The purpose of this article is to discuss Cisco Small Business Switches vs Enterprise Switches. You will ultimately have to review each switch individually to understand what is best for your organization. To skip ahead and get some immediate help, fill out the form below and a Cisco Specialist will contact you for a free consultation. Cisco has two classes of switches that encompass many different types of use cases. The two classes are Small Business and Enterprise.
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Cisco Small Business Switches
Cisco Small Business switches include the 110 series, 220 series, 250 series, 350 series, and Catalyst 1000 series. In general, the purpose for these switches is to be used for small, single-site organizations with low technical requirements and little chance of anything changing. These switches are limited in their features and many of the products in this family are not meant to run critical workloads. In fact, the time and money put into configuring these switches will out-weigh the monetary value of the switch itself since they are relatively low cost.
Cisco Small Business Switches Cloud Management Dashboard
These switches range in port counts from 8, 12, 24, and 48 ports with options for PoE and PoE+. Warranty claims are an important factor to understand with the Small Business Switches. It does not happen often, but when it does, it is good to know what needs to be done when a component fails and you have an outage. The 110, 220, and 250 model series require you to return the switch to the factory and wait to receive another one. This can lead to a significant amount of downtime, especially during the current situation with lead times so far distant in the future (in some cases a year). A good strategy to have with these switches is to have a hot-spare ready to go if a component failure did happen.
Cisco 110 Series Switch
The Cisco 110 series switch is an unmanaged switch. It is meant for really small networks that do not need configuration and only need to pass traffic. Ideal for a very limited scope such as a segmented network with only one type of traffic such as a non-critical application. It may serve for a non-critical IoT application, a remote conference room, surveillance camera(s), or a very small office with little security requirements. The Cisco 110 series switch comes with options from 5 ports to 24 ports and have the option for PoE. You can read more about the Cisco Business 110 Series Unmanaged Switches Data Sheet.
Cisco 220 Series Switch
The Cisco 220 series switch is considered a smart switch because it has management capabilities unlike the 110 series. The Cisco 220 provides QoS with up to 8 priority levels, 802.1X port security and Access Control Lists (ACLs). It also supports the Spanning Tree protocol to mitigate broadcast storms and has the ability to create VLANs. The Cisco 220 series switch comes with a 3-year limited hardware warranty with return to factory replacement. Read Cisco Business 220 Series Smart Switches Data Sheet – Cisco for more information.
Cisco 250 Series Switch
The Cisco 250 series switch has PoE and PoE+ (up to 30W per port), can create VLANs, and has QoS up to 8 priority levels. It also introduces layer 3 static routing. This is a great feature to have because it allows traffic to traverse from one VLAN to the next but it does require static routes, which must be manually configured. That means if there are any changes, routes are likely to break causing a network or access outage. This switch is not well suited to environments that may have changes throughout the years. That being said, it has additional security features such as IEEE port security, and ACLs. It also comes with a limited lifetime warranty with return to factory replacement. Read Cisco Business 250 Series Smart Switches Data Sheet – Cisco for more information.
Cisco 350 Series Switch
Like the 250 series switches, the Cisco 350 series switch can create VLANs, has the ability to do PoE and PoE+, and QoS up to 8 priority levels. It has additional security features as well such as DHCP snooping, and ARP inspection among others. The Cisco 350 switch can also do dynamic layer 3 routing, which means that it will discover routes and create paths to them automatically. This switch also allows for true stacking, meaning that you can manage multiple switches as a single unit (up to 4 switches on select models). The Cisco 350 switch also supports fiber channel in single-mode and multi-mode as well as RIPv2. The Cisco Business 350 comes with a limited lifetime with next business day advanced replacement. Read the Cisco Business 350 Series Managed Switches Data Sheet for more information.
Cisco Catalyst 1000 Series
Cisco Catalyst 1000 series switches are most ideal for small businesses and remote offices that have critical applications and require more robust management, reliability, and security. These switches have built-in redundancy and resiliency features to reduce outages and risk from network degradation. That includes things like redundant power supplies and fans as well as field replaceable units or components should something fail.
