NETSCOUT nGeniusONE Reviews

Most of the use cases for NETSCOUT nGeniusONE are in network monitoring. There are some people who say it has functions for front-end monitoring, but the majority, especially in banks or insurance teams, are using NETSCOUT nGeniusONE to find error traces, specifically for syslog analyses throughout the packets. Dynatrace and other APM solutions cannot do that, so they are just using NETSCOUT nGeniusONE for network monitoring.

The biggest advantage of NETSCOUT nGeniusONE is that when gathering logs, which require substantial bandwidth of more than 50 TB or 100 TB of data, NETSCOUT nGeniusONE can gather as much as possible. Another feature is their analysis capability, which actually surpasses other APM solutions, which is why customers love it. Toss Bank particularly appreciates the analytic part.

Another valuable aspect is that NETSCOUT is focusing on network monitoring, specifically packet analysis, which sets them apart. This creates a significant difference between Splunk and Datadog. Datadog focuses on infrastructure and application monitoring, while Splunk, which used to handle SIM and log monitoring, is trying to shift to APM; however, they currently cannot find any single customer for APM in Korea. Datadog is performing well by targeting very small customers and selling at cheap prices to ensure wider adoption, but NETSCOUT is unique. They focus on larger finance or manufacturing companies that truly face significant network issues and require specific analysis of each log, though not every customer needs that. These big customers need NETSCOUT, as they operate in a distinct market.

We are a system integrator, and I recommend NETSCOUT nGeniusONE to our customers.

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE helps us by providing root cause analysis when it comes to latency and performance issues. The real-time traffic intelligence is very useful for analyzing data in real time, particularly with comparison between real-time and historical packet levels.

Our primary use case for NETSCOUT nGeniusONE is to provide a holistic view of a core banking solution's current networks. It helps pinpoint faults and checks the overall infrastructure to ensure smooth operations.

With NETSCOUT nGeniusONE, the organization was able to achieve real-time data visibility for critical systems, which is crucial for core banking operations. This helps in identifying and resolving network issues promptly.

The most valuable features of the solution stem from its ability to deal with raw traffic and the fact that you can use it anytime to analyze and find problems, which may not be current ones but issues from a few hours ago. In our company, we see everything when we analyze raw traffic with the tool.

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE is a complex product since it deals in areas like network packet brokers and packet analysis, making the tool complicated for end users. The aforementioned area can be considered for improvement in the product.

The main strengths of nGeniusONE are its simplicity and the availability of its service. I learned how to use it without any training, and I have been using it for two to three years without any problems.

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.

nGeniusONE is not promoted enough because it has a lot of competitors, such as Huawei and Cisco. The larger companies tend to rely on their own well-known server or server solutions.

So, this product is not promoted enough. 

There are problems with integration as well. In most of our projects, we put that in our scope and limitations. It will not allow admin third-party apps.

In future releases, if they could switch up to the cloud services, that would be better.

The main use cases are primarily customer experience management for telecom operators. I've been working with telecom operators, mainly in the commercial enterprise sector for the telecom side. 

It's very valuable for a telecom operator for customer experience management to see the network end-to-end to the unit. KPIs reports for network enhancement, network optimization, and the end-user customer experience.

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. So from the probes themselves from NETSCOUT probes, it gets the real data, real chunks of data, and then we have the correct vision about our network.

We use the solution when our customers have problems with their databases or communications. We use it to look at packages and packets and verify the behaviour of the NOC, the server, and the traffic, looking for a pattern that might identify the issue and what's happening now.

We started using the product because our customers had some problems with the network. We made changes to the network and made it stable. However, the customer told us there were still some errors. Then the people from the database told us the problem was the network, not the database. The only way to verify it was the database and not the network was by putting a sniffer in it. And that's why we use NETSCOUT.

We have an extended operations team in India with engineers running the day-to-day tools to monitor around 150 sites across the globe. We have the MPLS and DIA for the bandwidth initiation. If there is a bandwidth alert, the engineers will look into it and take the necessary actions.

It is mostly deployed on-prem. We have a few NETSCOUT applications (five percent) that we have moved off to the AWS Cloud. We were in the process of migrating one of our data centers to the cloud. We just started working on that.

We have a direct internet connection (DIA) on most of the sites and nGeniusONE helped us with reviewing bandwidth depletion from the sites. Most of them were utilizing like 30 Mbps, but we were adding 100 Mbps. We went and collected data from all the sites using nGeniusONE, then we initiated a project for refacing the Mbps bandwidth, which gave us business revenue improvements. We reduced most of the sites' bandwidth and a lot of our spending (on unused bandwidth). This solution has saved us more than $50,000 a month and freed up 30 percent of our bandwidth.

It's able to give me real-time data. We were working on a project a couple of days ago where we were able to compare the nGeniusONE data and the packet data. Initially, the network team was using the nGeniusONE tool. However, right now, most application owners and the application team have access to nGeniusONE. They want to see how the application performs under real-time. Therefore, we are definitely moving towards have the application team use it as well. The management is also really happy.

Especially with the pandemic situation, we asked most users to work from home. We set up a lot of SSL VPN clients on the AWS Cloud. We were just using the nGeniusONE to monitor the bandwidth and the packet flow to the data center. Then, users were reporting a lot of issues connecting through the SSL VPN client. So, we did some analysis using nGeniusONE. We tweaked and removed a lot of the bottlenecks, allowing the user to work from home comfortably. We also set it up AWS cloud to give us more back and forth data and users connected through SSL VPN. Based on that, we increased the licensing count on the SSL VPN because we saw a lot of users connecting through one region's VPN. Therefore, nGeniusONE has definitely helped us a lot during this pandemic time.

This solution is good about providing us with increased visibility while conducting an IT deployment. We set up a lot of wireless connections for our R&D users to get real-time data across the globe when they access the data center. nGeniusONE showed us how the traffic is going through the MPLS, and we can move that traffic to the DIA.

Using the nGeniousONE, we found out that most of our sites were not marking the traffic. Therefore, we took the packet capture from nGeniusONE to Cisco and worked with them to fix it.

We use it VoIP, video, and monitoring the contact center application performance. It has helped us with uptime and the user experience.