- Cyber Security
How to Secure Your Business Email with MFA
11 Mar, 2026
£3053.40 inc. VAT
AI-generated summary
The Cisco Catalyst 9300 (Network Advantage, L3, managed) for £2,544 ex-VAT is a pretty “enterprise default” choice. If you’re building a properly managed campus or SMB-to-midmarket LAN where you want strong reliability, clean Layer 3 routing, and a switch you can keep supported for years, it makes sense. This is the sort of model IT teams buy when they’re sick of wrestling with flaky firmware, inconsistent QoS, and limited feature depth—9300s tend to be solid in day-to-day operations, and Cisco’s ecosystem makes ongoing management and troubleshooting more predictable.
That said, I’d only pay this price if you actually need the level of capability it brings. If you just need basic access switching with VLANs and maybe a bit of static routing, you can usually get the same functional outcome for less with other Cisco lines or even different vendors. Also, make sure the “Network Advantage” licensing matches how you plan to run it long-term—people often budget for the hardware and then get surprised by what they need operationally afterward. If you tell me roughly how many ports/devices you’re connecting and whether you need routing (not just switching), I can give you a clearer steer on whether this is good value or overkill.

TP-Link
TP-Link Omada SG5452X V1 - Switch - L3 Lite - Managed - 48 x 10/100/1000 + 4 x 10Gb Ethernet SFP+ - rack-mountable

Zyxel
Zyxel XGS2220 Series XGS2220-30F - Switch - L3 - Managed - 24 x Gigabit SFP + 6 x 10 Gigabit (uplink) - desktop, rack-mountable

D-Link
Switch24p 10/100/1000 PoE L2 man

STARTECH
StarTech.com Industrial 8 Port Gigabit PoE Switch, 30W, Power Over Ethernet Switch, Gigabit Ethernet GbE PoE+ Unmanaged Switch, Rugged High Power Gigabit Network Switch IP-30, -40C to 75C - Gigabit Ethernet PoE (IESC1G80UP) - Switch - unmanaged - 8 x 10/100/1000 (PoE+) - DIN rail mountable, wall-mountable - PoE+ (200 W) - DC power