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AppNeta by Broadcom vs Cisco DNA Center comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

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

AppNeta by Broadcom
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
63rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (43rd), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (16th), DX NetOps (3rd)
Cisco DNA Center
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
17th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (1st), Network Automation (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of AppNeta by Broadcom is 0.8%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco DNA Center is 0.8%, down from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco DNA Center0.8%
AppNeta by Broadcom0.8%
Other98.4%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Cliff Chapman - PeerSpot reviewer
Architect at Linkstatus Ltd
Excellent support, easy configuration, and a reliable tool to know what the problem is and where the problem is
They should try and make diagnostics run a bit quicker. When the problem occurs on a network, AppNeta runs automatic diagnostics on the end-to-end path. The path it was testing only to the destination, it now runs the same test to all of the devices and all the intermediate devices. Depending on the number of intermediate devices, it can take several minutes to run. If we're trying to find or diagnose a problem that only lasts two or three minutes, it may be that the diagnostics is still running by the time the problem is cleared. The only thing, which I have also mentioned to AppNeta in the past, is that there should be much faster and much more lightweight diagnostics, which can be completed within 30 seconds or one minute, rather than in 5 to 10 minutes. Currently, when we have short-duration problems, we use a different tool, but we only use that different tool for short-duration problems. With AppNeta, as long as the problem exists for more than a few minutes, such as within 10 to 15 minutes, we can normally tell where the problem is. However, most of the problems that we deal with are intermittent. They're very rarely a permanent condition that needs to be addressed. That makes it more difficult to troubleshoot. We would look to see at least two or three events and hope they show the same results to raise our confidence that we've actually found the problem, rather than just a problem.
Mahir Öztürk - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at NGN Bilgi ve İletişim Hizmetleri
Client history has helped resolve past network issues more efficiently
I mostly use the client history feature of Cisco DNA Center. I didn't use the real-time monitoring capability of Cisco DNA Center because I primarily used it for client history regarding issues and problems. I don't use it for real-time monitoring. If there is a problem, I can inspect the situation and see what is happening, which is beneficial.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Pathview is the most valuable feature."
"This solution helps prove that, if we move to cloud, we'll still be as effective as we are on-premises."
"Since we implemented it, we've seen multiple performance improvements, which in turn results in increases in revenue and efficiency."
"With one of our federal customers, we deployed these throughout their network and found multiple cases of misconfigured routers and NICs, which allowed the customer to move to a VOIP solution."
"A lot of times one of the AppNeta transactions showed that there is an issue, whereas everything seemed to be working properly. Once we dug into it, we realized that it really was highlighting a problem that otherwise we would not have seen."
"The product helps us understand networks and user experience. It helps us to understand the issues."
"The tool allows us to ensure the capacity, bandwidth, and packet loss of our VPN-based WAN within our thresholds end-to-end, and it is different from SNMP/NetFlow-based monitoring, which we also make use of."
"Delivery and experience are valuable. The usage in terms of the traffic application captures and other similar things is also valuable."
"Cisco VXLAN is a protocol that has been around for some time, but the practical implementation and operational capability of Cisco DNA Center bring it to life."
"It does a lot of things automatically, and that's the big thing with it. They're making the software so that you don't need to be as knowledgeable as me on the switching and routing side to get your work done. If you want, you can have DNA troubleshoot your problem for you and give you solutions or fix it itself, if it was something that's just a configuration issue."
"I like the visibility, instant build, network, policies, and the ability to control access. I also like that you can visualize your whole network."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco DNA Center is the AI (Artificial Intelligence) that provides us with valuable information."
"DNA Center is scalable."
"The most valuable features of Cisco DNA Center are wireless assurance and visibility."
"It gives us automation capabilities for pushing out the configuration to branch networks. It also provides visibility into the health of user network devices."
"It is a stable solution."
 

