Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer comparison

The compared Cisco and SolarWinds solutions aren't in the same category. Cisco is ranked #42 in APM , with an average rating of 8.0, and holds a 0.8% mindshare in the category. SolarWinds is ranked #4 in NTA , with an average rating of 7.7, and holds a 6.3% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 83% of SolarWinds users who would recommend it.

Cisco Provider Connectivity...

Read 24 Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance reviews

3,502 Views
1,646 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic ...

Read 43 SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer reviews

2,928 Views
1,054 Comparison Views

83% willing to recommend

Cisco Provider Connectivity...

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic ...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance and SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer Report (Updated: September 2020).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer

September 2020

Download the complete report

Helped 889,855 peers since 2012

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

Cisco Provider Connectivity...

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (42nd), Network Monitoring Software (46th)

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic ...

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (4th)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Network Management solutions, they serve different purposes. Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance is designed for Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability and holds a mindshare of 0.8%, up 0.3% compared to last year.
SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer, on the other hand, focuses on Network Traffic Analysis (NTA), holds 6.3% mindshare, up 5.4% since last year.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance	0.8%
Dynatrace	5.6%
Datadog	4.9%
Other	88.7%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer	6.3%
Darktrace	16.5%
Cisco Secure Network Analytics	10.1%
Other	67.1%

Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)

Featured Reviews

Pifu Lin

Senior System Engineer at DYNASAFE TECHNOLOGIES PTE. LTD.

Addresses connectivity issues with real-time monitoring while offering good local support

I had prepared for COC and the client. I work as a vendor for a client using Flow Mount for network performance monitoring. I focus on resolving client-side issues related to Packy Performance and quality use. This involves addressing network device issues, specifically Cisco network devices One…

Read full review

Raja Xabi

Technical Manager at APRAL

Improved bandwidth management and network visibility have resulted in financial benefits and streamlined operations

There is always room for improvement in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer, such as implementing instant reporting based on business intelligence reports and more granular filters in their dashboard to improve the GUI view and reporting. The licensing model of SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is always an issue for users because competitors offer unlimited and perpetual licenses, and SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer's model is quite costly compared to other brands. If users are comfortable with SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer, they have to make the hard decision to invest, and it's suggested from a user's perspective that SolarWinds should improve their financial model and licensing to become competitive, especially for small to medium businesses.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The ability to measure performance end-to-end across the cloud data center allows us to take corrective action to keep our channels online."

"When a remote contact complains about a slow application, we can immediately pinpoint the cause of concern."

"It is about finding operational problems. When sites go down, we try to determine who is at fault. While there is not much finger-pointing, the solution is just trying to analyse when there is an outage and where do we start looking to fix it. The very nature of why organization chooses to use the solution is to accelerate the meantime to resolution and find where problems lie to get them rectified as quickly as possible."

"We have found this to be a very valuable toolset, and has paid for itself several times over."

"The ability to measure performance end-to-end across the cloud data center allows us to take corrective action to keep our channels online."

"The performance of Accedian Skylight is better than other vendors."

"The response times, with the performance, are really interesting too, where you can see the packet loss."

"The solution’s UI and single pane of glass is good. The new dashboard is modern with its new design. The look of it is not pretty, but it is efficient, which is good. It is user-friendly; you can find what you need on the interface quickly."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance pros

"Visibility in the network is huge. Using the NetFlow analyzer, along with their NPM and NCM modules, are key for keeping our network up to date and for visibility."

"What the network team found most valuable in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is that it helps them to troubleshoot or analyze the issue. For example, traffic that comes from our location: India, goes to the US, so for the network team to analyze where the traffic comes from and where it is directed, and whether the packets are being dropped, they use SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer. The network team also likes that through the solution, they can analyze the complete traffic utilization and how they're going to use it. SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is user-friendly. The team finds it comfortable to use."

"The dashboard alerts me when a critical device goes off the network."

"This solution gives us a simple way to monitor traffic that is coming in and out, showing how much bandwidth is both inbound and outbound clearly on the dashboard."

