How to address E-series failure in Tolly test?

[Switchguy]

A customer sent this report to me:
Https://supportforums.cisco.com/docs/DOC-15345

This data looks very hard to refute. It effectively makes the case that the Cisco platform is head and shoulders above the E-Series. How van we refute this? Any nuggets?

[Helper]

Hi,

Two-three things to tell :

- Cisco SoHo is not Cisco it is Linksys. The CLI is not identical, Cisco proprietary protocols are not presents so interoperability/compatibility is not maintain (VTP, CDP, etc...), firmware update are anecdotic ...

- In the past with different reference but from Cisco Small businnes family product, we need to replace them because of strange behaviour with Cisco IPPhone. Loss of packets during conversation without any explanation, they was replaced by HP 2610PWR ;-)

- This report from february 2011 is not using latest available product firmware, 2610 is R.11.63 (not 56) and 2810 is N.11.43. This could be important regarding features and latency (not power consumption in my opinion).

- Price, SoHo should not be concerned by a discount because of the low price positionning. But HP products could be concerned, the definitive price need to be compared.

Bye.

[iantaylor1]

I had a similar question to this so glad you posted this, switchguy. I
did my research on this and have a few followup questions/comments.

Helper, am not understanding your rationale. It really does not matter
if this is Linksys or not, the bottom line is that that particular
series of switches outperformed E-Series in all areas including pricing,
performance, latency, energy efficiency, usability, capabilities, etc.
What you're essentially saying is that even though it beat E-Series in
all those areas, because it is a Linksys product, it does not count? If
it really was just linksys, what does that say about E-Series? Btw, this
Cisco product came out 2 years after Cisco moved the business group from
Linksys into Cisco, so don't think we can refer to this product is
Linksys any longer even though it does not run IOS.
Also, according to the report, "The various vendors reviewed their
results and did not dispute the accuracy of the results"

A few other points:
- Cisco claims that a version of firmware for these switches will come
out in June supporting CDP and Smartports
- Talking about IP phone interoperability with an earlier product says
nothing about this new product. I see numerous voice SPs supporting
these switches with various Cisco IP phones
- I looked at the release notes between version of firmware tested and
the latest version for the E-Series and there is nothing in there to
address any of the issues reported in the report

So far, I have not heard a rebuttal.

[Helper]

Hi,

I'm talking about my own experience, my point of view.

I have seen many competitive analysis with conclusion different than real life experience. Low latency is interesting when products works, low power consumption too (my example).

I can tell you that Cisco promise many firmare updates to the past small business product branch and nothing was done.

Now when i see that a product do not receive any update since 9 months i can tell you that is not good.

I think that this comment is interesting because it's real life : https://supportforums.cisco.com/docs/DOC-15345

"Not a very user friendly interface for configuring.  Far to many dependancies.  Often using the "copy port settings" does not work because one of the destination ports may have another VLAN or type set.  This defeats the purpose of "copy port settings"

Cannot set a monitor port destination if port is something other than access vlan 1. OR "error port x belongs to a vlan".. who cares what vlanit is!!  it is a destination monitor and I don't want to go through the 20 step hassle to redifine my destination port to make it specificall access vlan 1.

LACP doesn't seem to work.  Even worse, I get the same "Port X belongs to a vlan" if the participating port is something other than access vlan 1.  This is totally useless."

Thanks for your feedback.

[iantaylor1]

A few points:
1) For the 1 negative comment quoted on the page referenced, there are 9
other positive comments which you did not allude to
2) The comment from that post speaks to usability of the product. I would
not have picked that to make my point as there have been numerous
articles speaking to the usability and ease of use of the GUI for that
device. Tolly said it in the report- you can also find articles in CRN
and most recently article is from CDW which I saw just today
(http://fedtechmagazine.com/article.asp?item_id=967). If you dig around,
you'll find several more reviews out there.
3) Again, the experience you had has been with previous product models
while the 300 Series are brand new switches, so the experience does not
apply. I downloaded their GUI mockups (it's in the same area on their
website) and, on browsing through the product setup, found it to be easy
to use and navigate. Check it out for yourself and compare it to
E-Series with an open mind - I certainly have.
4) If a product does not have updates in 9 months, that does not mean
there's a problem. On the contrary, it could very well mean that the
product is solid and bug fixes are not required. Having frequent updates
is way more problematic than having a few.

From my point of view, I see reviews from people unaffiliated to Cisco
praising this product and elevating it above others in the market. Since
the tests/reviews are so comprehensive in scope - technical
capabilities, price/performance, usability, etc, it is difficult to argue with.

[Helper]

Hi,

To reply to the latest post from iantaylor1

A citation from the original Post of this topic: "How van we refute this? Any nuggets? "

Bye.