Cisco Catalyst 9300: Every Part You Need to Order With It
A Catalyst 9300 is the switch people buy when the network has to be supportable for a decade. It is also the switch where the quotation and the delivery note most often fail to match, because the chassis is only part of what you need.
This is the complete list, in the order it causes problems.
The two switches, and why the letter at the end matters most
| Model | Ports | PoE budget | Licence | Price at the time of writing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| --- | --- | ---: | --- | ---: |
| C9300-24P-E | 24x Gigabit PoE+ | 445 W | Network Essentials | 980.00 KWD |
| C9300-24P-A | 24x Gigabit PoE+ | 445 W | Network Advantage | 1,250.00 KWD |
Same hardware. 176 Gbps switching capacity, 130.9 Mpps forwarding, UADP 2.0 ASIC, StackWise-480, IOS XE 17.x, one 715 W power supply included and a slot for a second, redundant hot-swap fans, and a modular uplink slot.
The 270 KWD difference is the licence baked into the part number, and it is not a decision you can defer.
The trap: you cannot run DNA Advantage on a -E switch. The C9300 DNA Advantage licence explicitly requires C9300-\*-A hardware. If anyone in the organisation has mentioned SD-Access, DNA Center, or campus fabric, you must buy the -A chassis now. Buying -E and upgrading later means a hardware re-licence, which in practice means a procurement cycle you did not plan for.
If nobody has said those words, buy the -E and spend the 270 KWD on a second power supply and a decent cabling job.
The uplink module — the slot ships empty
The modular uplink slot is empty out of the box. A 9300 with no module has no uplink, so the switch cannot reach the rest of the network.
C9300-NM-4G — 245.00 KWD, four 1G SFP ports, hot-swappable, fits all C9300 series switches.
This is the module most offices need: four gigabit fibre or copper-SFP uplinks, enough for a redundant pair to the core and two spare. Cisco also makes 4x10G, 8x10G, 2x40G and 2x25G variants for higher-bandwidth uplinks; ask us if you need one of those and we will quote it.
You will also need transceivers, which are separate again. A Cisco GLC-SX-MMD at 32.00 KWD is 1000BASE-SX multimode with digital optical monitoring: 550 m on OM2, 1 km on OM3 or OM4. Two of them plus a 3 m OM3 LC/LC patch cord at 6.50 KWD is a complete fibre link.
Power: what is included and what is not
Included: one PWR-C1-715WAC 715 W AC supply, and the slot for a second.
Not included, and here is the arithmetic that catches people. The 445 W PoE budget assumes the default single supply. One 715 W PSU running 24 PoE+ ports at full load leaves no headroom, and if that supply fails the whole switch — and every phone and access point it powers — goes dark.
A second PWR-C1-715WAC at 185.00 KWD buys two things: redundancy, and a larger usable PoE budget. On a switch carrying the office telephony, that is not optional. If the phones on this switch are the ones people dial 112 from, treat the second supply as part of the switch.
And the power lead. Cisco ships these switches without a region-specific mains cable in many SKUs. CAB-AC-UK at 9.00 KWD is the UK Type G (BS 1363) to IEC C13 lead, 2.5 m — which is the plug standard used in Kuwait.
One per power supply. A switch with two supplies needs two leads. Nine dinars is the cheapest line on the quotation and the one most likely to stop a Thursday-evening installation.
A note on the CAB-AC family, because the part numbers are confusingly similar and people arrive here searching for the wrong one: CAB-AC-UK is the UK/Kuwait lead for standard C13-inlet switches and routers. CAB-AC-2500W-INT, CAB-AC-C6K-TWLK, CAB-3KX-AC-UK and CAB-AC10A-90L-UK are different leads for high-draw chassis and twist-lock supplies — mostly Catalyst 6500, Nexus and large modular platforms, not the 9300. We stock CAB-AC-UK; if your platform needs one of the others, send us the PSU part number and we will source the matching lead rather than guess.
Stacking
StackWise-480 lets up to eight Catalyst 9300 switches behave as one logical switch — one management address, one configuration, cross-stack link aggregation. This is the main operational reason to choose a 9300 over a standalone switch.
STACK-T1-1M — 55.00 KWD, 1 metre.
Two things to get right:
Count the cables properly. A stack is a ring. Two switches need two cables; three switches need three. Buying one cable per switch minus one leaves you with a daisy chain, not a ring — and a daisy chain splits the stack in two when any single cable or switch fails. The ring is the whole point.
