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Choice between Cisco Catalyst 1200 and Cisco Business 220? (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hey everyone,

I'm back with another question. I'm looking at switches and have it narrowed down to two options:

Cisco Catalyst 1200-24T-4X

Cisco Business CBS220-24T-4X

I'm going to have a Netgate as my main router in the house but I am also going to have a dev environment that I don't necessarily want interacting with my regular network. Originally I was thinking of just getting an unmanaged switch but I might like having some light VLAN capabilities of a managed switch that I can have the option of using.

I don't have any use right now for PoE devices so I don't need the switch to do that. I'm having a hard time figuring out exactly what the differences are between the CBS model and the Catalyst model.

It's a difference of about $45. As far as I can tell, the main benefit to the Catalyst is Cisco's Cloud dashboard. I don't need or want that. I'll handle everything through a VPN connection back to the house and honestly, I don't see myself needing to interface with the switch much after I get it set up. If the cloud dashboard is the only difference then I'll just save the $45 and get the CBS model.

But I wanted to ask you all if there's something else I'm missing that might make the Catalyst a better choice?

Thanks!--

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The Catalyst 1200 is a small Enterprise switch and the Business CBS220 is meant for SMBs and they seem to be extremely similar in what they can do.
The catalyst has some limited routing abilities that the business switch lacks, but that is all I can find and it's honestly not enough to influence a decision in my opinion. It's not like the Catalyst 1200 is a true L3 switch either.
Catalyst CLI
Business CLI
Catalyst IP Routing

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

Yeah that's kinda where I'm coming down too. They both also do IPv6 Multicast which I'll use briefly later on when I start setting up the Nutanix CE section of the build but I mean...they look so similar I may as well save the $45.