Cisco Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms vs. Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN

With the flexibility of sizing options, the Cisco Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms has worked to deliver solutions for our various needs. Smaller systems offer strong connectivity for office developments. Mid-range options have served our larger campuses well. Our data center deployments of the larger systems have provided up to 100G connectivity and advanced routing solutions. The Cisco Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms continues to meet our needs and exceed our expectations.

Incentivized

The best case, what I recommend to others and to clients to use is Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN one for is the case when you have a huge number of branches or small offices or remote offices, you name it. Even home offices, you have a large number and you want this whole infrastructure to be extremely easy to set up and also to have everything almost the same, not to have deviations from the standard configuration. This is the sweet spot for introducing Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN.

Incentivized

• Allows throughput reliable at over 200mb MPLS sites
• Supplies reliable performance at mid-sized sites
• Is much more quiet than an ISR4K

Incentivized

• I will say the ease of use. I know it's very much a template based with feature templates and device templates when deployed properly. I truly believe that the tool can be very, very effective and actually quite robust for us to leverage for globally because we manage a lot of distribution centers and it's all over the world and a different environment in each and every location and obviously across the global markets as well. We've got a wide range of use cases and how it would be very beneficial to each of our business units that we support.

Incentivized

• Adding more NIM slots on motherboard
• Adding PVDM slot for use cases where the router is used only for trans coding
• Adding more granular tiers for DNA licensing. For example it is a big gap between 2000Mbps (400 Mbps agg) and 1Gbps (2 Gbps Agg)

Incentivized

• The initial setup and configuration of the software can be somewhat complex, especially if you are not familiar with SD-WAN technology
• It has many advanced features and capabilities and as so it can be difficult to find the specific setting or option that you are looking for in the interface

Because I have had no issues with this product line and have grown go really trust in it. One of the besr thing is that this has had less vulnerabilities that the past cisco router that I have dealt with. In my line of work needing to upgrade code is always something that needs to be done after hours and most likely on weekends.

Incentivized

I would rate SD-WAN highly because it has significantly improved network performance, reliability, and cost-efficiency for my organization. Its ability to optimize traffic dynamically, enhance security, and simplify management across multiple locations has been invaluable. With SD-WAN, we’ve reduced dependency on costly MPLS, improved cloud application performance, and gained greater control over our network infrastructure.

Incentivized

Either you deploy those routers as a standalone, or as part of the SD-WAN fabric, the amount of features and settings you can configure on them, is well beyond any other vendor or product on the market. While this may bring some configuration complexity, availability of support for variaty of different protocols and features allows you to solve almost any network challenge you may face

Incentivized

No very intuitive for none trained customer, very complicated to assure a day to day operations if you don't have a strong knowledges on network routing OSPF BGP RIP etc... The different platforms and range of furnitures with specific options is very complicated for the integration and consolidation of the solution.

Incentivized

I think if we could afford, we could have HA inplace but we planned out outage and workaround to avoid any outages.

Incentivized

It does slow down over the period but it's same with other product. you need to clear/reboot services.

Incentivized

I have always had great response time and have never been let down by cisco support. I have had issues where the person who was assisting me was not able to provide a resolution but by utilizing his team members they where able to come together to provide a answer and resplve the situation.

Incentivized

Initial setup of any SD-WAN is complicated and difficult because there is so much to do and it is so very granular. Because of this, Cisco has a number of free onboarding help setups. I worked one-on-one with a couple of engineers during our POC, and those relationships continued afterwards into the Pilot. And that's not even counting the Cisco TAC experience or the number of How-To videos and documents they have uploaded on their sites.

the licensing is messy

Incentivized

I was late to participate but my team was very happy with the outcome.

Incentivized

Compared to the Cisco 2000 Series Connected GRID Routers, CGR2010, the Cisco Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms is more powerful in processing, and it has the capability to do the segment routing. It is easier to install physically and occupies less space in the rack, consumes less power, and saves more for the company.

Incentivized

We've used the old Cisco SD-WAN, which no longer exists. It was a lot more complex to configure what is now called Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN. So they've definitely come a long way in that it is a lot less complicated to set up and template based.

Incentivized

Really strength in scalability. Only thigs it's depends on some prototype Cisco product which you can't work with other Cisco products.

Incentivized

• Positive: It has a lot of options for the licensing level based on the scenario (SDWAN, IPSEC, Routing). There is no need for the DNA license for all the throughout for routing mode, like ISR4K models
• Negative: There is a gap between the 200Mbps tier licence and 1Gbps tier. If a custumer needs a 500Mbps licence (1G AGG), we need to offer a doubled value
• Positive: The platform can be used for routing mode and can be migrated to SDWAN using the same hardware.

Incentivized

• It had a very positive experience, especially for the power plants that have actually already transitioned into Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN. I think Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN is a very powerful tool for them because again, it allows peace of mind for redundancy purposes. Most power plants are located in a very remote area where before they used to have only certain choices for circuits to get out. So this allows to integrate any choice that you have there, not just point to point. So no, it is been great. Again, we're still in the process of transforming the whole network into Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN, so yeah, no, so far so good.

Incentivized