit better.

We would like to see better monitoring in the future. We'd like to see, for example, the ports that are having a lot of heavy traffic. We'd like to identify sources as well or identify what is the application currently running through that particular port on the switches.

The GUI could be better.

I've been using the solution for about seven or so years. 

Stability-wise, so far we have had no issue. We have been quite satisfied with it. When we changed to Extreme, it was due to the fact that Cisco was expensive. This has been a good, reliable replacement.

It is scalable, however, you have to design for it. It's best to do some planning and to understand how many people you will add in the time you will use the switch. Right now, we are quite small and have about 500 connections. 

We get technical support from our vendor and they are pretty good overall. Of course, they could always be better.

Neutral

We've used Cisco and 3Com in the past. I used Cisco eight or nine years ago, so it's been a while since I've actually used it. 

Normally we engage together to work together with a vendor and so far, I haven't seen many problems. We already have it set up and running. Even with the upgrade to the next newer one, we can have the two configurations imported back in from there. Even if we can't import it, from the configuration, we will be able to set it up on the new ones. It will be easy.

We had assistance from vendors when we were setting up the solution. They were very knowledgeable and experienced. 

We noticed an ROI after five years. Some might notice it after seven.

The pricing keeps going up and that is worrying us for when we need to upgrade in the future. Our concern is we will not be able to afford it. 

We are customers and end-users.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. If it came with more features out-of-the-box, I'd rate it a bit higher. 

ExtremeSwitching is used in a network for directing traffic.

The most valuable features of ExtremeSwitching are that they are robust and have plenty of features. There is a lot of functionality. They have a lot of other features ExtremeSwitching that you can get involved with but I haven't been using many of them.

ExtremeSwitching has many features but having come from Cisco environments, there is a steep learning curve to learning all the functionality.

I have been using ExtremeSwitching for approximately two years.

ExtremeSwitching is a reliable and stable solution.

I have previously used Cisco switches.

ExtremeSwitching is a good switch. I've dealt with other carriers that are using the ExtremeSwitching and they love them. They find that they have more options and more reliable than Cisco but I haven't had any experience with failures of the ExtremeSwitching or Cisco. They've always been reliable for me.

The initial setup of ExtremeSwitching difficulty depends on the individual. They have a lot of tutorials and information on the internet. If you were trying to take it out of the box and try and configure it without any assistance, it would be difficult. If you didn't have experience doing switching and routing, it would be difficult because the command structure is different than what people are normally used to. For example, Cisco, Dell, and other older switches. Dell and Cisco are similar in the OS configuration but ExtremeSwitching is different.

The amount of people required for maintenance depends on the client's environment. For a medium-sized business, you can have one person maintaining it but that person is going to be on call a lot.

There is a cost for ExtremeSwitching and if you want the support and maintenance, there are additional costs. My clients typically pay for the support and maintenance annually.

There are a lot of solutions coming out that have more features than I need.

I rate ExtremeSwitching an eight out of ten.

We are customers of ExtremeSwitching. 

Their number one valuable feature is the inspection firewalls that carry out a deep packet inspection on a port basis. It's a feature they've had for a number of years. Our customers like the switching, which does the deep packet inspections but can also write traffic from one VLAN to the next.

Extreme has become more aggressive with its pricing. The cost per switch per port has come down quite a bit, making it very competitive in the small and medium-size market. It has made the solution more favorable. 

All the solutions in this market are lacking cyber asset attack, surface management. It's not just Extreme, but Cisco, Juniper and Arista as well. The new multi-access age is upon us. In other words, billions of sensors and billions of IOT devices are all wirelessly connected and therefore cellular 5G communications, wifi and broad-spectrum communications are missing from the edge platforms. As a result, we're doing well with DOD and enterprise customers, because they have their Extreme core switches, but the switches don't understand cellular 5G, broad-spectrum. We provide value in that space. We offer the opportunity to go through APIs and integrate into wireless technologies. It's missing from the platform. 

I've been using this solution for 10 years, from the time it was owned by Motorola. 

The solution is stable. We have certified Extreme engineers who are very familiar with the solution. Depending on the service level agreement with our customers, we typically have three or four qualified staff members that can handle Extreme.

There is no problem with scalability. We have stackable switches for the IDFs and they have core switches for the MDFs. They can extend VLANs to the edge. 

The tech support is very helpful although there's always room for improvement. 

