Why pay more if you don't have to?

"Cisco is raising the price on older generation Catalyst switches in an effort to prod users into buying newer gear."

Cisco's recent price increase on select Catalyst switches is the latest upgrade tactic in their arsenal of vendor-influenced strategies to get you to buy newer equipment, whether you need it or not. We believe it’s a headache-inducing move that you and your peers are no stranger to. But we’re here to help.

On November 2, the new increased pricing for the Catalyst 3560 and 3750 Series Switches went into effect, raising prices in some cases by up to 67%. Your Cisco rep may have called you to upgrade to the 3650 and 3850 Series (or maybe it was another affected series among the dozens that were announced), but what your rep likely didn’t tell you is that the older models have all the key features that are still relevant to today’s networks, even for brand new deployments.

We've put together a tech guide comparing the features of the WS-C3750G, WS-C3750E, WS-C3750X and WS-C3850 to help you decide for yourself. While we’re not saying that the newer 3650 and 3850 switches don't have good enhancements, we do believe that the older 3560 and 3750 switches still have the key features engineers need in roles like the access layer and are still very relevant options.

According to the table, the 3850 does look impressive, and for some applications, it is the right switch to use. But when the needs of the access layer (where most of these switches are going to be deployed) are considered, many of the advantages of the 3850 are not really applicable. High-performance stacking, NetFlow support, and large L2/L3 TCAM space just aren't features needed in the role of access layer switch.

For customers who have standardized on the older platforms or are in the middle of a rollout of these switches, this price increase is going to present complications for sparing and future expansion.