AppNeta by Broadcom Reviews

• Easy to set up and clear to understand interface.
• Cloud based management means it is accessible from anywhere and great uptime.
• The best feature this product has is its ability to diagnose and troubleshoot an issue with very close accuracy.

The ability to quickly diagnose issues with proof for a "path" in the network has been critical. It has reduced our MTTR and allows us to make decisions faster on how to correct the problem.

Alerting. We have so many paths in our environment that it is strictly a reactive tool, not proactive. If AppNeta could find a way to tweak alerts so that there is less "noise" that aren't critical or false positives and only the emergency alerts are bubbled up or generate tickets.

Personally: 3.5 years

Company-wide: 5+ years

Only once during an upgrade, which seemed to be more on the cloud end than locally to the appliances. Other than that the platform has been rock solid.

Yes. You can throw as many licenses as you want on an appliance and it will not stop you from oversubscribing it with other services. You have to be careful how you balance what services are on which appliance and how many or else it will miss data.

Outstanding. They are always fast to respond to an inquiry.

Fairly straightforward. You have to figure out where all of the buttons and settings are, but once you are familiar with the concept of how the product interprets your network, administration is a breeze.

No other company has been able to match AppNeta's capability at the same price point. Licensing is easy to understand and generate / apply.

We have used this product since before I joined the company. We are constantly looking at other vendors, but thus far no one has been able to match AppNeta's capability and price point together.

If you have intrusion prevention systems (IPS) make sure to create a rule to whitelist the traffic from the appliances to the cloud as it can be identified as false positive.

End-to-End video testing - we would deploy m22s into a client’s network where we plan to deploy a high end video endpoint. This allows us to ensure that the client's network is capable of handling the planned video traffic. We run it over 24 hours or 7 days so that we can see the effect of any other traffic on the network, such as nightly backups.

We run 24 hour or 7 day video based network path assessments to ensure our customers networks are ready for video systems.

The VMware version doesn’t support video, so we have to ship hardware to remote locations.

So if we have a client with offices in for example Russia or Australia, we have to ship internationally these m22 boxes to these location in order to run a 24 hour video test and then ship them back. There is a Windows software client that can run on a client's laptop but we do not find that reliable enough for these video tests due to the impact the laptop's OS and hardware can have on this.

AppNeta has now got a V30 VMware based appliance which seems like it would allow us an alternative to shipping these devices internationally. However, while they have the core platform built the video add-on is not yet available.

Two years.

We discovered the m22 was incorrectly reporting packet loss.

We would like to be able to pull out a CSV from the video tests so we can report when peaks happen. Currently AppNeta provide graphs so we need to zoom in gradually to find the two minute period when a peak happened so we can report this to the customer so they can compare this on any other tools they have. We can get the data by manually reading the graphs but you need to zoom in to hunt for the peaks if they are short lived so it is time consuming.

It is only a limited deployment.

The packet loss issue was seen as a high priority and the support team very responsive.

AppNeta analysed the issue on our units and some of theirs. They replicated the issue and identified the source. They were then able to roll out a fix as part of their software update. They lent us m30 units as a temporary work around.

No.

Yes, to setup just build the config online and save it to a USB to import into the unit.

No others were evaluated.

Be careful with the simulated traffic not to flood your network.

From a technical perspective, PathView provides an effective, reliable indicator of network availability across our widely distributed physical locations. From a non-technical perspective AppNeta Customer Support remains continuously and positively engaged with us.

PathView provides immediate unequivocal confirmation of service restoration during situations that involve planned or unplanned loss of network connectivity.

Power-over-Ethernet appliances would be nice and possibly, more modular HW appliance evolution would support even more deployment flexibility.

I have been using AppNeta services for at least 5 years.

We have never had any issues with stability.

AppNeta's products are fully capable at any scale. The challenges that we have experienced result from trying to align use-case demands with an appropriate product/service density while remaining within the budget constraints that someone else enforces.

I would rate AppNeta technical support very highly: they have always been responsive and effective.

