Small Medium Business Stackable Switch Comparison
This report discusses the findings of a recent test of web-manageable switch products for the SMB (Small and Medium Business) market space It specifically compares and contrasts the features and performance of the Cisco SF500, SG500, and SG500X series of switches with similar products offered by HP, D-Link, and Netgear.
Overall, we were impressed with the comprehensive set of features, performance, power efficiency, and ease-of-use of the Cisco switches. Specifically, we found that Cisco delivered the highest capacity and scalability of configuration parameters including VLANs, MACs, ACLs, and IP routes. The Cisco switches provided the best resiliency when subjected to a DoS attack. Cisco switches can also be seen as more economical when measured using normalized pricing based on Price per gigabit and Price per PoE Watt. In addition, they were the most efficient both in terms of overall energy consumption, and the energy saving capabilities provided. The Cisco switches included in this test were the easiest to configure and implement, forwarded line rate full mesh traffic at all frame sizes with zero packet loss, and provided the most extensive support for IPv6 transitions.