Cisco Falling - Favorite Network Switches 2017

"HP, hands down. ...great customer support for the few times I've needed it - even if you aren't factory trained / certified, and their products are very competitively priced."

That's interesting, because that's contrary to what I have heard from Cisco in the past where they said if you buy one of their switches for resale and you are not an authorized Cisco re-seller, they said they would not support you they would require the distributor you're buying from (CDW for example) blacklist you and not sell you anymore Cisco switches.

For integrators selling Cisco switches, I'm curious how many are Cisco certified resellers, and if not, when they call Cisco for support does Cisco ask them where they got the switch form and does their distributor know the integrator is buying it for resale.

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Undisclosed Manufacturer #1

Unhelpful: 1

What, is there a Cisco employee or distributor here? I simply presented facts based on experience and asked what I thought a reasonable question. Geesh. :)

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Michael Fusco

From what I have observed That policy is pretty standard in the high end IT hardware industry. It discourages know-nothings who don't bother to educate themselves on switching & routing principles and/or who don't get certified on the in's and out's of a particular manufacturer's gear from clogging up support lines that are meant for higher level issues that skilled/certified engineers can't figure out in the field because perhaps there is a software bug or the procedure isn't sufficiently documented.

Other manufacturers will offer support to anyone who calls, don't have to be certified, but only if there is a support contract attached to that piece of hardware purchased with the gear.

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Undisclosed Manufacturer #1

As for the Ubiquiti switches, do dealers not think that if they put that on quotes eventually customers may say to themselves, "If they using some so common and easy to get as Ubiquiti, then I'll just go online and buy them myself and probably install them myself, so they can cut that out of the quote."

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Undisclosed Integrator #2

That's the easiest thing to head off. Simply tell the customer that the system will be warranted as a whole using only hardware, software and labor furnished by you.

If they insist on furnishing certain devices, offer no warranty on the entire project or better yet decline the project.

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Undisclosed Manufacturer #1

In reply to Undisclosed Integrator #2

That's a pretty good counter.

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Chris Hammond

In reply to Undisclosed Integrator #2

You'd give up, say a 60 camera, install just because you can't sell them the switch?

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Undisclosed Integrator #2

In reply to Chris Hammond

Yes. I don’t position my company as an “installer” or a “dealer”. I provide end to end solutions. There’s a big difference. The former generally makes you an easily interchangeable commodity. The latter generally makes you a trusted adviser who keeps accounts for many years. As such, I do not allow IT managers who probably won’t even be at the company a year from now to dictate how I build my solutions or worse, to parse my solutions and add their own hardware into it. That’s nuts in my opinion.

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Andile Radebe

Hi all

I'm a corporate end user based in South Africa. We are very prone to lightning , especially in the summer season. We have found that putting an IP device, i.e. camera, on top of a pole somewhere in the field and then connecting it back a regular corporate level, e.g. Cisco 3850, is not a wise exercise.

We've gone the route of using in field PoE injectors with either Ethernet to fiber converters or smaller 4\8 Port Industrial switches in the field with fiber backbones to our internal core.

This minimizes hardware replacement costs when lightning strikes one of our field IP devices as usually, we may lose the IP end point and PoE injector but the industrial switches tend to take a hit or two before total failure.

Interesting to hear on makes and models of ruggerized or industrial switching units that installers use and recommend , specifically when it comes to difficult environments that are lightning prone.

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Michael Fusco

Never heard of a network switch ruggedized to interdict lightning.

We use lightning arrestors or fused surge protectors on the ethernet cable so that in the event of a lightning or external surge on the network cable or device, the fuse opens after the switch. Below is a link for an example

http://www.itwlinx.com/products/surgegate-modular-communication-protectors/cat6-75-op

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Walter Holm

•Oct 22, 2017

IPVMU Certified

My opinion: None of them address multicast very well. Avaya VSP is/was far superior and made by the same hardware manufacturer as Juniper and Cisco (so assembly quality is good). Extreme has bought the Avaya VSP networking business but they are keeping VSP only at the core, which for a core network design is a great idea but their edge switches are no where near the ability of Avaya's VSP 4k but more importantly to use this technology, it becomes expensive. You could replace a core and with that little guy as it had all of Avaya's SPBm features. On the VSP infrastructure they tested over 15,000 multicast camera streams, didn't even break a sweat and there was no packet loss or quality loss when they pulled and replaced uplinks (the PIM kiss of death). The reason is they don't use PIM! They don't need it.