The initial setup is pretty straightforward as long as you have an open API so it's just a matter of connecting the APIs that feed the threat intelligence into the infrastructure.

if you're looking to embrace Extreme, it is a good alternative to Arista or to Cisco, but I would encourage investing in the certification of one or two people; one on the writing side and one on the firewall side. The OS is different for each product and I'm a big fan of defense and depth, meaning different routers at the edge, different switches at the core. Extreme is competitive from a price perspective. They're a really good alternative to a default Cisco, but I just think the OS and the underlying features are kind of quirky. You need someone on staff familiar with it.

Extreme doesn't have their own APs, they're leveraging the Motorola stuff they acquired. A lot of the extreme access points are now end-of-life, and customers that are using the T5, T511's and the T524 switches, which is kind of the VDSL and the Cat3 version, are upgrading because they're end-of-life.

I rate the solution nine out of 10. 

I have been a network engineer since the mid-nineties. The company I am in now has19 buildings and 50 plus switches, all Extreme. We use lots of gen one and gen twos — either the X460s or X690s — using the SummitStack. That is our standard variant of the Extreme Networks.  

We do have a couple of old 460s and a couple of old 480s, but we use the SummitStack for those versions instead of the Black Diamond.  

I have been using ExtremeSwitching for so long that it is really natural for me. I just use them. I guess if I had to pick something I really like, it would maybe be the ease of using their protocol. They use ring topology protocol. Using that protocol is somewhat unique to Extreme. It is actually really handy.  

I think Extreme can learn a few things from Cisco's approach. That is not to say that trying to become Cisco would be an improvement for Extreme. It is just that they might acknowledge the differences in the direction the solutions have taken and maybe learn from what Cisco does right. They are different even though they set out to accomplish the same thing.  

To call Extreme wrong for their approach would be like telling people in Great Britain that their drivers are bad because they drive on the left side of the road. They have been driving on that side of the road and that's what they chose to do. They are not going to just go and change it one day so they all drive on the right side of the road. It would be a pretty big undertaking in adjusting to it. I do not think that is going to improve Extreme's product to try and imitate Cisco. Making that kind of a major change is not something you should do just to be like another product and it would not be a way to improve what you do.  

I would say that they could learn from what Cisco does right. Extreme needs to improve on their training. They have been working on it, but they do not really have enough training classes and learning resources for users at this point. When we first put ExtremeSwitches in, it was very complex. I think that might have been because no one had any real experience with the product and people were more likely to be familiar with Cisco if they did have experience. The training was not up to speed.  

Extreme aught to take that into account and at least offer more resources to learn the products. If engineers are coming from the Cisco world, it is really like pulling your mind through the looking glass or driving on the other side of the road. It is just a totally different way of thinking. Cisco had a 12-year head start on the market. More people see switching from a Cisco perspective.  

Other than offering training, they are getting better. When I have a problem, I can at least look up a solution online. But with Extreme Switches, if you look online, you are just not going to get as much information and options as you do with a search for problems on Cisco. Everybody and their brother could tell you stuff about Cisco because they are familiar with it.  

In some way, it is a benefit to have less information. When there is not as much stuff out there, then you have less stuff to sort through. With Cisco there is so much you might have to determine where the reliable resources are. With Extreme the resources are more limited but sometimes that means that you will not get the answer you are looking for.  

We have been using ExtremeSwitching for at least eight years.  

After the first year where we were having some stability issues, things came around. Now we are good for stability. If any part of what we have breaks, Extreme will just replace it.  

Extreme is quite scalable. We have a lot of buildings (19) a lot of switches (50+), and multiple fiber rings. I do not think we are limited in our ability to grow from that at all.  

Right now, there are only two of us doing the maintenance. Before I got sick earlier in the year, there was only one person on the maintenance. So now it is two people on the team, but working with Extreme is not the only thing that we do. We share the responsibility.  

I have no idea how we compare in size to other similar companies. We have 550 employees, and we are a 24/7 shop, like police and fire — or maybe public works. We have to be ready when we are needed.  

Tech support, in my case, refers more to training than calling in tickets. When Extreme bought Enterasys, they had a bit of a rocky start with that merger. But Extreme's tech support has been okay. We have got a better integration partner now and that helps.  

When we first bought the Extreme product, they had all of two classes. That is it. They were both online. The two of the courses put together were only a week long. That was all the training you could possibly get for Extreme Network Switches at the time.  

Think of that compared to the kind of training and support you can get from HP and Cisco on their equipment before you go to implement their products. Extreme's programs did not even come close to covering everything. There were parts of the product, like their management platform, that they did not even mention even though it is a valuable part of the system.  

