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NETSCOUT nGeniusONE vs OptiView XG [EOL] comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (30th)
OptiView XG [EOL]
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

HT
Newwork And Collaboration Supervisor at Nafeza
Monitoring has improved bandwidth insights and application diagnosis but setup and costs still need work
They need room for improvement about the spare parts. There are shortages in Egypt in their stock. We tried to make RMA for specific parts, and it took a long time. Comparing this to a vendor like Cisco, who provides any component next business day, NETSCOUT nGeniusONE took a long time. This needs more improvement. I believe it is expensive. They need to reduce its budget a little bit. Comparing to other solutions, it is very expensive.
MW
President at Bitwise Micro
A valuable, impressive, and portable product that saves time and has great scalability and stability
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"For me, the most valuable features are the dashboards which we use to highlight the overall impact to the customers, and being able to drill down into the nitty-gritty of the customer experience."
"The solution gives us increased visibility while conducting an IT deployment, recording data all the time so we have the before picture and the after picture, and in areas where we have instrumentation, we have seen a measurable decrease in mean time to know and mean time to repair."
"The installation process is straightforward."
"Packet decode and bandwidth analysis reports are the two most valuable features."
"Deep packet inspection is a very useful tool as it works in real time and uses serial packet-level analysis."
"The valuable features include packet analysis, packet capture, and [that] it's easy to use."
"The best feature is when we have it connected permanently via TAPs. That enables us to constantly collect data and then we can go back in time... To be able to rewind, back in time, and see the problem as it happened, is very helpful."
"The details it provides are among the most valuable features; the ability to drill down and get to the packet level."
"The most valuable feature of this product is the sniffer, where we can troubleshoot user connections by identifying the source and destination, to try to get to the root cause."
"It's worth a shot. Give it a try. Definitely a product worth considering."
"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."
"If we are in the field and we have OptiView, it is our first line of defense."
"We are using this product to improve our view of what is happening with the packets."
"Gives us the ability to see our network."
"In this way, I think OptiView XG is the best all in one solution."
"For me, just resolving our one VLAN problem really makes it worth it."
 

Cons

"The scalability is difficult. Packet capture and packet broker are hard to do because you ultimately have to build a separate overlay network, so you can capture the packets."
"I think it could have an easier to understand interface."
"Maybe the optics cost could be improved. It's not about the product itself, but the optics cost from other companies is very high, which affects the business. When you buy a $1 million product, you shouldn't be expected to pay $500,000 for support. So, support, operation, and professional services are very expensive. It's the main weakness."
"The product was lacking for awhile when they did the Arbor acquisition. I was waiting to see more security stuff, which they did eventually add, and is now impressive."
"The stability is only fair. It goes down a lot."
"We would like better end-to-end data flows. This is something that my users always complain about, as they don't know what the data flows are on the network. We would like to know every point along the line."
"We see it overload once in a while. It doesn't have built-in protection. Therefore, once it gets too much data, it tends to crash. Then, we have to recover it."
"The dependency mapping is good, but I am hopeful that they will build some type of partnership and relationship with ServiceNow. I want to see NETSCOUT partner with ServiceNow so they can leverage Service Now Discovery and Service Mapping to automate the build of the service dependency mappings inside of nGeniusONE."
"It takes some time to get used to it. There is always room for improvement in the ease of usability and learning curve type of stuff."
"I think everything is OK, except that they integrated AirMagnet already. It's also very heavy, like a brick."
"Its price was a bit excessive. The device that I had died; it is under warranty, and they want $20,000 for another one, so I am trying to find an alternate solution."
"We use the tablet version, and I'd like it to have a longer battery."
"Ease of updating, automated updating. Basically, based on the unit right now, maybe get it to be a little bit smaller, lighter."
"Also, the overall weight of the product is a lot to carry around for a long period of time."
"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 think that the discovery of a network can be improved if the OptiView would recognize more kinds of devices independent of the manufacturer."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 product is too expensive compared to other products."
"I rate the price of NETSCOUT nGeniusONE a four out of five."
"The license becomes cost prohibitive very quickly."
"The biggest problem we have with this product is the expense."
"It can be expensive, but if you have a good configuration, based on what you are looking for, it's okay, it's manageable."
"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."
"Cost is probably the biggest drawback. Compared to some of the newer vendors that have popped up in the space, it's definitely more on the expensive side... [But] it's been able to keep its value, even in the face of the cheaper competition."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Construction Company
15%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise37
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise26
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
I would say if it’s an ISP that will build a scrubbing center, Netscout/Arbor is a good solution. In all other solutions, Imperva is a great choice.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NETSCOUT nGeniusONE?
Regarding its high price, I give NETSCOUT nGeniusONE a seven.
What needs improvement with NETSCOUT nGeniusONE?
They need room for improvement about the spare parts. There are shortages in Egypt in their stock. We tried to make RMA for specific parts, and it took a long time. Comparing this to a vendor like ...
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Also Known As

NETSCOUT nGenius, nGeniusONE
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cerner Corporation
XG is used in all industries. Example customers include: Republic National Distributing Company, Titelive, CitiGroup, Los Angeles Unified School District, Saudi German Hospital, DeKalb County Schools, Valdosta State University, The Everett Clinic, Bio-Reference, Miami-Dade Library, Mitel, Borsa Istanbul, Cimarex, Air National Guard Lowndes County, High Point City, Carrollton City Schools, Kern County, Pruitt Communications and Bosch Group.
Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, SolarWinds, Datadog and others in Network Monitoring Software. Updated: August 2026.
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