Which network equipment manufacturer is better and in what situations?

Question

Computer networks

Good afternoon!

I started studying network equipment manufacturers (for conditionally medium-sized enterprises) and was horrified by their number: d-link, tp-link, cisco, ubiquiti, mikrotik, hp, and this list, apparently, can be continued indefinitely.

I myself have only recently been in "computer networks" and for me this is some kind of chaos.
What to choose? Who is best in what situations? Who has what reputation?

I tried to find some article comparing manufacturers, but I managed to do it. This makes it even sadder.

Who cares, share your experience :)

Answer 1

Well, how many manufacturers of clothes, milk, refrigerators, monitors, etc. do you know? And especially their Chinese clones?
So here - the comrades of their economic sphere even came up with the name "Competition" for this situation.
And manufacturers have a horror of differing classes of equipment.
From the point of view of small enterprises: in the main "it's cheaper for us - it somehow worked" From the point
of view of medium-sized enterprises: everything looks like tasks, reliability, policies, prices, availability, etc.
Cisco is in this segment. meets all its basic requirements and has ample opportunities for centralized management and support.
In the enterpide, they don’t like configurations like: the dahua camera receives wifi from the tplink point included in the dlink access switch, which is included in HP on aggregation. and on the core they have a microtic, from which the uplink goes to kenetik and this is all through a tambourine attached to zabbix. There, if a tsiska, then it is a tsiska in Africa

Answer 2

HP - the "senior" switch has been operating for the 12th year. One port was knocked out, it seems, by a thunderstorm. Other ports in it and switches are younger - without problems.
Tsiska - there is 1 managed switch, everything is OK
D-Link - 4 gigabit switches died in 3 years, Mikrotik firebox
- for complex tasks, you need to learn to program. They perform their tasks and do not die.
ubiquiti - did not use.

Answer 3

What to choose? Who is best in what situations? Who has what reputation?

Usually they formulate requirements (including those for scaling and the availability of technical support), and then they select by price.
Tsiska - reliable, scalable, service, hardware platform, but expensive.
HP - a good price when shipped with servers or PCs, as a rule, "native SFPs" are needed.
TP-Link - home routers (well, or SOHO at all).
DLink - cheap managed switches, sometimes there are glitches with firmware, access to standards.
Microts are cheap software platforms with firmware based on Linux with all the consequences (flexible, with limited built-in functionality and glitches).
Ubiquiti are generally wifi radio bridges.
Well, it's about reputation. But first, the requirements.

Answer 4

Cisco is such a thing that was thrown into the rack, plugged in and forgotten. From a fleet of a dozen devices with a capacity of approximately 600 ports, only a couple of ports flew out in a decade due to a thunderstorm.
Microtic - cheap and cheerful. Gui confused, to understand, you need to know the theory well.
Ubiquiti is a nice management server gui, the dots look pretty nice (sometimes that's important). Works for himself and works.

Answer 5

As far as I remember, when I worked in a broadband access operator, managers were very worried about the functionality, cost and number of hours of work. Yes, each specific model has a set period of operation in hours, hence the cost.

Answer 6

any but not Chinese d-link, , cisco, ubiquiti, mikrotik except tp-link they violate international RFC standards