HP ProCurve vs. Cisco switches

[Rilescat]

Does anyone have any experience in compare/contrasting the overall properties of HP ProCurve Switches vs. Cisco?

Cisco tends to be more feature rich, however, HP tends to be 1/2 the price. HP has a lifetime overnight replacement warranty. Cisco has decent service, but not that decent.

Cisco is the world leader and HP is big, but not that big.

HP does not make routers, so my routers have to be Cisco anyway.

I am presently compairing HP's 2848 (48 port 10/100/1000) with a couple of different models from Cisco (we are currently a Cisco shop).


Any thoughts?

Thank you,

 

[alphnasx]

my company is currently evaluating 3Com enterprise equipment. u might want to take a look for urself.
not bad for the price!

 

[InlineFive]

Originally posted by: alphnasx
my company is currently evaluating 3Com enterprise equipment. u might want to take a look for urself.
not bad for the price!

I find it hard to believe that you work for a company with spelling like that.

 

[randal]

HP has cheap high-density switches that are great for shuffling packets around - I have experience with the HP4000m (64x100mbps+4x1gbps) and the 2626/2650. Honest answer is that for price vs. features, HP's newest switches blow Cisco out of the water. I mean, the 2650 is really similar to a 3550-48, but lacks some Layer 4 stuff and a couple of other higher-end features.

If you don't have specific feature needs or corporate policies that require the use of Cisco, HP is definitely the way to go. And that's coming from a total Cisco whore.

$.02,
randal

 

[randal]

Originally posted by: alphnasx
my company is currently evaluating 3Com enterprise equipment. u might want to take a look for urself.
not bad for the price!

I don't know if you're the guy who posted about how awesome 3Com gear is in another thread, but I thought I'd make a point anyways -- 3Com left ALL of it's network customers high and dry when they axed their networking division. They're support was already poor, and then they just left everybody swinging, generating a LOT of a grudge. I have a few older 3Com switches -- still in their box -- that I will /NOT/ use because 3Com is such a horrible company.

It's nice that they're going to give it a go again, with low prices and claims of super performance and features. But honestly, any network person worth a damn won't even glance at it given their worse-than-horrible track record.

$.02,
randal

 

[Rilescat]

Originally posted by: randal

Originally posted by: alphnasx
my company is currently evaluating 3Com enterprise equipment. u might want to take a look for urself.
not bad for the price!

I don't know if you're the guy who posted about how awesome 3Com gear is in another thread, but I thought I'd make a point anyways -- 3Com left ALL of it's network customers high and dry when they axed their networking division. They're support was already poor, and then they just left everybody swinging, generating a LOT of a grudge. I have a few older 3Com switches -- still in their box -- that I will /NOT/ use because 3Com is such a horrible company.

It's nice that they're going to give it a go again, with low prices and claims of super performance and features. But honestly, any network person worth a damn won't even glance at it given their worse-than-horrible track record.

$.02,
randal

I absolutely agree. For my immediate needs, 3Com is 100,000$ cheaper than the HP's we are looking at and roughly half the Cisco price. However, due to previous experience with 3Com, I refuse to use them. I'd rather go to Best Buy and pick up 30,000 ports worth of Dlinks.

 

[randal]

Oh, I didn't know if you were going to be using Cisco+XYZ for routing/switching for a Large deployment. I was thinking a couple hundred ports. From what I've heard, HP's high density switching gear is really good and at a very good pricepoint (5308xl -- 96 ports/all the goodeis at <9k Link). If you are pro-Cisco, I would seriously suggest talking to the HP folks, then taking their info and pricing to Cisco and clubbing them with it.

Anecdotally, at a total hack-job install I have a 2620xm hooked up to a hp4000m and a 2950-24 and I had no issues. I had to get the latest firmware for the 4000m to make it's dot1q stuff work right (doesn't support FEC because it's old), but other than that, standard lan stuff like QoS, vlans/trunking, stp, etc all work flawlessly between the two different brands.

 

[ITJunkie]

I would also take a look at Extreme Networks (Extreme) switches. They are as feature rich as the Cisco, fast and usually include more routing protocols (if you are looking for a layer 3 switch) and cheaper by a couple thousand last I checked.
FWIW

 

[TheRouterNinja]

I work with both switches on a daily basis, and I can tell you the Procurves are great for their price. If you are looking to purchase a gigabit-ready network, the difference between cisco/procurve is in the thousands for just one switch alone. If the target is a small company, then procurve is definately the way to go...but as you start going towards larger and larger networks, they don't make as much sense. Larger networks require more features (QOS, MPLS, Multicast) that the ProCurves either don't have, or aren't completely functional with yet. Have you talked with their sales people yet? I would call their sales division and ask them if the switch you plan on purchasing can accomplish your end goal... a lot of times, their sales engineers will actually tell you to buy Cisco.

 

[alent1234]

At my company they use Enterasys. We used to use all Cisco but we got a few Enterasys switches in a merger a few years ago and the WAN guys seem to like them.

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: randal

Originally posted by: alphnasx
my company is currently evaluating 3Com enterprise equipment. u might want to take a look for urself.
not bad for the price!

I don't know if you're the guy who posted about how awesome 3Com gear is in another thread, but I thought I'd make a point anyways -- 3Com left ALL of it's network customers high and dry when they axed their networking division. They're support was already poor, and then they just left everybody swinging, generating a LOT of a grudge. I have a few older 3Com switches -- still in their box -- that I will /NOT/ use because 3Com is such a horrible company.

It's nice that they're going to give it a go again, with low prices and claims of super performance and features. But honestly, any network person worth a damn won't even glance at it given their worse-than-horrible track record.

$.02,
randal

Yep, that's him.
Assuming you mean the guy who "asked" for advice, then neverminded the advice given and started talking about how awesome 3Com is.