PACKETPERF

Primary Device

Cisco Catalyst 9300X
Cisco Catalyst 9300X
★ 3.1 Value Score

Technical Specifications

  • Switching Capacity: Up to 2,000 Gbps (2.0 Tbps)
  • Forwarding Rate: Up to 1,488 Mpps
  • Ports: 48x 10G Multigigabit (mGig) Copper or 24x 25G SFP28 Fiber, with Modular Uplinks (up to 100G)
  • PoE Budget: Up to 90W UPoE+ (802.3bt) per port, total budget up to 5900W in a stack
  • Layer: L2 / L3 (Full routing support)
  • Stacking support: Yes, StackWise-1T (1,000 Gbps / 1 Tbps bandwidth)

Curation Review

  • ✔ Pros: Industry-leading 1 Tbps stacking bandwidth; Modular 100G uplinks; 90W UPOE+ support for Wi-Fi 7 and IoT; Hardware-accelerated 100G IPsec encryption.
  • ✘ Cons: High initial cost and ongoing TCO; Mandatory Cisco DNA software subscription; Overkill and high power/heat for small or basic office environments.
  • Est. Price: $6,000 - $35,000

Compare Against

Fortinet FortiSwitch 124G
Fortinet FortiSwitch 124G
★ 3.7 Value Score

Technical Specifications

  • Switching Capacity: 240 Gbps
  • Forwarding Rate: 355 Mpps
  • Ports: 24x 100/1000/2.5G RJ45, 6x 10G SFP+
  • PoE Budget: N/A
  • Layer: L2 with Static Routing
  • Stacking support: Yes (via FortiLink)

Curation Review

  • ✔ Pros: Full 2.5G multi-gigabit support on all 24 access ports; robust 60Gbps uplink capacity via 6x 10G SFP+ ports; fanless design for silent operation; native FortiLink integration for centralized management via FortiGate.
  • ✘ Cons: Non-PoE model (requires FPOE variant for power); advanced L3 features like OSPF/BGP require a separate license; lacks hardware-based MC-LAG support found in higher-tier models.
  • Est. Price: $1,130 - $1,504

Popular Comparisons

Cisco Catalyst 9300X vs Ubiquiti Pro Max Aggregation (USW-Pro-Max-Aggregation) Cisco Catalyst 9300X vs Fortinet FortiSwitch 124G Cisco Catalyst 9300X vs Fortinet FortiSwitch 124G (FS-124G) Cisco Catalyst 9300X vs Ubiquiti USW-Enterprise-24-PoE Cisco Catalyst 9300X vs Ubiquiti UniFi Switch Pro Max 16 PoE