They have been improving on their training, but I do not know how far they have taken it at this point.  

I have worked with both Cisco and Extreme at different times. It is almost like Alice in the Looking Glass when you compare Extreme to Cisco. Cisco uses iOS. Extreme uses xOS. These two solutions are so different. With Cisco, you configure by port — you assign everything to a port. With Extreme, you assign everything — all the ports — to a VLAN (Virtual Local Area Network). It is almost like they work in the opposite way of each other. You have to get used to adopting the mindset of the solution you are using and just do it their way.  

Extreme hardware is also less expensive than the Cisco equipment. That is a biggie in making the comparison.  

I think the initial setup was complex. Really it was extremely complex.  

We did an RFP (Request for Proposal) and a vendor came in to put the product in. One of the problems we had that we obviously could not have known at the time was that the vendor did not necessarily know enough about how Extreme worked. It was a systems engineer from Extreme that implemented the RFP and even he did not know the product well. Then he left Extreme to go to another company. We were left holding the bag.  

For the first year, there were some glitches and gotchas that we kept running into. But after that year — and after we switched integrators — then we were in much better shape.  

All I can say about Extreme pricing is that it is much less expensive than Cisco and more expensive than HP. It is less expensive than Tesco by a mile. On pricing, it is going to beat most of the major competition.  

The products we buy are influenced by our company's business model. Everything we want to implement that is over 30-grand, we have to do an RFP for. So a lot of times to get under that threshold, we go with the lowest possible bidder just to get things done. We have bought stuff that I have never even seen before. I had never even heard of Tegile Arrays until we bought their products. I had never even heard of Extreme Networks until we bought their products either.  

Advice that I would give to people considering switches is that I think Extreme products are pretty feature-rich and they are definitely worth considering alongside the competition. They just have to be aware they are not going to be working like they would with Cisco, which means fewer resources and potentially fewer candidates to work with the solution as engineers.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate ExtremeSwitching as an eight-out-of-ten.  

I use the solution in areas related to the education sector, hospitality, and hotel industries. It is also useful for many general purposes. There are multiple use cases attached to ExtremeSwitching.

The solution's most valuable feature revolves around cloud management. The tool's capacity is high because it offers switches with 740 W over 24-port models. The tool's aforementioned main key feature makes it a usable tool for many businesses.

The pricing of the universal switches is an area of concern that needs to be improved. I am really satisfied with the switches, so I don't have any comments about what needs to be enhanced in the tool.

Though the product is scalable, there needs to be some enhancements in the product since there are multiple areas with inconsistent software.

The solution's technical support needs improvements. Sometimes, the technical support team takes a day to offer a solution to our company's queries. Fixing problems with the help of the support team is really complex.

There can be improvements in the product's pricing model.

I have been using ExtremeSwitching for two years. I am a reseller of the tool.

It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

It is a scalable solution.

I deal with 11 customers of the tool.

I have experience with products like Ruckus and tools from plenty of other vendors.

The product's initial setup phase is straightforward, and it depends on the application. For some applications, it is complex, while for other applications, it is easy, meaning it all depends on the application and in which scenario we are installing the devices.

The first method is to manually configure the switches. The second way is to onboard the switches to the cloud platform, like ExtremeCloud IQ, and then manage it from the cloud. Cloud onboarding is easy and straightforward, and it can manage updates or configure all the switches from just a single dashboard.

The solution is deployed on the cloud or on an on-premises model. For the on-prem version, the tool offers very limited features and management ability. Lately, the product has been focusing on the cloud solution. I am not really satisfied with the tool's on-prem solution.

The product is expensive.

I recommend that others carefully select the model of the product, and they need to consider it by taking into account the solution's releases.

In terms of the value of benefits added by the product, I would say that the switches can be used to make shifts in many scenarios. The product offers a single management platform for multiple models of switches. The tool also allows users to manage multiple sites from a single dashboard.

I rate the overall tool an eight out of ten.

I am using ExtremeSwitching for networking in my organization.

The performance of ExtremeSwitching is good.

I have been using ExtremeSwitching for approximately four years.

The stability of ExtremeSwitching is good.

We have 13 people using this solution in my organization.

I was satisfied with the technical support.

The installation ExtremeSwitching is straightforward.

There is no license required to use the solution. The hardware controller is expensive, and this is why I prefer controlling ExtremeSwitching on the cloud.

I would recommend ExtremeSwitching for others.

I rate ExtremeSwitching a nine out of ten.