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SecurityPlus
Explorer III
June 15, 2019
Solved

Compare To Cisco SG250 / SG350

  • June 15, 2019
  • 1 reply
  • 6793 views
New to FortiSwitch. Beyond the fact that you can manage the FortiSwitch via the FortiGate, what other differences are there between Cisco small business switches and FortiSwitch? What FortiSwitch would be comparable to the Cisco SG 250 and SG 350 switches?
    Best answer by ede_pfau

    You already named it, full management from a single pane. Enforcing firewall security up to each switch port incl. quarantine, easy deployment of VLANs, PoE or FullPoE models, resetting devices via PoE-up/down from the FGT etc.

     

     

    Pro FortiSwitch:

    low price to performance ratio (low price for ample performance)

    variety of models

    Con:

    physical ports are either TP/RJ45 or SFP/SFP+/LC. I can imagine you could get Cisco switches which take port modules for other infrastructure (WAN ports, T1, ...). I doubt that the models you named are capable of this, though. And I personally haven't been in urge for this yet. An office environment doesn't ask for this neither.

    1 reply

    SecurityPlus
    Explorer III
    June 16, 2019

    To better frame this question, the application that I'm researching at this time is a small business office with about 40 employees. They currently have two Cisco SG250 24 port POE switches. Moving to a new location and will need more ports.

     

    Thanks!

    ede_pfau
    SuperUser
    ede_pfauAnswer
    SuperUser
    June 16, 2019

    You already named it, full management from a single pane. Enforcing firewall security up to each switch port incl. quarantine, easy deployment of VLANs, PoE or FullPoE models, resetting devices via PoE-up/down from the FGT etc.

     

     

    Pro FortiSwitch:

    low price to performance ratio (low price for ample performance)

    variety of models

    Con:

    physical ports are either TP/RJ45 or SFP/SFP+/LC. I can imagine you could get Cisco switches which take port modules for other infrastructure (WAN ports, T1, ...). I doubt that the models you named are capable of this, though. And I personally haven't been in urge for this yet. An office environment doesn't ask for this neither.

    SecurityPlus
    Explorer III
    July 24, 2019
    Thanks!