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Ken Mills

I am the General Manager for Dell EMC for surveillance. What is stopping the folks here from using Dell Networking? Having come from Cisco, Dell has a great value proposition at the edge and edge aggregation layer. You can combine this with vmware's software defined networking solution called NSX that competes at the high end with Cisco for your larger projects where performance is critical. How can Dell earn more of this networking business?

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Undisclosed Manufacturer #1

Ken, its always good to see a manufacturer not just throw out a sales blurb, but either cite specific ways your product is better, or if not sure what will win a client over, then ask what can be done.

For starters, maybe cite some real performance tests where EMC switch beat 2 or 3 comparable competitive products in performance.

"We ran 24 4K cameras on our switch at 15FPS and here's how our switch performed against Competitor A's and Competitor B's same spec switches."

Or if it only did as well, then cite some other beneficial criteria, like a longer or better warranty, and maybe better support levels.

Also, since any customer can buy EMC online, maybe a real dealer discount that makes using and recommending EMC switches a real value for the integrator, that everyday end users shopping on the web can't get. And I'm talking real beneficial discount, not 25% and expecting us to be happy with that.

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Ken Mills

All fair points. I did not provide all the justification at this time as I am hoping to get an understanding of what is the reason Dell is not on the list and what we can do to earn an opportunity. One point I will point out is that we offer on-site deployment and service options that are very cost competitive and since we are an end to end provider, you can have a Dell technician help install and configure your switches, servers, storage, clients and virtualization.

On your last point. We offer a much better discount if you become an actual partner vs just going to dell.com. In opportunities where a Dell partner is competing, we have been able to provide compelling pricing and protection through registration.

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Undisclosed Manufacturer #1

One point I will point out is that we offer on-site deployment and service options that are very cost competitive and since we are an end to end provider, you can have a Dell technician help install and configure your switches, servers, storage, clients and virtualization.

I think one of the problems is if you are always aiming for the "Big Fish". What you mention is all nice and well, but deals that involve those kinds of needs including virtualization, which is fine for Access but for Video is much more challenging, are much fewer and farther in between. You have to be able to scale to the mid-size and smaller jobs, too. I think many dealers would only want to start you off on smaller deals to see how well you work before they take a chance on a larger deal with you.

It's kind of like those Dell and HP reps who kept wanting to talk about data-deduplication and off site synchronizing for video. It showed how little understanding of the market they were trying to break into that they had.

We offer a much better discount if you become an actual partner vs just going to dell.com.

Better have something way better than 5%, which is what some reps I talked to [a long time ago] offered and they thought I should be excited like a kid at Christmas. I wasn't.

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Undisclosed Integrator #3

•Oct 25, 2017

Dell has such a bad track record, and bad name in networking. That's why you're not on the list. Dell needs to do the actual hard lifting of changing people's perspective through hiring effective Field Sales Engineers and Managers, taking it on the chin from a margin perspective, and actually start driving customers and specifications to require the product. This is the case with Dell Servers still. If Avaya, Enterasys, Brocade, etc have all failed at this over the years, with amazing support, innovative products; I will be impressed if Dell can turn this ship around.

What this poll reflects is years of overselling capabilities, and underperforming. Dell Support is a punchline/laughing stock anywhere I've worked (including 2 large Dell Server dealers). Dell is going to need to actually bring companies into opportunities at this point, not expect people to give them a look, just because they're asking to help now.

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Walter Holm

IPVMU Certified

From the PoV of the networking industry: Dell's networking is a combination of multiple vendors with their lower end "Force10" different in quality from their upper Force10. Multiple problems if you are going to tie into NSX, you would need someone like us to do it right. NSX is not the best solution either, there are standards that are far better and I have talked with VPs at VMware about this and the NSX team is basically untouchable. This causes two problems, one, they might be solving a problem but they are adding complexity. Two, the cost!

Now, you can assume that the infrastructure is in place, but this also doesn't solve other technical problems. If you are dealing with multicast, 99% of the time you will not saddled up to NSX because you will risk melting the core. We have elegant solutions for this but as most are pointing out Cisco is the 900lbs gorilla.

Ken, to answer you directly, when you are buying Dell networking, it's unclear what you are getting. Some is sub-Netgear and their higher end is too expensive and at that point, I can not only sell a product at or better quality that their higher end but also better solution. Dell will give you awesome deals, but the quality is not there.

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Ken Mills