Netgear

[Millgate]

Hello everybody!

 

I just wondered what everyone's thought's were on Netgear?

 

Just done a massive network upgrade for one of my schools where they replaced Cisco with Netgear and not only were they very competitive on price ( much cheaper than HP & Cisco ) but they helped design the Network, had many many chats with the school to see what would work and threw in a few guys to help out with the install FREE!

 

So my opinion of them has shot up. They've always been a good company but now they're up there with Cisco.

 

There very good to work with so if any of you are thinking of something similar and want to see what they can offer, just let me know.

 

Cheers

 

Luke

[irsprint84]

I like netgear for personal use but not been a fan of enterprise stuff I will still keep to HP/ Cisco

[Millgate]

That's what a lot of people think. Honestly though, it's worth a look. I deal with them all (HP, Cisco etc etc) everyday and i know people think Netgear aren't as good, which is fine but it's worth having a chat about and considering.

 

Plus your FD, Bursar or whoever, will be very happy with the money you'll save!

Edited September 23, 2011 by Millgate

[sted]

the switchgear ive used has been ok (one type of switch probably long discontinued i know) annoyed the heck out of me by the only way to prerorm initial config was a serial cable of cose located on the back so a swine to get to once installed (and was installed before i got to it)) and their current wireless stuff is not good im not sure if its the power injecting switch or the waps but they dont seem to let pcs get dhcp leases quickly enough

[caffrey]

use netgear here, always like the netgear blue kit, my only niggle is the web interfaces on the managed switch - they are awful

the older ones dont appear to work in newer browsers either

[SYNACK]

Netgear may be ok in the UK but it is rubbish in the rest of the world with their non-existant supply chains and support.

 

Comparing their gear to HP or Cisco is like saying that an Uno is just as good as a Bugatti Veyron because they both have four wheels completely disregarding or simply not understanding the underlying technical differences between them.

 

Sure many schools can get away with Netgear stuff fine as they don't need the featureset but try to do something a bit more complex and your options become much more limited.

Edited September 23, 2011 by SYNACK

[pete]

Netgear IME have two types of switches.

 

a) Ones that work perfectly well, are sensibly designed wrt to heat dissipation, airflow and firmware.

 

b) Ones that work perfectly well for a couple of years and then die to poorly designed heat dissipation*, airflow and/or firmware bugs.

 

The problem is that the difference between a) and b) is arbitrary and unrelated to price, featureset or expected quality.

 

*like their range of 24 and 48-port Gigabit switches with no active cooling and not even the heatsinks butted to the upper casework with a thermal pad.

 

In short, Netgear kit is cheaper, but long-term HP is cheaper in terms of "just works, not having to faff around with it". The only time I need to touch a HP or Cisco is when I want to make a change to it.

[ict_support]

I use Netgear they provide great value for money we can have multiple classes video editing live across the network using adobe premiere pro cs4 without a stutter. You need to be looking at their business class kit. I would compare them to Ford as far as an analogy, they produce good cars for reasonable money, no they are not BMW or Mercedes but you are not paying for the name or the extra refinements that a lot of people just don’t need.

They are easy to administer compared to Cisco /HP and also long as your topology and VLANings are well thought out, jobs a good un.

The network here has 800 pcs and has been faultless since I put the Netgear kit in 2 years ago. As a school how can you justify putting in cisco that would cost more than double, I don’t think you can, cisco can be a pain to administrator and often the skill base is not available within a school environment to support it so you have pay external companies to help.

Question

If you have a 100k do you spend that all on switches or do you spend 50k on switches and 50k on kit for the classrooms to support teaching and learning? It’s a balance and I find Netgear helps me to find the balance.

[SYNACK]

The network here has 800 pcs and has been faultless since I put the Netgear kit in 2 years ago. As a school how can you justify putting in cisco that would cost more than double, I don’t think you can, cisco can be a pain to administrator and often the skill base is not available within a school environment to support it so you have pay external companies to help.

Question

If you have a 100k do you spend that all on switches or do you spend 50k on switches and 50k on kit for the classrooms to support teaching and learning? It’s a balance and I find Netgear helps me to find the balance.

 

Cisco and HP stuff are not that hard to configure, if the school has the skillset in place then having something like that with a better warrenty and better featureset can be a real benifit. There is also the longevity of the higher end stuff.

 

We have 6 year old Cisco 3750 switches that are still going faultlessly, fast at 1GB/s to the desktop and can support IPv6. I doubt that an equivilent Netgear would be the same. Sure they cost more upfront but they last longer and are supported longer. We mostly go HP now as they have most of the featureset of the Cisco stuff but are cheaper.

 

There is a place for Netgear in some schools as some of their gear is fine and it is cheaper but in others it is not the best solution as always it depends on the school.