Others in our group had previously experimented with iPerf. AppNeta PathView was not really a replacement for iPerf, but in my opinion, within the operational constraints our group has, AppNeta PathView gives superior results at a far, far lower level of administrative overhead.

Much of our PathView deployment is multi-step and more advanced, requiring a more in-depth understanding of both network constructs in general and our environment in particular. From that perspective it could be judged more complicated, but I would not categorize it as complex nor would I categorize the AppNeta setup as difficult. I think basic deployments suitable for many use-cases would be straightforward and fast.

My comments here are applicable to any vendor or service provider: define your use-case and clearly link product features with intended results--particularly with regards to the expectations of those who are paying the bill--if you do that effectively, it should provide you with a blueprint to guide your licensing choices. Then, don't confuse cost with value: if something is cheap but gives you a low-priority result then it really has little value; and on the other hand something that has a high cost but gives a high-priority result is still very valuable.

No.

Generally speaking I have found that all of AppNeta's services are excellent. I have had the most experience with PathView and I would give it 8.5 out of 10. I've had the least experience with AppView and I would give it 7 out of 10. FlowView is probably the easiest and quickest-ROI netflow capture product that I have ever used; I would give it 9.5 out of 10.

Applicable to any vendor or service provider: there is no such thing as a free lunch and you never get something for nothing. While basic deployments will absolutely provide value in specific use-cases, the more careful thought, consideration and attention (ie: input) you give to AppNeta the more ROI (ie: output) you will get.

The tool allows us to ensure the capacity/bandwidth/packet loss of our VPN based WAN within our thresholds and this is done end-to-end. It is different from SNMP/Netflow based monitoring, which we also make use of.

For example, the tool helped in identifying unreliable ISPs or intermittent instability on WAN/VPN connections – both real time and based on historical metrics.

Fully Monitoring asymmetrical links is more costly and complex than symmetrical ones. But this is understandable by the functionality.

With Pathview, we are monitoring the estimated capacity of our links. For example, we upgrade an internet link from 10mb/s to 20mb/s and we can use Pathview to confirm that without filling the link with test traffic. Also, we see in the history graph if we had phases with less bandwidth on the link, but this only works with symmetrical links (up and download is the same speed). AppNeta has a solution for asymmetrical (like 20down/5up mb/s) links which is to deploy another sequencer at the remote location and creating a path pair, but this is becoming more expensive and creates administrative overhead, if you have a large number of sites.

We have been using this tool successfully for more than five years.

The stability is very good. Not having to maintain our own Server and Reporting database infrastructure is a big benefit.

Scalability is good, if you are investing in Path and Appliance licenses.

The technical and administrative support is quick and helpful.

The tools we used before were intrusive and affected production users. This tool overcame that problem by creating little traffic overhead.

The setup is straightforward if you understand the nature of the tool, which is ICMP. The User Interface of the tool is straightforward and intuitive.

When you add licenses – sync them with the existing ones in regards to runtime, otherwise billing becomes complex.

We had an existing toolset with rich features but those could not fill the gap VPN WAN monitoring opened.

Get a test license and have a play.

I rated it 8/10 because it works very well for what it’s intended but we have to team it with other monitoring solutions to cover all monitoring requirements. To be precise, we have not evaluated all features AppNeta offers, as we had other tools already in-place.

The ability to view into third party networks for visibility as to problem areas that are often outside the prevue of a standard network analysis tool. Also, the ability to utilize FlowView to capture and analyze packet flow from source and to destination has been a significant asset to our troubleshooting and remediation solutions.

We now use this tool as a pre-deployment asset for our hosted phone solution. We also use it for bring-your-own-broadband solutions for our hosted phone platform in order to validate our solution and the third party networks that it is transporting over. This has greatly improved customer satisfaction and reduced troubleshooting time. We also provide a managed service designed around this appliance and solution set.

Billing does not have a user friendly format that allows you to break down the billing of sub-companies and be able to see them with what has been spun up, what subscriptions are currently in use, what has been added new that month and to pull that in an easy to read and easy to import format.

Mass Deployment Tools – I would like to see a simple format for importing paths into the system from a CSV for customers so that we can do a full multipath deployment quicker if we have spreadsheets available.

