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DX Spectrum vs NetMaster Network Intelligence comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 2, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

DX Spectrum
Ranking in Network Management Applications
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
118
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (16th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (18th), Network Troubleshooting (7th), DX NetOps (1st)
NetMaster Network Intelligence
Ranking in Network Management Applications
19th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
8.8
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Network Management Applications category, the mindshare of DX Spectrum is 5.0%, up from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetMaster Network Intelligence is 3.0%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Management Applications Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
DX Spectrum5.0%
NetMaster Network Intelligence3.0%
Other92.0%
Network Management Applications
 

Featured Reviews

PinchasAlbalya - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
Monitoring has become centralized and management now sees real‑time health of key network assets
The time investment required is significant, not because of difficulty but because of the need for free time to invest in it. We need to get the knowledge. We know there are many options, but we took an external vendor to install and make the customization. If we want to make others changes without paying for customization, we need to learn it deeply by ourselves. The tutorials are very complicated. They could work on that area. The tutorial part could be more simplified. I know there are many explanations, and you can get help or documents in one click on the current page in the product, but it is not very clear. If you want to do something new that you did not see from the vendor in the installation, it is not very simple. The documents are good for people that know how to operate the product well, but for new users, it is not simple.
it_user558525 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Analyst at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Streamlines quick and effective drill-down into the network stack for better troubleshooting
I would like to see a web-based interface that mimics the ease of doing data traces, similar to something like a Wireshark which is a Windows-based network monitoring tool. Wireshark is fast. I'm an old Windows guy, it's what I know. I think the liability of NetMaster is having to do things through the panels. It's slow to generate traces, and when you're doing a real-time troubleshooting call - when you have to wait 30 seconds for a process to spawn and fire up in order to give data back - 30 seconds is a long time when there's an issue. The user interface is probably the biggest impediment to my success with it.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It creates transparency and makes everything work by being more transparent."
"The main thing is obviously notifications about alerts, getting ahead of the curve to make sure that we do not have system going down, or if it is down we get to know it earlier."
"With CA Spectrum, we are now able to monitor more proactively network assets, reduce the total downtime of these and prevent money from being lost for device stoppages."
"The great aspect about the CA Spectrum tool is not what it does, but the integration that it provides with the other CA monitoring tools, such as CA APM."
"It has a high-quality graphical interface."
"Implemented with Enterprise Customers across region, it is a very strong fault management tool with extraordinary correlation and alarming."
"As the kind of enterprise that straddles the line between telco size and enterprise size, it scales for us, because we're not all the way at telco yet."
"The way our network is structured, CA Spectrum seems to be able to deal with problems that we have coming up in real time."
"I consider NetMaster to be the best-of-breed for network."
"The support has been excellent. It is far and away the best among the products that our team supports."
"The most valuable features are SNA and IP monitoring, and it has been very easy to define many thresholds, including self-defining baselines."
"Stability-wise, the whole product runs great, especially with the automation; that's where it really shines."
"Otherwise, I think it is one of the better network products out there."
 

Cons

"I’d like to see better access to data elements via the API as well as better elements for the UIs."
"The EventDisp logic (code) is too complex."
"It's a little disheartening when you go in to find whatever it is procedure you need to do and it's just not there."
"A better integration with the UIM, as far as being able to do root cause analysis and that type of analytics."
"No good technical support from CA."
"I think the management or configuration of devices needs some improvement."
"I would like to see CA move Spectrum, Performance Manager, and some of their other tools moved to a SaaS based model. You see a lot of other manufacturers which are moving toward SaaS based models."
"It needs better integration with other CA products."
"I would like to see new release migrations made easier."
"I would like to see a web-based UI (major effort now in progress)."
"The automation part could use improvement, but I do not do that much with it."
"I didn't think the SNMP function was easy to set up. That caused some problems with the address space."
"I think the liability of NetMaster is having to do things through the panels."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In general, the license cost will be about 30% of the total TCO for this tool (hardware/support team, OS costs, and OS management)."
"DX Spectrum's pricing depends on the license number. It is affordable."
"The product, support, and maintenance are all expensive, which is another reason that we are switching to another solution."
"The price is good enough to expect an ideal solution. It's expensive."
"The cost of some of these products are a little cost prohibitive, which is unfortunate. We have to find lower cost solutions for some of the things that we have to pull in. For the most part, CA has capabilities in pretty much everything that you would need. You just have to figure out where are you going to spend the most money for what you have to actually get done. You can do all these things but, which ones do you have to do? And that's hard to choose sometimes because you want to do them all."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"It’s a great tool, but an expensive one. Learn how to use it properly."
"It is expensive compared to other tools in the market."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Construction Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise90
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with DX Spectrum?
The time investment required is significant, not because of difficulty but because of the need for free time to invest in it. We need to get the knowledge. We know there are many options, but we to...
What is your primary use case for DX Spectrum?
The university purchased DX Spectrum, called ICE. DX Spectrum NAC is working for us only on Cisco 9200 switches. It is not working on any other switch like C1000 or HG or any 2960X. Even other Cisc...
Ask a question
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Also Known As

CA Spectrum
CA NetMaster Network Management. CA NetMaster, CA NetMaster Network Management for TCP/IP, CA NetMaster Network Management for SNA, CA NetMaster Network Management for TCP/IP
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

National Informatics Centre India, Banese, Olympus, AlphaServe Technologies, Sicredi
Tieto
Find out what your peers are saying about DX Spectrum vs. NetMaster Network Intelligence and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.