Cons

"The VMware version doesn’t support video, so we have to ship hardware to remote locations."
"I would like to see some advanced dashboard features. It could also be integrated with third-party tools. For example, an integration with a reporting solution would be helpful. Out-of-the-box, there are few dashboards or reports. What it does have is useful, but there should be additional dashboards."
"As you really start to grow your deployments, it does become quite expensive."
"I would like to see the following improvements in accessibility: The ability to see the details concerning incidents and their reasons right on the graph, the ability to open those events right from the graph, the ability to see the applications being used at that time."
"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."
"An area of improvement would be to move back towards what AppNeta used to have directly before the Broadcom acquisition."
"Instead of integrating with other people, they should expand their interior capabilities."
"Fully monitoring asymmetrical links is more costly and complex than symmetrical ones."
"The task failure reporting or provisioning failure reporting could be a little bit better in the UI, with more information given to the user."
"There is a limitation with the number of VRFs that you can have in your network, and this has caused us problems with some customers."
"We have had a lot of problems with the Cisco switches and have needed to upgrade the operating systems, which means that we have to upgrade the DNA."
"The task failure reporting or provisioning failure reporting could be a little bit better in the UI, with more information given to the user."
"Better compatibility with third parties and to other Cisco products because if versions are not perfectly matching requirements, it gives a lot of problems."
"There should be an option for automation of template deployment by using the stored data. It is not easy to save configuration information for lots of devices without using other tools. There should be a tighter, better repository of information that can be merged with the templates."
"It's quite good, however, it's not ideal for smaller organizations as it's cost-prohibitive."
"One area that needs improvement is the upgrade process."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Broadcom software is always a little expensive because they provide quality."
"I find the solution's price to be fairly good."
"I inherited this from a different version, and I haven't yet gone through a renewal because we had purchased three years upfront. So, to me, that still remains to be seen. Once it comes up for renewal, we'll see what happens. Especially because now it is Broadcom, it is going to change anyway."
"We typically don't get involved in the commercial side, but the list price is probably something like $3,000 for a small probe. However, that gives all of the features that the probe can do, whether or not you use them. In the old days, up until two or three years ago, each of the separate features was a separately licensable module so that you could add things that you wanted, and you didn't have to add things that you didn't want. They've changed all that now, and everything the probe can do is a part of the base license."
"AppNeta by Broadcom is not expensive."
"The small probe is probably around $3,000 and the very large probe that they make for massive data centers might be $50,000 or $60,000. It's a subscription model, so the payment is per year."
"It's worth the money."
"I rate the product's pricing an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is very cheap, and ten is very expensive."
"The tool is medium-priced."
"Our licensing agreement is for three years."
"The tool's licensing may not come across as something that may be friendly for users."
"Affordability is a problem because it's created for large enterprises only. So, some customers, even if their engineers want the solution, might have problems with budget limitations."
"The solution is expensive."
"We have a three-year license with them."
"Cisco DNA Center is a licensed product with multiple levels of licensing available such as basic, advanced, and essential. I don't have the exact figure, but Cisco DNA Center is costly. For example, the box has information about the essential license and costs a considerable amount of money. You need to pay extra to use advanced features in Cisco DNA Center. My company sees Cisco DNA Center as a solution that's worth the money, which is why it invested in the solution. If you want centralized management for your network, especially when upgrading it, Cisco DNA Center is perfect, but it's more suitable for a large-scale rather than a small-scale network."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Construction Company
10%
Insurance Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise24
 

Questions from the Community

What open source tool can one use to measure bandwidth from one's upstream service provider?
One I am looking closely at is AppNeta. They have an appliance that can digest the flow and do a better job than Netflow. The other one we are using is ExtraHop. This has both a Datacenter Hig...
What do you like most about Cisco DNA Center?
The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it gives some kind of ease in operations, especially since our company is moving from CLI to GUI-based configuration.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco DNA Center?
After evaluating other solutions, we will provide feedback.
What needs improvement with Cisco DNA Center?
The deployment of Cisco DNA Center was complex due to the fact that on the data center side, we have a Juniper infrastructure, which created some complexity, though not significant. The deployment ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
DNA Center
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ebay, Citrix, National Instruments, Marriott, AT&T, Bon-Ton, McDonald's, Netflix, PayPal, Uber, QAD
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about AppNeta by Broadcom vs. Cisco DNA Center and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
894,807 professionals have used our research since 2012.