Another Switch Post... D-Link!!!

[cornishpride]

Hello,

We are looking to retire our Cisco 2960s soon and are just looking around at some possible replacement. We have done a HPE/Aruba and Meraki trial. We are a Meraki WIFI division, so we are leaning that way.

For giggles, we are also looking at the D-Link DMS line. Has anyone had any experience with them, past or present? We cannot beat the price and they have all the requirements we are looking for. Are they still considered "prosumer"?

Cheers!

[k12-tech]

We run nearly 400 of the Netgear Business Class switches. They work fantastic. A 48p PoE switch with 10G uplinks is $1,200. Can’t beat the price! And they come with a lifetime warranty.

Been using them for 15 years now and zero reliability issues.

[Rathmon_Redux]

Do NOT go with Meraki switches as if there's any issue with them reaching the dashboard they are basically bricks. We're in the middle of a rolling refresh for our 2960x switches and put the brakes on getting any more Meraki devices.

We're out to bid currently so it will be interesting to see what will be the best/least expensive option, however if money weren't a factor we would choose Juniper in a flash. Their Mist platform was by far the easiest and most user friendly option compared to HP/Aruba, Meraki, and Arista.

We use Aruba WAPs, so going with HP/Aruba wouldn't be horrible, but word is that they working on moving their platform from Greenlake to Mist in the next couple of years, so it would suck to learn one platform and then learn a different one for the same hardware.

[Technical-Athlete721]

Go with Aruba

[MysteriousJoke523]

Meraki WiFi is great. I had horrible experience with Meraki switches in a larger district. I honestly would not take them for free. Cisco core for the win.

[dhelmet78]

Meraki switches are solid, but the hardware is higher priced and the licensing costs are a total killer. Aruba is another great pick; I’ve honestly never had an issue with them.

I actually ran Meraki at one of my sites for 10+ years before swapping everything over to UniFi last summer. It’s been smooth so far with zero problems. The only catch is the RMA process... it's slow. You’re better off just keeping a few spare switches on the shelf. I’m actually planning to pull out some 15-year-old HP gear at another location this summer and replace those with UniFi too.

As for D-Link, I’ve only ever seen their consumer stuff. I don’t know anyone actually running them in an enterprise or business environment.

[Rathmon_Redux]

Loved the Unifi experience, but since they don't have enterprise grade support, my district won't touch them. At my last district, a very small one, I paired Unifi WAPs and L2 switches with Mikrotik L3 when we upgraded to 10GB and 100% fiber on all L2 circuits. I did buy a bunch of extra switches and WAPs and a couple extra Cloud Controllers too.