Cisco Catalyst 1000 series switches allow for stacking for up to 8 switches with a single IP to manage them all. They come with a PoE+ budget of up to 740W and enhanced QoS with multiple options for marking, classifying and prioritizing traffic. They also have multiple network security features like 802.1X port security, access control lists, RADIUS authentication, and dynamic VLAN assignment. Dynamic VLAN assignment will automatically provision a user or device to a specific VLAN based on your policies.
Read Cisco Catalyst 1000 Series Switches Data Sheet – Cisco for more information.
Contact a Cisco Specialist Today
If you would like help in designing your network, we can put you in touch with a Cisco Specialist and Engineering team that can provide a free consultancy and recommendation. Please fill out the form to receive a call and schedule your next meeting.
Cisco Small Business vs Enterprise Switches
Cisco’s enterprise switches include the product families of Access Switches, Core and Distribution Switches, and Data Center and Cloud Switches. The Access, Core and Distribution switches include the Catalyst 9200, 9300, 9400, 9500, and 9600. The Data Center and Cloud switches include Cisco Nexus 3000, 3500, and 9000. They also include storage switching for SAN fabrics with the MDS 9000 series switches.
The complete feature sets of these products are outside of the scope of this article but can be found on their respective data sheets. There are some key points which really separate enterprise switches from small business switches.
Resiliency of Enterprise Switches
Cisco enterprise switches have hardware redundancy with the two most common parts that fail in a switch: power supply and fans. The enterprise switches are built with redundant power supplies and redundant fans to reduce the likelihood of an outage.
Cisco enterprise switches also have PoE redundancy. Even when the switch itself goes through a power cycle (restart), PoE devices will continue to get power as long as the switch is connected to a power source.
Cisco’s enterprise switches also provide resiliency through stacking. Catalyst switches can be stacked and managed as a single unit and has Stateful Switchover. Stateful switchover is used to allow a redundant supervisor engine to takeover if one fails. Other resiliency features include Non-Stop Forwarding (NSF), REP, Nonstop Routing (NSR), and many other features to recover from network outages or disruptions that may occur in the network.
Scalability of Enterprise Switches vs Small Business Switches
Scalability is another architecture component that differentiates the enterprise switches from the small business switches. A small business network may be manageable using the small business switches, but scalability problems grow quickly as the network gets larger and more complex. Cisco enterprise switches include a 3-tier architecture design of core, distribution and access switching. Well-designed architectures using Cisco enterprise switches can quickly adapt to change and growth without having to re-design the entire network. You simply cannot design a scalable network like this with Cisco Small Business switches.
Security – Cisco Small Business vs Enterprise Switches
The enterprise switches contain a whole different class of security mechanisms and features that do not exist in their small business line. An in-depth overview of the features is out of the scope of this article but can be summarized. Cisco Catalyst 9000 series switches contain elements of Zero Trust, tamper resistant chips, integrity checks, hardware encryption, and integration with other security solutions.
Management – Cisco Small Business vs Enterprise
Although the Cisco Small Business Cloud Dashboard does provide features to manage the network, it does not compare to what Cisco enterprise switch controllers can do. Cisco Small Business Dashboard does have useful features like zero-touch provisioning, discovery and network topology mapping, and event alerting and notification. It does not however compete with the vast feature-set of Cisco’s other controller solutions like Cisco DNA, Cisco Meraki, and the IOS XE operating system. For example, with Cisco DNA Center, you can have visibility into user and application performance in real time. It provides automation with policies and has user and device profiling with network segmentation. These are features not available in the Small Business switch line.
Conclusion – Cisco Small Business vs Enterprise
To summarize, there are a lot of other features available in the Cisco enterprise switches that make them more broadly applicable to use cases than the small business switches. Small business switches meet a smaller list of network requirements that may be suitable for a small business, but not a growing business nor a larger business. Cisco Meraki also has a great product line for smaller businesses with their own networking stack that includes firewalls.
Contact a Cisco Specialist Today
If you would like help in designing your network, we can put you in touch with a Cisco Specialist and Engineering team that can provide a free consultancy and recommendation. Please fill out the form to receive a call and schedule your next meeting.