Over 7 years.

The smaller appliances, while they can monitor a sufficient number of paths, will lock up with large Internet pipes. We have found that we needed to move to a larger appliance for clients that have large bandwidth pipes from their ISPs. Otherwise, the stability is excellent.

We have found no issues with scalability.

Technical support is exceptional. They are very available, willing to work with our technicians and engineers and very open to providing training to understand their product more thoroughly.

We used a SolarWinds application previously. We switched as this provides more visibility for less cost.

Initial setup is web based and very straightforward. It takes 15 minutes to have an appliance ready for deployment. Entry-level technicians provision the devices and we are quickly able to begin seeing what is going on in our customers network.

I advise to look at both pricing models and pick that one that makes the most sense for your organization. Both solutions work depending on your goals. We have found AppNeta flexible and easy to work with for both licensing and pricing and willing to work with us.

We reviewed some other applications, but this product was the only one that can do what it does so we did not look far.

I recommend others plan their portal and their deployment strategy for management. We have a naming convention for our appliances as well as how we name our paths. This provides an easier process in reviewing the alerts and knowing what we are looking at quickly without having to dig into documentation. The solution itself is easy to implement, how you use it should be thought out.

Probably the most valuable is that it doesn’t really require any or just a minimal amount of effort on my part to sustain its operations. What results from that is the time that I spend interacting with it is actually productive time, solving a problem or validating service or validating functionality across my network or knowing that connectivity exists. I don’t have to hold its hand all the time and babysit it and worry about this patch didn’t work or this upgrade didn’t work or now I've got to take it down to restart it and reboot it.

All that stuff is handled very effectively by the AppNeta team and that frees up my time to take care of the more valuable things.

It is much easier and it gives a very, very apples-to-apples view that becomes available to a wider range of people, including support . It is very easy for everyone to be able to see the same results or the same thing. There is no worrying about trying to interpret what the results mean. It just quickly gives us a very consistent, common, and easily viewable set of results.

My previous answer would have been that they haven't for a number of years made any additions or modifications to the hardware appliances they used to deliver their service. Interestingly enough, just within the last four weeks or so, they’ve come out with a number of new models. I think that that immediately would be the biggest thing that I would have been looking for and anticipating and expecting from them. They in fact have just delivered.

My best guess is somewhere approaching five years or so. I don’t remember the exact start date, but it is definitely more than three years.

We haven't experienced any issues with deployment.

They are outstanding. In terms of the improvement over something similar in-house, it is not even close. I can’t even imagine us being able to sustain anything as well in-house as they do. There is nothing you can ever do about local individual device hardware issues. Nobody is immune to those, but generally speaking, their track record, at least as far as the appliances that we've used, is that there's at least a little bit of failure in terms of hardware. The downtime, though, is very quick. If there is a failure, it is 24 hours. I call up and I open my support case. It is relatively very quick to document and determine. They have a replacement shipped out immediately.

Its scalability is going to be up to customers to choose. It certainly can become very effective or it certainly is very effective, but I believe as you really start to grow your deployments, it does become quite expensive.

As an educated customer, you are always looking for that point on the curve where you keep adding up the scale and scaling your deployment up without simultaneously building out your need to keep a conceptual awareness and management of yourself and your costs in line.

If you are not careful, you will very easily and very quickly probably have a deployment that is quite large, probably a little bit unwieldy and certainly very extensive very quickly.

I have not yet encountered a support engineer who doesn’t have outstanding product knowledge and who hasn’t been very effective. They are personable and able to communicate effectively with the customer. Even sometimes you can be the product expert, but if you are not able to hold up with the conversation or communicate with the customer, then you are not going to be particularly successful. Every experience that I have had with them has been outstanding.

I believe it was our CIO who encountered them at a conference or a trade show or made some contact with them external to our actual engineering team. Our CIO provided our contact information and expressed some interest, and so we followed up and we initially deployed based on the desire of our CIO.

We actually have a specific use case. Then when we spent some time with it, we found that it's just been a very effective complement to our overall operations.