Check the model suffix. STACK-T1 fits the Catalyst 9300 and 9300X (the modular-uplink models) and the older 3850. It does not fit the 9300L or 9300LM, which use STACK-T3 or T3A. Ordering T1 cables for an L-series stack is a week lost. Other lengths exist — STACK-T1-50CM for switches in adjacent rack units, STACK-T1-3M where they are separated.
Support, which is not really optional on this platform
CON-SNT-C93P24 — 195.00 KWD, three years of SmartNet 8×5×NBD for the C9300-24P.
What it actually buys: TAC access, hardware replacement next business day, and IOS XE software updates. That last one is the reason it matters. Without a support contract you cannot download IOS XE images from Cisco, which means you cannot patch a security advisory on your core switch. For a 980 KWD switch expected to run for ten years, 195 KWD for three years of patch eligibility is not a discretionary line.
Two complete bills of materials
A 24-port access switch, no fabric plans, telephony on board:
| Item | Qty | Each | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| --- | ---: | ---: | ---: |
| C9300-24P-E | 1 | 980.00 | 980.00 |
| C9300-NM-4G uplink module | 1 | 245.00 | 245.00 |
| PWR-C1-715WAC second supply | 1 | 185.00 | 185.00 |
| CAB-AC-UK power leads | 2 | 9.00 | 18.00 |
| GLC-SX-MMD transceivers | 2 | 32.00 | 64.00 |
| CON-SNT-C93P24 3-year SmartNet | 1 | 195.00 | 195.00 |
| Total | 1,687.00 KWD |
The chassis is 58% of it. That gap between "the switch costs 980" and "the switch costs 1,687" is this entire article.
A two-switch stack, SD-Access planned:
| Item | Qty | Each | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| --- | ---: | ---: | ---: |
| C9300-24P-A | 2 | 1,250.00 | 2,500.00 |
| C9300-NM-4G | 2 | 245.00 | 490.00 |
| PWR-C1-715WAC | 2 | 185.00 | 370.00 |
| CAB-AC-UK | 4 | 9.00 | 36.00 |
| STACK-T1-1M — a ring, not a chain | 2 | 55.00 | 110.00 |
| C9300-DNA-A-24-3Y | 2 | 285.00 | 570.00 |
| CON-SNT-C93P24 | 2 | 195.00 | 390.00 |
| Total | 4,466.00 KWD |
DNA Advantage activates against a Cisco Smart Account, so make sure your organisation has one — or that we are told to create it — before the switches arrive.
When a 9300 is the wrong switch
Being direct about this, because a Catalyst 9300 is sold into a lot of offices that do not need one.
A 9300 earns its price when you need stacking, a ten-year support path, SD-Access or campus fabric, or your organisation already runs Cisco and requires it. If what you actually need is 24 PoE+ ports and a web interface, the money is far better spent elsewhere:
| Switch | Ports | PoE | Price at the time of writing |
|---|---|---|---|
| --- | --- | ---: | ---: |
| Cisco CBS350-24P-4G | 24x GbE + 4 SFP | 195 W | 125.00 KWD |
| Cisco CBS350-48P-4X | 48x GbE + 4x 10G SFP+ | 370 W | 195.00 KWD |
| MikroTik CRS328-24P-4S+RM | 24x GbE + 4x 10G SFP+ | 500 W | 195.00 KWD |
The CBS350-48P-4X gives you 48 PoE+ ports, four 10G uplinks and a Cisco badge for 195 KWD — one fifth of a 9300 chassis before any of its accessories. For most Kuwait offices it is the correct purchase, and we will tell you so. Our PoE switch buying guide works through the budget arithmetic.
Short version
Order a Catalyst 9300 and you need, as separate lines: the chassis with the right licence letter, an uplink module, transceivers, a second power supply, one power lead per supply, stack cables as a ring, and a support contract. Miss the module and it has no uplink. Miss the lead and it does not switch on. Miss the licence letter and you cannot run DNA Advantage without re-buying the hardware.
Send us the port count, whether SD-Access is on anyone's roadmap, and how the switch reaches the core, and we will quote the whole bill of materials rather than the chassis.
Centrix Kuwait — Bin Khaldoun Street, Sharifa Al Mulla Complex, Office 4, Floor 2, Hawally. Call 2208 5406. Genuine Cisco from authorised channels, with the accessories on the same quotation.