OptiView XG [EOL] Reviews

It does the inventory of the network. I was using the current version, but the device died. I am just looking for a replacement.

It just saves time. We have run into situations where contractors come in, and they plug in a WiFi device that is handing out DHCP addresses, which affects the rest of the network. To be able to quickly identify from where the problem is originating, you need a network tool that can identify the device that is doing this. It just brings into clear focus the exact issue when there is a problem or outage. 

When there is a crisis and you've several people wanting to know an estimate of when things are going to be back up and running again, you need to have answers. I have been at places that didn't have a tool like that. I know one place that had an outage for almost a week, and it was craziness. It turned out to be just a bad cable. That's all it was. They were having trouble with their email server, which was an on-premise email server, but emails were taking six hours to appear. The whole problem was because of a bad network cable. When I plugged in the Fluke analyzer, it analyzed and told me immediately that there were transmission errors on this one port from one switch. It told me this within 10 minutes. It is an incredible product.

It is a very valuable tool. It goes out and does a discovery, which is a great process of it. You could have something like a rogue DHCP server, and it will identify it, and then you can see to which switch port it is connected.

It is quite an impressive tool. I really liked it because you didn't have to install an agent on anything. It would just go out and do its discovery. For me, that's great.

Its price can be improved. Their support can also be improved a little bit.

In terms of features, it did everything I wanted it to do. With more features, I would have to start installing network agents or something else, and I don't want to have to install anything. This was the value for me about this device.

I have been using this solution for ten years.

It was great in terms of stability. The unit I had was 10 years old, and it just kept working. Unfortunately, it stopped working, and I can't get it repaired. A replacement is $20,000, but I am not going to spend that kind of money to replace it.

Its scalability was great. There were no limits on it. I had one site with 1,000 devices, and it would constantly monitor all of them. It was great, and no agents needed to be deployed. It would just discover what was there.

I have interacted with them. They were helpful to a degree. Their support can be improved a little bit. I would rate them as average.

Its initial setup is very straightforward. It is a portable device. No agents need to be deployed.

I am responsible for different companies, and I am able to go and quickly deploy it. Within 20 minutes, I have an inventory of everything on a network such as VLANs, subnetting, and other things.

I was also handling its maintenance and all that stuff. I used it daily to monitor things. We had to monitor and make sure that our 10G connections were performing as expected, and it did that, so that was quite good.

We have seen an ROI. A good way to approach it is to calculate what your downtime costs would be if you had a network outage, and then you realize that it is cheap insurance to buy this stuff.

It is worth it when you calculate what your hourly downtime would be. For one of the sites, we had calculated that downtime of an hour would cost about $30,000. So, it paid for itself.

Its price was a bit excessive. The device that I had died. It is under warranty, and they want $20,000 for another one. I just don't want to spend that kind of money, so I'm trying to find an alternate solution.

They have annual maintenance on it, which probably was 10% a year, so it all starts to add up.

I would rate OptiView XG a ten out of ten. It did everything that I wanted to do, and I was very happy with it.

Gives us the ability to see our network.

It helps us troubleshoot when we have problems.

I would like a built-in tap feature which doesn't interfere with the network, and it allows you to see what is happening there.

I would also like to see them lower the cost of maintenance. We paid a lot of money for the product and you also have to pay a yearly fee for technical support.

We have been using this solution for three years.

There were no issues with stability.

I was involved in the setup. It was easy.

We can see the sub-net, but we can't see more without using the tap feature.

We are looking at packet loss, tracking the packets which are going to and from a tap to figure out exactly what the problems are with the traffic movement.

We are using this product to improve our view of what is happening with the packets. We can analyze the information there fairly quickly. We can resolve the issue at hand, whether it is a software issue or a hardware issue.

At this time, I can't really think of anything specific. I need to ask my colleagues about that.

I've been using the solution for about three years.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

I have never engaged technical support.

We didn't use any similar solution previously.

The setup was straightforward.

I am not involved in pricing and licensing considerations.

We evaluated Wireshark and some others, but this product was a better fit for our requirements.

You get what you pay for.

• Network discover: We use it for fiber testing, for checking all the packets that are going in and out, availability, bandwidth, etc.
• We don't necessarily use it every day, but every time we have some issues with the network, we use it. This could be once a week, twice a month, or three times a month.
• I usually have it turned on all the time just to scan the network for problems.

There are a lot of improvements depending on the situation. We have a lot of tools that we can use. If we are in the field and we have OptiView, it is our first line of defense. It is very easy to do the troubleshooting right away. It's an issue of portability.

I think everything is OK, except that they integrated AirMagnet already. It's also very heavy, like a brick.