The most basic setup is quite simple. It's easy to accomplish and you will begin to be able to see the results. I think it is probably even less than an hour. More advanced setup can be time consuming. You also need to have the more advanced setups well-thought and well-planned out ahead of time. That's not a knock on their product. That's simply if you deploy it and you want to gain the insights that it can produce in those more advanced circumstances, you have to understand how you are going to deploy it, what you need to do in your environment to deploy it and then understand what those results will really indicate.

The basic problem that a huge majority of their customers have is that the types of deployments that they do is very simple, very easy and begins to return results almost immediately. But the more you'd like to do the more advanced and more dense deployments, you certainly do need to give it additional thought and you will have additional time within your environment to create the structures in your network needed to support them.

Certainly nothing is free. No one gives anything away. If you want something you have to pay for it, but at the same time I think that it is very wise as a customer always to keep that mindset where we want to make sure that every dollar that we are investing, we are getting the best return.

Sometimes maybe it is better to deploy three less and give yourself room to grow. Deploy seven and give yourself lots of time to pay additional attention to those seven rather than deploy 10 units and stretch yourself out a little bit and also assume the additional costs.

If you need something that is capable of acting as a complement to other tools that you’ve used, this will be very effective. But if you have a limited budget and a dispersed environment with lots of different locations and limited support teams, then I think that this would work very well in those circumstances to give you lots of bang for your buck.

It may not provide you every single function that might be desirable, but considering that they are easy to deploy across wide ranges, you can certainly then shift them out to remote locations and have almost anyone plug the red cord in here, plug the power cord in there, and make the blue light flash.

The most valuable feature for us is its ability to provide quick visualizations of many aspects (front end, back end, software layers, etc.) of application performance in one place.

Since we implemented it, we've seen multiple performance improvements, which in turn results in increases in revenue and efficiency.

It needs more improvements in monitoring of video streaming performance as well as more layers of breakdown in the front end performance.

I've used it for two years.

Yes, we had some issues with deployment. Specifically, there were a few slight issues with method signatures changing. These issues were, however, easy to debug since support was readily available.

We had no issues with stability.

We had no issues with scalability.

I'd rate customer service a 10 out of 10.

I'd rate technical support a 10 out of 10.

Other teams had this initiative before, but I’m not aware of the tools themselves. They weren’t as widely deployed in our company.

The initial setup was straightforward because both documentation and support were readily available.

We implemented it with our in-house team.

It's hard to measure ROI due to our company structure. I can safely say, though, that sales increased overall as a result of having applied improvements based on the data analyzed.

I am not fully in contact with the pricing and licensing aspects since they were handled by someone else.

I know the company evaluated other options, but I can't comment since the evaluation was done by other teams.

Take the time to apply and study the functionalities. It can do a lot, and it’s usually not utilized to its full potential.

The most valuable features for us are the synthetic tests and automatic testing when an issue it detected. This gives you a more granular look to see what the issue is.

The appliances (M30’s) are constantly doing site-to tests. PathView has detected many circuit issues for which we could go back to the carrier and ask them to troubleshoot. It also shows us QoS marking that helps us audit and verify our QoS policies are set up correctly.

They can improve by configuring the site-to-site tests and setting up alerts.

We've used it for five years.

We've had no issues with deployment.

We've had no issues with stability.

We've had no issues with scalability.

9/10

10/10

The initial setup is complex. You really have to have a good understanding of what you want to test. It also took some time to get the configuration setup correctly. Basically choosing the right tests for your environment and choosing the correct configuration options makes the setup complex.

We have peace of mind that our redundant circuits are fully operational and ready to take VoIP calls if they are needed. If we didn’t have this tool constantly doing those synthetic tests, we wouldn’t know that Voice Quality and QoS are good until it’s too late.

It’s more expensive than other tools, but it’s also priced differently because of the cloud solution. Basically, we pay a recurring yearly maintenance cost for licenses and appliances, but we don’t have to buy servers or do any of the maintenance because they live at AppNeta (via the cloud). Thus, I don’t have to purchase or maintain servers.

Review AppNet's website and YouTube videos.