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NETSCOUT nGeniusONE vs Viavi Observer Platform 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
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
29th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Viavi Observer Platform
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
92nd
Average Rating
0.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of NETSCOUT nGeniusONE is 1.2%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Viavi Observer Platform is 0.3%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
NETSCOUT nGeniusONE1.2%
Viavi Observer Platform0.3%
Other98.5%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

ES
General Manager at MOCOMSYS
Offers detailed network monitoring but requires improvement in deployment complexity and pricing
The price is really high, making it difficult for many financial companies to purchase immediately; it will take time for them to afford any budget for the purchase. The traffic data correlation feature's effectiveness with performance issues for clients remains uncertain as there are questions that need to be addressed through engineers regarding how many customers are actually using it. Regarding pricing and value for money, while the solution has the potential to save time and money for clients in the long term, monitoring solutions for performance management or network monitoring do not cause immediate damage to a company. It could lead to damage over time, but financial and management teams typically cannot see the immediate crisis. This is why many big companies Samsung and Hyundai try to build their own monitoring solutions using open-source tools and their own engineers, though it has not been successful.
JeroenDubbelman - PeerSpot reviewer
Director at Bitrate
The product is extremely valuable and provides a lot of functionalities and visibility to organizations
The score-based application performance ratings help the network team. Often, customers have a siloed environment for security, applications, and servers. The network team is always asked to do troubleshooting. Being able to know how well an application worked in the past and what's happening today is really helpful. If someone has a complaint and the network team says that the problem is not on their side, they must be able to demonstrate it accurately. The network team is often given the least budget and the least number of employees. So, they must be able to troubleshoot and pinpoint problems as fast as possible. If it’s a network issue, they must fix it. However, if it is a cloud problem, an ISP problem, or a problem within the server or application environment, they must be able to demonstrate it clearly. It is the real benefit they get from the solution. Some of our customers are financial institutions. They use the tool for traffic accounting, especially when they get charged by ISPs or carriers for the amount of traffic they are using. In South Africa, we have banks that pay the service providers to allow customers to use their banking apps for free. The bank pays for it, not the customers. So, they need to compare to ensure they are paying for what has been used. Viavi enables them to do that. It is pretty much the best there is in the world. There is nothing to beat it. The product is extremely valuable and provides a lot of functionalities. It's really impressive.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The biggest benefit is the ability to do low-level packet inspection. When I say packet inspection, I don't mean looking at payload, but just looking at your communication handshakes and the like. It reduces troubleshooting time because you can get a much better view into the communications path between servers, database servers, web servers, and understand what's going on."
"The fact that it's able to capture and store packets from the wires is very useful for troubleshooting with our vendors, when issues do come up. It's valuable that we have that overall data for them."
"The most valuable feature is visibility."
"The visual and graphical interfaces in the display that it provides for us to show our senior leadership. We can show them what is actually happening, instead of a spreadsheet."
"The most valuable feature is that it is in line with the traffic. It already captures the raw traffic itself and then filters it, giving us the correct image. Some other companies may just extract what they think is valuable from the traffic itself. nGeniusONE is in line."
"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."
"When we have any type of outage, and we dig into it, we are able to tell what the root cause is instead of having to go through Wireshark, etc."
"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."
"The score-based application performance ratings help the network team."
 

Cons

"There are so many pieces of their product that integrate with one another that perhaps a recommendation for improvement would be some sort of bigger overview and map to help understand how all their pieces integrate together."
"It could have an easier to understand interface."
"Some help screens would be nice, especially if we bring on new operators. It would be great to see if they have more helpful tips available."
"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."
"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."
"Another thing that would help out is if they packaged the NetFlow monitor into nGeniusONE. Their NetFlow monitor works with nGeniusONE where you can actually get the netflow of pretty much anything you hook it up to. But it's a separate box that you have to buy. If there was a way that could package that into nGeniusONE, it would be a complete package straight out of the box."
"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."
"There is currently less visibility or GUI to analyse the packet for troubleshooting purposes."
"The product must start using a bit more machine learning and AI, especially for security."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The biggest problem we have with this product is the expense."
"It is very expensive, but it's well worth the money."
"The price is only for acquisition; it's not a licence."
"Like any company, we always want better pricing. The pricing is okay, but it's not a cheap solution. When you want to deploy it across an enterprise as large as ours, you go into seven figures. It's not a cheap solution to get out there."
"If you are able and you are willing to use everything that Netscout provides to you, it's probably a relatively fair price. The problem is that it's such a large and such a complex tool that I'm not sure that many companies would be able to use it entirely, the way it's expected to be used."
"It is a little overall pricey and expensive, but you get what you pay for."
"The scalability becomes very expensive quickly."
"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 tool is very pricey."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise37
No data available
 

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 do you like most about NETSCOUT nGeniusONE?
Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NETSCOUT nGeniusONE?
Regarding its high price, I give NETSCOUT nGeniusONE a seven.
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Also Known As

NETSCOUT nGenius, nGeniusONE
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cerner Corporation
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, Auvik, Datadog and others in Network Monitoring Software. Updated: January 2026.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.