We've been using the product for more than ten years.

We had a stability issue when we updated. It froze a few times, but they were able to solve it when we opened a ticket. We had a virus issue, but they solved that as well.

We didn't encounter any scalability issues.

The technical support is pretty good. I would give them a rating of 9.5/10.

We did not switch to anything. But again, we have multiple monitoring tools, and we had XG since day one.

The setup was pretty straightforward unless you don't know how to pay attention and listen to the instructions.

• Make sure that you know what you're doing.
• Make sure you know where to do the plugins. There are multiple Ethernet ports. Know which one you want to be part of the network, which one you want for management, etc. Sometimes they interchange those things if they don't pay attention. They just plug everything in there, and then you get screwed up.
• You need to know what SFP you're going to use for a 10-Gigabit and a 1-Gigabit port. Those are important things. But again, you have to pay particular attention to those things, or else you will not get any results.

We have only been using it for site survey. I've used spectrum analysis as well, just to see what is on the wireless. I haven't used it too much, but it's on our network.

We use it as a site survey tool. I don't hire out, so it's done in-house. I don't use it every day, but only when I need to.

I had some problems generating reports. However, that could be me and not the tool. I don't know. I couldn't get a report out of it for some reason. I have to review that myself.

It's been about two years since we starting using this solution.

There were no scalability issues that we experienced. It's running pretty well.

I personally have not contacted support. I just haven't had time for anything like that. I had other people use it, and they got the report they were looking for.

OptiView XG is the first solution that I've gone with. I have not used any other solution yet.

The setup was straightforward. You turn it on. It's really easy to use, once you understand it a little bit. For the site survey part, it's pretty simple. For the other issues, you do need some training. I took some training for it.

I did not evaluate other options. I went with this solution because I read the reviews on it and they were good. We had shortage of time to purchase the product, so either you purchase now or never. I ended up purchasing it.

It's a good tool and is pretty simple to use. Once you get the hang of it, it's not too hard to use. You don't have to read a bunch of manuals to get it going, at least for the site survey part.

For the other issues, such as the analyzer and the spectrum, you will probably need some training. I've got to use it more often. If I had time to play with it, I would, but I don't have time.

The packet capture feature is valuable when there's a troubleshooting issue. Since this is a data center, there are thousands of servers/users.

When there is a performance issue, we do the sniffer capture on the OptiView XG, and then we analyze the captures. If it helps to determine what the problem is, then it improves the server or application performance.

The licensing cost needs to improve since it is very expensive, especially the licensing and maintenance costs.

We used to cover the maintenance, but it's too expensive, so we no longer pay on a yearly basis for the maintenance anymore.

This product is also too bulky.

I have been using this solution for around four years.

When we first got the second one, there was an issue with the power cable, i.e., when we plugged the power cable into the unit, even if you moved it a little bit, it would turn off. Then we sent it in and it seems a little bit more stable now than it was before. This was a while ago, so it's been fixed.

It has not crashed; there were no scalability issues.

When I had the power issue mentioned elsewhere, I contacted them to get it fixed; they sent me a temporary one while they were trying to fix it. So, it was pretty good. I would probably give them a 10/10.

The new OptiView XGs were purchased because the data center has all 10-gigabit fiber; so that's why we had to purchase that.

The setup was pretty straightforward.

Just test it out. We've always used a Fluke (now NETSCOUT), so I can't really compare it to anything else.

The maintenance cost is obviously too expensive, so our management is not going to approve that type of maintenance cost on a yearly basis.

Most valuable to me is its size and the applications that are loaded on it. It's like a Swiss Army Knife. It's in a tablet size, but not like a laptop. It has handles and straps so it's easy to carry around and survey. The bulkiness I accept only because I need the extra battery life. I don't know if there's a way to do all that stuff and not have the battery capacity. We ordered extra batteries so we can swap them out and keep surveying.

We've been using it a lot for the wireless portion. We've been doing surveys, heat maps, verification of signal strength, and everything else. If we use the OptiView, we also can use verified LAN and WAN, we do bandwidth throughput testing. Those are some of the big tasks we use it for.

It's the one product that we go to when we have a problem or need to get information, because it can do so much. You don't have to go back and grab this or that other device. It's a Swiss Army Knife.

Recently, they introduced a cellular product, so part of what I needed was to add this onto the XG so we can do cellular heat maps for our properties and locations. Our owners come over and expect to have great Internet, as well as connections for their phones when they bring them. That would probably be something I'd want to add on. Size is not a big factor for me, because I realize we ask it to do a lot and for a long time. We may go all day, so I need battery stamina.