"We have already seen a return on our investment by going with ThousandEyes."

"It provides proactive monitoring, rather than waiting for applications to go down due to heavy bandwidth or latency."

"I would recommend SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer to others because it's very easy to use."

"The product is a great experience to use and I never experienced any problems with this software application."

More SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer pros

Cons

"This solution is expensive compared to some others."

"Increase the drive’s capacity to store more data, and maybe switch to a database system similar to 3Big-Data."

"Some of the Skylight applications are a little newer, and they're still moving through initial revs. There are certain bugs, but nothing is insurmountable... It will just take a little bit of time for their user interface to get a little bit better."

"Embed a warning system to a mailbox when it exceeds the threshold for use of bandwidth over a given period of time."

"Because of the policies in Vietnam, we cannot connect the system to the Accedian cloud. It would be good if Accedian could provide a local cloud. In the next release, I would like them to focus on improving and adding more reporting features. This will help the operations teams."

"It's a bit slow. When I execute a query, something general with a short timeframe that covers one month, for instance, and I do not specify the IP source or IP destination, it can take ages because it has to query the whole database."

"It needs the possibility to export data because it is not easy to see larger data sets, e.g., for one month. It would be interesting to export data into a PDF or dashboard to keep a history of the situation."

"Support for more VoIP systems, Avaya, etc."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance cons

"The pricing is expensive."

"It is very slow to pick the dynamics of the network."

"It's not a cheap product, so the pricing could be improved."

"SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer could improve its flexibility and integration with AI to provide analytics beyond just showing up/down statuses and traffic volumes."

"The Atlas module that is used for building the network map is very bad."

"What needs improvement in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is performance because sometimes, my team struggles too much for the solution to perform correctly for a specific deployment in my organization."

"In terms of support, I would rate them five or six out of ten. It was difficult to find videos for training. Overall, I am not satisfied with the support."

"It is a scalable solution, but it is costly to scale. Therefore, I would rate scalability at eight out of ten."

More SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is competitive overall, depending on the type of customer."

"It provides value and the cost is not huge."

"The pricing is cheaper than other competing products, which is better for our budgets."

"The solution was previously well-regarded, but after being acquired by Accedian, the prices have significantly increased. This has made it challenging to sell the product due to its high cost. It is an expensive solution."

"The pricing of Accedian Skylight is really good. The sensors are low cost. Their model to analytics for sensors is by license, endpoint, or session. With the probes for their analytics, if they get deployed virtually, they are free. The licensing is only based on flows. So, you can effectively deploy probes everywhere in your network. Then, if you want to look at a specific type of traffic, you can enter into it with a very low cost license. You can just use things like spam ports, mirrors, TAPs, and aggregators to optimize what sort of traffic you send to these analysis tools. Then, if you want to start looking at more, you can up your licensed as you go. You are not getting forced into expensive appliances or subscription models."

"We understand there's a significant cost difference, but have yet to investigate fully."

"It's not for free, clearly. But on the other hand, it offers very interesting functionality. We pay around €100,000."

"Pricing is a little bit expensive."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance pricing and cost advice

"We pay yearly, and we are happy with its price."

"While the pricing is fair, it could be better."

"We have licenses for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer. In terms of pricing, its license is not that expensive versus other tools such as HP."

"Licensing for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is paid yearly, and there are no additional costs that you need to pay apart from the standard licensing fees because you don't need to purchase another solution to make SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer work. Pricing for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is more expensive than other solutions."

"SolarWinds' pricing structure is the primary reason why some customers opt for another solution such as ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer. In NTA, you are charged per port, meaning that if you have a 24-port switch you will be charged for 24 individual nodes. ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer, on the other hand, charges per switch, such that if you add a switch, the entire switch will count as one single node."

"NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is reasonably priced."

"For our environment, we pay approximately $25,000 USD yearly."

"The solution's licensing is high-priced."

More SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

889,855 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Construction Company

Financial Services Firm

16%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Healthcare Company

Construction Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	14
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	9

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	13
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	26

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Accedian Skylight?

