Cisco's Catalyst is one of that company's brand of network switches.
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Cradlepoint Routers
Score 8.1 out of 10
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Cradlepoint in Boise offers a range of routers supporting cellular or wireless failover, branch and IoT networks, and related needs, available through a variety of appliances, and via the Cradlepoint virtual edition router.
The fact that it is eight slots for users, so 384 ports making every port active in the hospital. So it's, that's where we use it extensively for connecting all our medical devices, users, wifi apps, and that type of thing.
It has worked great for our emergency vehicles and mobile remote dispatch stations. We did have them at other bases as secondary internet access in the event of failure of our fiber, but I have found that is not as useful as we thought it may have been. I have temporarily disabled cellular on those devices and just did not have the need for it.
Particularly well. It does help. It keeps up our network very well. We don't have any issues with the hardware at all that we've noticed. Sometimes it might be a power supply issue or something like that, but for the most part we have very low amounts of RMAs for anything for that, for our actual switches. But yeah, I would just say it's reliable and it takes care of the network well with limited issues.
I think what I would like to see as an improvement is probably bigger difference between high end and lower end models. For example, 9300 and n9200s, they both pretty much do the same thing and sometimes it's hard to justify why do we need higher end models because the difference are not much. The biggest one is obviously the module. You can use 9300 supports way bigger modules than the 9200 ones. What I'm getting at, maybe introduced a lower end 9200 with even basic features that can be used just as layer two, similar to like 2960 that's going end of life. There is a similar 192L, but it does still have a lot of features, which I appreciate because some companies might not be able to purchase high-end licensing to use those, but it still kind of makes it senseless for us to purchase even the low end switches to use as a layer two. So I would like to see the bigger difference between these two much that.
They are consistently reliable and this switch in particular is a very affordable solution. We can place the Cisco Catalyst 1000 Series Switches gear in areas that we normally would not place a switch because it is affordable enough to make it justifiable. And because it is a reliable solution, we are confident it will continue to provide service over the long haul.
I have been using some type of device like this for a very long time. We have and will maintain the need for this and have no immediate plan to make any change from Cradlepoint Routers. They have been very solid. These devices are a bit pricey, however worth the money as they always work and are reliable and save IT staff time.
The usability will feel natural to frequent Cisco users and a bit harder to navigate if you're new to the system. If you're limited to a small rack, maybe even in a not climate controlled environment the fan-less models with less energy consumption are a pro. With PoE you can deploy your network hardware anywhere you have a network socket: Thin Clients, APs, Sensors, you name it. The integrated power monitoring tells you how much power each client consumes and how much you have left.
We have had very few unplanned outages with all of our Cisco Catalyst products. The biggest issue I have seen is when a device has been powered on for a very long time and it gets powered off and reused later. Sometimes, the switch will not come back up. In most cases, these are switches that are way past end of life. I can't say we have really seen any other issues with the availability of the Catalyst family of switches
No, the packets flow. Sometimes you will see collisions and broadcast storms can happen which will slow performance but that can be fixed and the packets will flow.
So far we haven't had very many support issues with our Catalyst switches. When we have had issues TAC is always a pleasure to work with. They're prompt, knowledgeable, and take ownership of the case from open to close. Also, this isn't attributed to Cisco support directly. But because they are so widely known and have such a great market share you can find a solution to almost any issue with a quick internet search.
It has always been a pleasure working with that team. They always go above and beyond with getting the device working as you need it to work and are always willing to explain and answer any questions.
I prefer in person training. For me I understand things and the ability to ask someone helps. This particular training was a large class and it was a bit busy. However, I do prefer in person training to online. I have taken many online courses, and while they do offer a lot more info at an affordable price, there is sometimes a place for the personal touch.
The implementation of the Cisco Catalyst 1000 Series Switches is fairly seamless, especially if you are familiar with Cisco products. We have had Brocade switch gear in place too, and the differences between the manufacturers [are] not a major issue.
We selected Cisco Catalyst Switches over the HPE Aruba switches due to the end-to-end solution that Cisco has been building and improving upon over the last 5+ years. We can now utilize the same security tagging and posturing from our access layer all the way up through our firewall/edge, and even on our SD-WAN connectivity between sites. This has saved us valuable staff time and improved our security posture.
I have not used a cellular router before this, so I can't compare.
I am however familiar with Cradlepoint as designing components for Emergency Responders to keep them connected and online while dispatched. That was a deciding factor for us. We wanted something heavy duty and reliable.
The product line is very complete and flexible. Supporting anything from small to larger modular solutions. Need PoE? Need 25Gb or faster fiber? Catalyst has you covered in all areas we can think of. Compact form factor? Industrial use? Cisco Catalyst has something that fits any scenario. And we can expect the same features, configuration and integrations to work no matter what.
Difficult to answer. I hope it has a positive influence on that. The part that I'm most positive about is the fact that in the construction with this switch, the hardware and software licensing are being separated through the smart license, so you can reuse the license on other hardware. On the other hand, we are using it too short to have a real influence on that.