Recently, it came out with the web interface or cloud-based feedback; that's good. You got live clients for testing and all that. I'm actually pretty happy with what I've got. I can't think of anything else that I could be improved on, other than the cellular, which they've already done. I've given feedback and they seem to have caught up on that stuff. The cellular was the last one that I had talked about.

I have been using OptiView since the XG came out and we had the generation before that, so we're looking at either six or seven years.

We haven’t had stability issues. We buy the gold support to cover us if there are any issues. One time, we had an issue with a battery and they sent us new batteries overnight. The gold support is important for us, so in case anything does come up, it's covered.

I have no stability problems because we maintain network connectivity with the whole state of Hawaii; from here to the Big Island. If I need to run tests, it's usually to set up a reflector and run bandwidth tests. Scalability wise, it can go across and do quite a few things with what we need to test it with.

I rate technical support 5/5, being the best. After our last report and the follow-up, everything's been great.

We've used other products and the biggest problem was lack of support, no warranty or excess warranties; things like that. The OptiView support program was pretty comprehensive, including updates for the XG and the other products that we buy. It's something that an enterprise would need; not some fly-by-night or, "oh, we're going to do this stuff, but we won't do extra.", kind of thing.

Setup was pretty straightforward. We needed a little help from our sales engineer who guided us through some scenarios. Then, once we got the hang of it, we took off with it. We just needed a little nudge.

We looked at freeware options like JDSU. We looked at Wavetec, also.

The pre-site survey and the AirMagnet site survey help my company in pre-sales and post-sales.

We used it for our post-sales, so we can get a better understanding of the customers’ wireless needs.

They could improve the tablet hardware itself. It can't support the AirMagnet software.

I have encountered stability issues. It crashed. Tech support told us that the OptiView tablet itself needs a better processor and more memory. It's unable to run the software without crashing.

It can’t scale to even one user because it crashes when you're using the AirMagnet survey tool, or even running reports.

When I contacted technical support about it crashing, it didn't go very well because they said we need better hardware or better tablets with more processing power.

We didn't have a solution before. OptiView was the first of its kind. We wanted a pre-sales site survey tool and a post-sales site survey tool.

Initial setup was straightforward.

With the licensing and putting up the software, I pretty much didn't really have to do much other than activate the license.

Before choosing this product, I didn’t evaluate other options.

Make sure the hardware supports the software. I think the software is good. I think it would work better on hardware that would support the software.

Packet sniffing - it allows us to see where there are communication errors between devices.

We had two devices that we didn't know what was wrong with them. Communication wasn't working and the graphical interface actually allowed us to see what traffic was being sent to which device. We were able to find out that there was actually double acknowledgments coming from one of the devices. We were able to share that with the coders and ultimately get it fixed.

We found that when we used the wireless section of the AirMagnet, we used to have a laptop dedicated to AirMagnet and it actually ran smoother on the laptop. The device still runs AirMagnet the same way the laptop did but it's not as smooth as it ran prior. It probably just needs more memory or needs to be a little more robust.

No issues at all.

The only thing we used them for was some licensing. Since then we really haven't called back.

We actually used another Fluke Networks solution. It was two of Fluke's separate products and this was a an all-in-one solution.

It's actually very easy. It auto discovers and you can pretty much set it up and let it go. It uses a Windows interface so if you're familiar with Windows computers, it's fairly easy to use.

We were able to try it out so if it's possible for you to try it out, it's definitely worth the trial.

I'd rate it an 8. The wireless portion of it being a little stronger would probably get it a 10.

We use it more or less for the troubleshooting aspect of wires and wireless.

It just made it easy to troubleshoot certain situations and to get a quicker resolution, depending on the situation. Basically, we utilize it to troubleshoot situations, packet analysis, wired and wireless, sifting of traffic, and then accurate analysis; when someone says they've got issues with an application. That's generally what we're doing.

• Ease of updating, automated updating.
• Basically, based on the unit right now, maybe get it to be a little bit smaller, lighter. That would help.

I have used it for 4+ years.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues; it's just a good tool. Basically, it's used for troubleshooting, so it's not always used 24/7. When we need to use it, it works.

Technical support is good. I give them a 4 out of 5; no real changes needed.

Before, we would use Wireshark and similar products. OptiView just made it a little bit easier. It was a neat package that made it easier to utilize.

Initial setup was easy; it wasn't complex.

Previously, pricing and licensing was easy. We'll see what happens with the change with Netscout.

We basically upgraded. We had some legacy versions of this and we upgraded them. There was no evaluation or comparison.

Just know that it's a niche product, but it works.