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Broadcom Network Flow Analysis vs Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 2, 2025

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

Broadcom Network Flow Analysis
Ranking in Network Management Applications
23rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (76th), Network Troubleshooting (11th)
Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN
Ranking in Network Management Applications
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
123
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Network Management Applications category, the mindshare of Broadcom Network Flow Analysis is 2.3%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN is 2.3%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Management Applications Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN2.3%
Broadcom Network Flow Analysis2.3%
Other95.4%
Network Management Applications
 

Featured Reviews

Purneswara Rao - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Consultant at KyndleIT Consulting
A stable tool that helps identify the complete flow analysis in a network
The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that the complete flow analysis can be identified through the tool. The classification of each protocol and how the bandwidth utilization is happening with the protocols while managing to get SLAs, IP protocols, and QoS metrics is possible because of the product.
Ashwani-Tyagi - PeerSpot reviewer
Regional Manager at Orange
Centralized control has simplified cloud access and has improved operational visibility
If they can have better firewall features as their competitors have, such as Fortinet and Versa, that would help to place this solution better so that we can address security related things. If they can have all the IPS, IDS, everything built on all the edge devices, whether physical or virtual, that could be one improvement. Actually, if customers are existing Cisco customers, if Cisco can be more flexible to leverage the existing investment, that could be another important aspect to save on cost and be more competitive from a pricing perspective. Overall, the pricing or the segment that Cisco deals with is a bit premium, which they charge a bit premium against the competition on the licensing, hardware, and services. The implementation is not straightforward. You need a specialized partner or specialized people who can implement this. It can be simplified a bit from that perspective as well. Mostly the way we implement the policies for a big environment requires a lot of things that we need to take care of. If that can somehow be improved, because they have different components, like they have vManage, they have vSmart, and vBond and all these components have to work with a certain flow that they need to follow.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This solution has helped our organization by allowing us to have visibility. We deal with cybersecurity, so visibility is very important."
"Anomaly Detector - This detects the anomaly flows in infra environment and makes job easy to analyze issue."
"Despite the low level of support, I would still fully recommend this product, because even when not all the features are used, the advantage of having such a wealth of useful information about the network traffic in real time, together with such flexibility of its presentation, is undeniable."
"It is an overall stable solution."
"For supporting flow-traffic monitoring, this product is the best option."
"The custom report is the most valuable feature."
"I would rate the overall solution as a ten out of ten."
"Overall, it's a very good solution."
"Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN has positively impacted my organization by reducing the deployment time from days down to a couple of hours for a site."
"When you want to access cloud applications, or you want to have secure connectivity at a branch or hub location, it is quite useful."
"The orchestration on the VPN connection between remote locations is a fantastic feature. I used it some time ago."
"The most useful feature for our organization is the combination of on-prem and cloud-based deployments. We connect securely to our hybrid cloud using transit VPCs and cloud on-ramp for fast deployments."
"Cisco provides the best support among all the vendors."
"The solution offers good quality of service, visibility, connectivity, and security."
 

Cons

"If one is able to find it at all, the documentation is often no help."
"Sometimes the custom report jammed in the MYSQL database."
"Currently, Broadcom Network Flow Analysis does not support high-availability solutions, making it an area that needs improvement."
"I would like to see more security features, like a lost protection package."
"Prefer this product only if the scope of flow analysis is vast and for a limited scope I don’t prefer this product since the product licenses are very costly and it is a waste of money."
"Enhanced support should be given with APIs that work to maintain collected information."
"Recently, the user interface of Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN was changed, and I feel it would be better if it were made more user-friendly, as the current one is somewhat challenging to work with and while compatibility exists, I need more knowledge base documentation for the new GUI interface to be truly helpful."
"Cisco SD-WAN's clustering mechanism needs to be improved. If there are more than five milliseconds of latency time between installations of the VM manager, the cluster automatically breaks down."
"The main issue is that not in the technology, but it comes back comparison. When we do a comparison with other SD WAN solutions, they are priced better."
"Better pricing and greater security would be nice to see."
"I think Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN could be improved because too many vulnerabilities come up, so upgrading it is a challenge, and the hardware keeps changing; we moved from Viptela 1K to 2K, then again to the Cisco Catalyst router, so it's an expense."
"The solution is a bit complicated."
"The product could improve its pricing; they are very expensive."
"Cisco offers premium enterprise capabilities, but its pricing, setup cost, and licensing models represent the most significant hurdles for IT organizations."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If you make a DX NetOps-based purchase and the complete suite of products that fall under DX NetOps from Broadcom, then you get Network Flow Analysis along with DX NetOps Performance Management and DX Spectrum."
"The cost is reasonable. I would rate the price as seven out of ten."
"It is expensive. The license limitation is there in terms of bandwidth. Basically, Cisco is always good in terms of performance and related things. However, if you want to have a license, for example, for 100 Mbps, they charge you because of their 100 Mbps. If you want to go without the license of 300 Mbps, it is a bandwidth license as well. This is not happening with other vendors. That is the reason why we moved away from Cisco. The bill gets a little bit high. I do remember that one time we were trying to increase the bandwidth for at least five devices, and the license got as high as 20-grand for five devices, only for the license. It was expensive for us at the time. Our company is not a big company, but it is a solid company. The price was very high, and we moved away from Cisco because of the price."
"This is not a cheap option but if you move from Capex to Opex, I expect you should have lower costs."
"The cost of Cisco SD-WAN is high and has room for improvement compared to competitors such as Fortinet which has similar functionality."
"The pricing is fair, and it's on par with the market vendors. But based on the competition, Cisco could work on the pricing, go deep on discounts and provide more commercially viable solutions to customers."
"The license model is too complex with too many flavors and options. You might not be able to see it from an end user's point of view, but from a telco point of view, their license model is too complex. They should have a flexible license model. If you want to have good pricing, you need to buy it for a two-year, four-year, or five-year license immediately. Some other vendors have much more flexible license models."
"80 percent reduction in WAN costs. There are no MPLS or P2P circuits left in the organization."
"Cisco SD-WAN is more expensive than its competitors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
17%
Construction Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business52
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise64
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco SD-WAN?
Regarding Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN's price, I find it reasonable, based on commercial pricing and CDCS support, although we see that there is some lack in TACACS and other support.
What needs improvement with Cisco SD-WAN?
I see some room for improvement for Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN with G2 routers, as we are expecting more customers. To bring Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN closer to ten, I would like to see improvement in the G...
What is your primary use case for Cisco SD-WAN?
I am using Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN mainly for enterprise customers.
 

Also Known As

CA NetQoS Reporter Analyzer, CA NFA, CA Network Flow Analysis
Cisco SD-WAN
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Empowered, BCBST
Doyle Research, Ashton Metzler & Associates
Find out what your peers are saying about Broadcom Network Flow Analysis vs. Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
921,749 professionals have used our research since 2012.