NETSCOUT nGeniusONE vs OptiView XG [EOL] comparison

"The packet capture is the most valuable feature for us. It gathers data from the device. In case somebody has a problem, I can go back X amount of time - days, hours - and get the data to do real troubleshooting."

"We build application dashboards and performance indexes for locations."

"It's a consolidated, single tool that talks to multiple platforms. It's not vendor-proprietary; it's independent. It provides interoperability with different products, whether they are routing products, switching products, wireless, wired, load balancing, or proxy. It works with anything you can name."

"The product is very good. We have very few problems."

"Deep packet inspection is a very useful tool as it works in real time and uses serial packet-level analysis."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is being able to drill down into any kind of troubles that are reported to us, by use of identifiers."

"The details it provides are among the most valuable features; the ability to drill down and get to the packet level."

"The ability to be able to do detailed traffic analysis such as top-talkers, application-specific monitoring, and understanding them through patterns, is helpful. We're also able to gain an understanding of voice calls, voice traffic, whether we have packet loss in a certain part of the network or jitter or high latency that might be impacting the network. All of those are nice functionalities."

"Gives us the ability to see our network."

"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."

"The initial deployment is tedious and requires a lot of build, deployment and configuration time. Experience is key to a successful deployment."

"I would love to have them reassemble fragmented packets. That would be a very big plus in my book."

"A lot of tools highlight what's going on but they don't actually pinpoint the user experience. It would be good if there were a small message or something highlighting what the user experience is like and any degradation that's actually occurring."

"I would like more in-depth convergence between all the applications, especially when I look for information through a data mine."

"The technical support could improve a bit with quicker responses for early on questions. What I think are simple questions are taking a long time to get answers to."

"Datadog is more stable than NETSCOUT nGeniusONE, being a SaaS-based solution compared to on-prem solutions like NETSCOUT."

"nGeniusONE could be improved by reducing the number of bare metal servers required to run it. Currently, you need a separate bare metal server for each of the following: Xfinity, ISNG, nGeniusONE, and CFS. It would be more cost-effective and less complex if all of these functionalities could be combined into a single bare metal server."

"The solution is not easy to install."

"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 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 rate the price of NETSCOUT nGeniusONE a four out of five."

"The scalability becomes very expensive quickly."

"It is a little overall pricey and expensive, but you get what you pay for."

"Their pricing is very competitive with other solutions... But what I like about NETSCOUT's licensing is that it's shared across all their platforms. They don't create a new licensing scheme for every one of their products. So for nGeniusONE, you buy a certain license level, and it works on all of their products."

"The license becomes cost prohibitive very quickly."

"Make sure you get the low down on your licensing and understand the licensing requirements before making a purchase, especially when it comes to an upgrade. Make sure that it suits your needs before you commit to it. For example, we purchased ATA at version 6.2.1. At that time, the licensing covered everything we need. NETSCOUT comes out with 6.2.2, stating that in order to upgrade, you had to purchase CyberStream licensing. Now that requires some additional funding from both a capital investment and a maintenance cost. That's something that should have been said, "Well, if you want these additional features, you will need to purchase these CyberStreams." Otherwise, we should be allowed to continue on the basic operations as it is now through the newer releases without being stuck."

"Licensing is flexible, it's not tied to anything else. We can easily switch up the licensing piece... Obviously, NETSCOUT is a little bit in the higher range, but it gives you value for money. You get what you pay for."

"The platform is expensive."

"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."