What's the difference between the $15k and $2k Cisco switches?

Question

D-Link

What is the difference between switches?
Cisco for $15,000 and $2,000 don't seem to differ in functionality, but the difference in price is huge.
And why is Cisco superior to all other vendors?
By the way, if the router is "smarter" than the switch, why are they not installed instead of switches?

Answer 1

In switches, rather simple actions on packets are performed by switching matrix controllers, almost 100% in parallel.
In routers, all (or in technologies a la NetFlow, the first in a session) packets pass through the central processor, which allows them to perform a lot of heterogeneous operations, but sequentially.
Because of this, we have incomparable differences in the speed of processing streams. By the way, in routers they are always counted in packets / sec, and then multiplied to estimate by some average packet length.
Switch and router of the same class from Cisco:
router: 982.000 packets / sec., approximately 502.78 Mbps
switch: 88 Gbps

Answer 2

By the way, if the router is "smarter" than the switch, why don't they put them instead of switches?

Probably because the switch and the router are two devices designed to serve different purposes.

Answer 3

Stacking. The amount of traffic being pumped. Branded features for traffic isolation. Might have missed something.
Regarding superiority, they are pillars. Reference.
Routers are unable to forward such traffic. They will bend.
In short, so as not to worry about you - if you do not know what kind of features are there, then you do not need a more expensive piece of iron.

Answer 4

I see two main differences - on the 3750 you can install 10-gigabit transceivers as uplinks, and on the 3750 the routing is more complete (RIP / OSPF) (on the 2960s only static routes, about 16, and in my opinion you need to use the LAN Base software, and not the LAN Lite that comes with the kit)
Useful links:
3750
2960

Answer 5

These models are generally of a different class.
one is actually pure L2 - access level, the second is a full-fledged L3 switch c acc. routing functions.

Answer 6

What is the difference between a car for 500,000 rubles and for 1,500,000 rubles?
You would at least bring the models that you looked at so that you could say what and with what to compare.
Well, the difference between a switch and a router has already been said above, but I will still send you to read the documentation and find out what is the difference between switching and routing.

Answer 7

When buying equipment for 15 thousand, you get service in case of failure, the next day they will bring you a new one

Answer 8

We look at detailed features, and using them as access routers.

Answer 9

Here is an example switch 3850 network.msk.ru/products/kommutator_cisco_wsc385024tl
in the base costs 100k.r. and the top 200k.r. The glands are the same, but the difference in licenses
1 LanBase (a regular second-level switch)
2 Ipbase (advanced L2 plus L3
features 3 Itsevices (Advanced L3 features)
In this option, you can buy for 100k and activate the Itservices license and will work for 200. But this is equivalent import software on your computer)

Answer 10

The question is not correct. But, it can be answered without going into too much technical detail. If the number of ports for pieces of iron is approximately the same, then this is how it will be cheaper for the access level, and the piece of iron in N is more expensive, depending on your organization, it will already be at the aggregation or core level.
In general, if such questions arise, then I advise you to at least read the Cisco Smart Business Architecture guides.