Cisco Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms vs. Fortinet FortiGate

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

We reviewed many different vendors product offerings, we found the Fortinet FortiGate to best fit our needs. We upgraded from a previous firewall, the migration was a fairly easy process. We were also able to consolidate multiple firewalls into one unit using vdoms. It's been helpful to have one pain of glass, one support contract and easy to work with support. These firewalls are feature rich which is great, but the support contracts are expensive.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

• It is the most reliable NGFW that we have ever been touch with it.
• You can easily upgrade the firewall cluster firmware without user attention!!!
• User IDentity based feature is fantastic and intrusion prevention just works with least false-positive possible.
• Very reachfull and intuitive GUI, just love it

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

• When we switched to Fortinet Fortigate, it took some time getting used to and become familiar with the new interface. Being used to strictly command-line interfaces, a full GUI-based firewall was something brand new. Careful planning had to be done when creating rules to ensure we didn't miss anything. However, once we got used to the new GUI interface, going from one Fortinet product to another was simple, as Fortinet used the same interface for all of its devices.

Incentivized

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

Fortinet's products have kept improving with new software releases and they continue to deliver great value. Their support is also very good. I believe that as a small enterprise, their products have given us competitive advantage delivering features and functionality that enable us to innovate and do things better. They also continue to be a leader in the markets they serve.

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

The user interface shared among many simultaneous users is very easy to get around. With shared favorites among users, most tasks are easily bookmarked and can quickly be found and edited. Their strategy for web filter integration is easy to understand and manage as well. With some general direction, setup and maintenance were easy to do and easy to teach others in the organization to do as well.

Incentivized

We had didn't any hardware failures at our two main office locations and upgraded our units last year after using them for about 5-6 years

Incentivized

Good performance and really good integration. We have integration with Microsoft AD.

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

We live in Turkey. Fortinet's Turkey office [dealt] constantly with us in our every problem or our experience. In addition, global support teams also supported every ticket we opened in every problem we encountered. They support innovative approaches and evaluate and offer solutions. In this context, they were very supportive of the problems we encountered in previous versions.

I received it a couple years afters use it and it was just to confirm my knowledge about the tool.

Incentivized

the licensing is messy

Incentivized

Make sure that you have the most current version of FortiOS. Make sure all Fortigates are on the same version

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

One of the biggest advantages over competitors that Fortinet FortiGate leverages well is its remote virtual private networks options. Licensing is included with Fortinet FortiGate units at no extra cost. We find that the telemetry is easier to compile and most importantly communicate with non technical members of staff. The Fortinet FortiGate unit is also extremely stable for long periods of time without showing signs of needing a reboot.

Incentivized

My environments are pretty small (less than 100 users per location) so no issues here.

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

• SD-WAN : Can't stress it further that we are very happy with this functionality and outcomes in the org. We have multiple WAN and MPLS links and traffic switching becomes an important in order to utilize the best performing line.
• QoS : We use QoS for almost all internet traffic, be it Web browsing by users, IOT segment, Application based traffic policy and VIP and normal user based bandwidth allocation.
• SSL and IPSec VPN, both features are fully used to it absolute capacity. IPSec tunnels with multiple sister companies across globe.