Human resource costs can be high when dealing with connection issues. I require more tools to file and resolve these issues efficiently.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Accedian Skylight?

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Accedian Skylight?

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

See all answers

What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?

I have worked from 1973 with all kind of systems in large enterprises across the world. And have experience with all kind of software in monitoring from infra to end to end, it depends on the funct...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer?

The licensing model of SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is always an issue for users because competitors offer unlimited and perpetual licenses, and SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer's model i...

See all answers

What needs improvement with SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer?

Regarding improvement, the application monitoring capabilities are not exceptional. If SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer could improve in that area, it would be helpful. It is less AIOps driven a...

See all answers

Comparisons

ThousandEyes vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 5% of the time

Dynatrace vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 5% of the time

LiveNX vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 4% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 4% of the time

New Relic vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 3% of the time

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance Competitors

Wireshark vs SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer

Compared 9% of the time

Zabbix vs SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer

Compared 8% of the time

ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer vs SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer

Compared 6% of the time

Darktrace vs SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer

Compared 6% of the time

Nagios Network Analyzer vs SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer

Compared 5% of the time

More SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

April 2026

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance report

Download Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance product report

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer

March 2026

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer report

Download SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer product report

Also Known As

Accedian Skylight, Accedian SkyLIGHT PVX, SkyLIGHT PVX, SecurActive, Performance Vision

Netflow Traffic Analyzer

Overview

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance is known for its user-friendly approach to network analysis and performance monitoring. It excels in real-time diagnostics, helping organizations quickly resolve network issues and optimize performance effortlessly.

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance focuses on comprehensive network troubleshooting and performance monitoring, assisting in identifying bottlenecks and analyzing applications. Real-time data collection and evaluation ensure IT infrastructure efficiency. With active monitoring of latency, jitter, and throughput, users maintain smooth operations across multiple sites and applications. While highly effective, improvements in data handling, protocol support, and dashboard aesthetics are suggested to enhance user experience.

What are the key features of Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance?

Flow Matrices: Advanced analysis of network paths and traffic distribution.
SQL and DNS Analysis: In-depth insights into database and domain queries for troubleshooting.
Bandwidth Assessment: Evaluation of network capacity and utilization for performance optimization.
Real-time TWAMP Monitoring: Tracks network performance using Two-Way Active Measurement Protocol.
Application Performance Modules: Monitors the performance of various applications and services.
Customizable Dashboards: Personalized views for tracking critical network metrics and trends.
PCAP Capturing: Detailed packet analysis using tools like Wireshark for deeper insights.

What benefits and ROI should users look for in reviews?

Ease of Use: Intuitive design allowing users to swiftly diagnose network issues.
Comprehensive Monitoring: Enhanced visibility of network activity for better control.
Performance Efficiency: Optimization of throughput, reducing downtimes and improving service delivery.
Cost-Effectiveness: Balances features and functionality with competitive pricing for better ROI.

In industries such as telecommunications and finance, where network reliability is crucial, Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance offers critical network performance insights. It supports high-demand environments by providing data-driven decisions, ensuring infrastructures handle increased loads efficiently.

Cisco

SolarWinds Netflow Traffic Analyzer enables you to capture data from continuous streams of network traffic and convert those raw numbers into easy-to-interpret charts and tables that quantify exactly how the corporate network is being used, by whom, and for what purpose.

SolarWinds

Sample Customers

T-Systems, Thomson Reuters, Bordeaux Metropole, CGI, Citadelle Regional Hospital Center, Lorraine Institute of Oncology, Luxembourg Institute of Health, Groupe BPCE, Group S, Splitpoint, Horus-Net, Audatex, Indexis, Province de Liège, EASI, Spie Batignolles, Faymonville

Oceaneering International, Asia Pacific Network Information Centre, 335th Signal Command, Immofori

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer

September 2020

Free Report: Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer

Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer and other solutions. Updated: September 2020.

DOWNLOAD NOW

889,855 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer report.

We monitor all Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.