Cisco Switch : Cisco 2960X vs Cisco 3650 vs Cisco 3850 : Which Access Switch you require?

Today i will discuss about the requirement of the Cisco switch at Access layer. A lot of people asking me about the design and the deployment of the Access layer and always been asked about the model of the Switch at Access layer.

Always to start with the need of the customer requirement and on the basis of it we can have the different models in the infrastructure. There are lot of questions when you are going to evaluate the requirement in the customer infrastructure.

Fig 1.1- Cisco Access Layer model

Lets talk about the various models of Cisco at Access layers with the option of Stack.
We have different models and these models are

• Cisco 2960 Switch
• Cisco 2960-X Switch 
• Cisco 2960-XR Switch 
• Cisco 3650 Switch
• Cisco 3850 Switch

Here we are going to differentiate between three switches and these switches are Cisco 2960-X/XR, Cisco 3650 Switch and Cisco 3850 Switch. Below is the table showing the difference between these 3 switches

Fig 1.2- Cisco Switches

Above table shows and give you the idea where to use which switch as per the requirement and the design of the network. Make sure one of the key factor is the next generation network support called as Cisco DNA infrastructure which supports in 3650 and 3850 switch but not capable in Cisco 2960-X/XR switches.

If you are interested to deploy the DNA cisco architecture with SDA in the access layer you should always go with the Cisco 3k models ( it can be Cisco 3650 or Cisco 3850 Switches ) either in 24 ports or in 48 ports models. Prices are there in the table shown the estimate price of both the models with 24 port and 48 port switches.