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Ixia Hawkeye vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

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

Ixia Hawkeye
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
85th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
66th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Unified Communications Monitoring (5th)
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
4th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
160
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Ixia Hawkeye is 0.4%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.6%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds NPM3.6%
Ixia Hawkeye0.4%
Other96.0%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

José Enrique Cano Rodriguez - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Consultant at Tata Consultancy
A valuable tool for optimizing network performance and security with comprehensive network monitoring capabilities, user-friendly interface, and flexibility for scripting
Distinguishing itself from network management systems like SolarWinds Orion and Dataminer, Hawkeye offers a distinctive feature. It empowers network administrators to access specialized and detailed views for specific tests, including video streaming and performance related to specific applications like video games. In contrast, SolarWinds and Dataminer typically offer a more general evaluation of network health. Hawkeye's unique capability enables a detailed analysis of network performance through specific tests, allowing administrators to identify areas in need of improvement and take precise actions to enhance network performance.
Vivek Jaiswal - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager IT at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Central monitoring has improved outage alerts and now needs smarter detection and modern dashboards
Regarding the automated network topology and mapping feature in SolarWinds NPM, I am not satisfied with it. For static monitoring, it is acceptable. However, if it is possible, I would need a feature in SolarWinds in the future for some kind of malfunctioning detection, such as malware attacks or that type of environment. We did not have any facility to detect that in SolarWinds. I think it would be better to incorporate those types of features. Regarding customization options in SolarWinds, the ability to customize the dashboard has room for improvement. The dashboard is quite old, and we need some improvement in it. Nowadays, we have multiple tools with AI-based monitoring and web-based dashboards. SolarWinds also has a web-based dashboard, but I think there is scope for improvement in the UI. There may be other areas I would like to improve in SolarWinds NPM.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Our customer was happiest with the price of this product."
"I would recommend Ixia Hawkeye because there are some KPIs that are very useful."
"The most valuable feature is the deployment because it's very easy to deploy real flow through the network."
"The ease of setup is the most valuable aspect of this solution. It's easy to set up and run tests."
"It empowers network administrators to access specialized and detailed views for specific tests, including video streaming and performance related to specific applications like video games."
"The initial setup was straightforward. We deployed the solution from new and completed the upgrades."
"The abnormal traffic notifications are good. Most of them are remote, and it is very good for notifications and monitoring for the traffic."
"We moved from nGenius to Orion NPM about 3 years ago and are very happy with the performance, features, and pricing, the company is very pro-active, as in adding additional features and being responsive to customer requests."
"With just three modules, I can monitor server performance (whether it’s a VM, in the cloud, or an on-premises server."
"Whether you want basic enterprise network monitoring or a full suite of network diagnostic tools and monitors, I recommend Orion 9 for its full feature set and ease of use."
"SolarWinds is user-friendly with a manageable console."
"This has helped us to monitor the availability of our routers, switches, servers, and virtual environments."
"SolarWinds makes a great product and their support is second to none!"
 

Cons

"You can't delete more than one thing at a time. It would be great to be able to highlight three out of five things and delete them, whether it's a test or an actual report."
"Improvements in network performance are essential."
"The customization of tests and even the results can be improved."
"Ixia has one flaw, which is that they do not print the license code on the paper licenses that are shipped to the customers."
"The customization of tests and even the results can be improved."
"Scalability is a bit tricky because it requires more gateways in order to get the performance you may need. It also requires a lot of licensing."
"SolarWinds needs to be improved such that it is on par with the leading products in the market."
"There isn't a great deal of flexibility to create custom metrics that can be discovered easily or custom aggregation schemes."
"Bulk Node attach is chaos."
"The tool can only monitor up to 1000 instances in a single SolarWinds console. Customers may have over 1000 instances. Hence, it needs to support a minimum of 1500 instances. It should also improve support."
"A need for improvement is in the technical support provided by SolarWinds."
"Overall speed of the software could be improved as it is incredibly slow at times."
"Better offline license management. I’ve had to get in touch with customer support several times simply to remove an expired license from our NPM servers (which have no connection to the public internet)."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It cost us approximately 25,000 for two years. This is cheaper than ThousandEyes."
"In larger networks, the costs for licenses tend to be more reasonable, but for smaller networks, it appears relatively costly."
"Licenses depend on the number of devices, but all license levels come with technical support."
"SolarWinds NPM has different pricing models available. The cost of the solution is less than some competitors."
"It's expensive and there are costs in addition to the standard licensing."
"I would rate the pricing a five out of ten"
"Excluding the costs of running VMs and physical blade servers, our licensing costs run around US$200,000/year for over 60 polling engines."
"I find that the pricing is acceptable."
"The licensing is based on the number of nodes, interfaces, and volumes."
"There's standard licensing, and then it depends on the size of the customer."
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
May 31, 2015
Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor
I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise85
 

Questions from the Community

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What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
It actually depends on the exact purpose or kind of devices (network devices, servers, something else). Some tools are better for only network devices while others are better for a cloud monitoring...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
We are partners with SolarWinds and we sell a lot of Network management to large enterprises also because of scalability, products like Network Performance Monitor & Netflow Traffic Analyzer ar...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

EMA
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about Ixia Hawkeye vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.