[ict_support]

As far as warranty Netgear give a lifetime warranty on their kit now, I do have a cisco router for my 100M leased line and two hp switches for the SAN but for the remaining network it's net gear. It's about the right price for the right job. . Some of the recent net gear switches / modules support 10g over om1 up to 220 meters, for a snip of the cost of cisco / hp

As I said before their kit is good value for money that helps me get the balance, for example my lowest spec pc has 2gb of ram most are 4 gb, if I went cisco I would still have some poor pcs connected to my switches , CRT monitors etc etc. Students / staff like to see the investment being made

[pantscat]

Just my 2p worth - when I was going through the motions of replacing my LAN last summer I had special bid pricing from HP Procurve, Linksys (bleurgh!), Cisco and Netgear.

 

In the end, price-wise, it was pretty close between HP and Netgear - but HP pulled out all the stops and continued to slash their pricing so they came in about £1,500 cheaper than Netgear. It's not a huge amount of money in the grand scheme of things but when you consider the the HP kit has a much better feature set, a nice IOS (no horrid GUIs or web-based administration) and all of my cisco knowledge can pretty much be put to use straight away with HP it was a complete no-brainer.

[sted]

Just my 2p worth - when I was going through the motions of replacing my LAN last summer I had special bid pricing from HP Procurve, Linksys (bleurgh!), Cisco and Netgear.

 

In the end, price-wise, it was pretty close between HP and Netgear - but HP pulled out all the stops and continued to slash their pricing so they came in about £1,500 cheaper than Netgear. It's not a huge amount of money in the grand scheme of things but when you consider the the HP kit has a much better feature set, a nice IOS (no horrid GUIs or web-based administration) and all of my cisco knowledge can pretty much be put to use straight away with HP it was a complete no-brainer.

You realise linksys is cisco

[pantscat]

You realise linksys is cisco

 

Yep. But the IOS is very very different. Have you compared the two?

[sted]

Yep. But the IOS is very very different. Have you compared the two?

The only experience i have of Cisco's is lea ones that are poorly configed and not documented

[SYNACK]

You realise linksys is cisco

 

No Linksys is owned by Cisco, there is a huge difference. Linksys is consumer grade cack, not matter what claims they make on the label.

 

Cisco gear runs IOS (the original one that they liscenced the name of to Apple before anyone asks) which is massivly configurable and upgradable in comparison to most other integrated solutions. Linksys usually runs the lowest spec they can get away with system with either custom code (for switches) or busybox (*nix) for routers that is comparitivly about as stable as nitroglycerine in a paint shaker.

[featured_spectre]

If I was to be judging Netgear by the Netgear stuff in my new place, its poo!

If I was to be judging Netgear by the Netgear stuff in my old place, its not too bad.

 

Warranty is not too bad, but my god its a nightmare when you need to get something fixed or replaced on warranty!

[mac_shinobi]

No Linksys is owned by Cisco, there is a huge difference. Linksys is consumer grade cack, not matter what claims they make on the label.

 

Cisco gear runs IOS (the original one that they liscenced the name of to Apple before anyone asks) which is massivly configurable and upgradable in comparison to most other integrated solutions. Linksys usually runs the lowest spec they can get away with system with either custom code (for switches) or busybox (*nix) for routers that is comparitivly about as stable as nitroglycerine in a paint shaker.

 

lol @ about as stable as nitroglycerine in a paint shaker

 

Plus one to linksys being owned by cisco ( subsidiary )

 

I used to have a WRT54G wifi router by linksys ( obviously for home use ) and is still running as we speak, obviously no where near as good as cisco equipment but then there is a huge price difference the same as there is a huge feature set difference due to the price that you pay for them whether it be cisco or linksys etc.

 

As with everything you get what you pay for ( or not as the case may be )

[cpjitservices]

Personally if anywhere is going to switch from Cisco the next big players I'd go to would either be HP or Juniper. Both beat Cisco on price of course!

[featured_spectre]

Juniper would be my first choice for any switch now...CLI is much nicer than Cisco and HP, GUI is nicer than both, and IMO it works better than both!

[RabbieBurns]

just to be different, I use Wireless Access Points, Cloud Based Solutions, Data Center Solutions these guys...

[mac_shinobi]

Did see extreme networks mentioned somewhere on EG - think they are meant to be quite good as well ??

 

Switching Products - Extreme Networks

[pete]

just to be different, I use Wireless Access Points, Cloud Based Solutions, Data Center Solutions these guys...

 

Ah, but you're in the land of "Wait, Australia? Set price gouging to Ludicrous Mode."

 

Regarding HP - they're cheaper than you think if you've access to decent pricing.

[john]

I'm just in the process of changing my LAN from Netgear to either HP or Juniper, awaiting final bits and bobs to be confirmed but hoping we will become a Juniper place from after Half Term. The netgear has served us well, however they have not been keeping up in the edge switching and the forward thinking angles IMHO.

 

They now have a Chasis switch, great, however its just a re-spray of an Extreme, which is good news as that kit is bulletproof, but the cost is majorly high, and they don't have any edge kit to go with it IMHO. So we will see what happens going forth, we will either be HP or Juniper, Cisco have priced themselves out of the project, so we will see. I am still awaiting the quote for Extreme actually, there is one on the way so will be interesting to see what that looks like