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Broadcom Network Flow Analysis vs SolarWinds NPM 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

Broadcom Network Flow Analysis
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
60th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (19th), Network Troubleshooting (12th)
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
158
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Broadcom Network Flow Analysis is 0.2%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 4.5%, down from 5.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Purneswara Rao - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Masud Alam - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers alerting service to trigger alerts and easy to manage
For end-user performance monitoring, we like features such as availability of our all devices and device/interface monitoring. We have also used NCM (Network Configuration Manager) for our network. We use the alerting service to trigger alerts based on specific thresholds, like CPU or memory utilization exceeding a certain percentage. There are AI network initiatives in SolarWinds NPM for some lengthy issues. For example, it shows availability reports. But for bandwidth monitoring, it's not very clear how much bandwidth is being consumed. SolarWinds provide real-time bandwidth monitoring. It is not difficult to manage the network with SolarWinds. We have one customer with a satellite location. If we have a large network with, let's say, 43,000 elements, and our current SolarWinds license supports only 30,000, we would need to create another polling engine to accommodate the additional 13,000 elements. It's limited to the polling engine, so we can only support 30,000 elements per engine. So it's only for 30,000, but we have at least 40,000 elements in our network.

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."
"It is an overall stable solution."
"SolarWinds is user-friendly with a manageable console."
"SolarWinds has greatly helped us, especially in tracing when the SoundCloud Software goes down without any apparent reason."
"Technical support is very helpful with our upgrades."
"The alerting and usage tracking notifications on disk space capacity, network and processor utilization."
"The most valuable features in SolarWinds NPM are the network search and diagnostic tools."
"The most valuable feature is the graphical user interface."
"We have configured multiple alerts for our network devices, including routers and switches, so that we are notified if any interface goes down."
"As we look to add more servers to our virtual environment and to understand the impact, the solution allows us to dig into the historical charts related to capacity planning."
 

Cons

"I would like to see more security features, like a lost protection package."
"Currently, Broadcom Network Flow Analysis does not support high-availability solutions, making it an area that needs improvement."
"The solution does not offer much customization so is somewhat inflexible."
"The solution could be more secure."
"The price could be better."
"The improvement would be that SolarWinds NPM thoroughly checks its patches before releasing them to the market. Better testing, alpha testing, and then releasing it to the market."
"SolarWinds NPM needs to increase its elements. One polling engine can only support 10,000 elements then it becomes slow. There are limitations even if you have the full SLX version license."
"It would be nice if SolarWinds could have a polling engine on the site that would collect the reporting and then manage everything itself."
"They need to work on their automation and automatically discover devices. They are not very good at automatically discovering devices."
"The integration with the APIs and the web servers deployed can definitely be improved."
 

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."
"Licenses depend on the number of devices, but all license levels come with technical support."
"It's expensive and there are costs in addition to the standard licensing."
"SolarWinds NPM has different pricing models available. The cost of the solution is less than some competitors."
"Quite highly priced"
"The solution's pricing is low compared to a lot of other tools in the market."
"We pay approximately $700 per year for renewal of the license."
"The pricing is very expensive for SolarWinds. That's a huge disadvantage for it."
"The standard licensing fees are what we're paying. It's about $20,000 a year for all our licensing."
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 31, 2015
Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor
I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Non Profit
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Educational Organization
35%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Broadcom Network Flow Analysis?
Currently, Broadcom Network Flow Analysis does not support high-availability solutions, making it an area that needs improvement.
What is your primary use case for Broadcom Network Flow Analysis?
I use Broadcom Network Flow Analysis in my company as it helps us deal with the classification of protocol, which will monitor the flow, and once we enable the flow in the network devices, we can s...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
It actually depends on the exact purpose or kind of devices (network devices, servers, something else). Some tools are better for only network devices while others are better for a cloud monitoring...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
We are partners with SolarWinds and we sell a lot of Network management to large enterprises also because of scalability, products like Network Performance Monitor & Netflow Traffic Analyzer ar...
 

Also Known As

CA NetQoS Reporter Analyzer, CA NFA, CA Network Flow Analysis
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Empowered, BCBST
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about Broadcom Network Flow Analysis vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
857,162 professionals have used our research since 2012.