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Cisco DNA Center vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 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

Cisco DNA Center
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
18th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (1st), Network Automation (2nd)
Cisco Provider Connectivity...
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
43rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (43rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Cisco DNA Center is 1.0%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance is 0.7%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cisco DNA Center1.0%
Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance0.7%
Other98.3%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Sylvain Germe - PeerSpot reviewer
Application and Network Performance Engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Highly scalable, responsive support, but lacking new features
This solution is geared towards on-premise setups, and would not be useful if the company plans to move to the cloud within the next two years, such as Google Cloud for example. If the goal is to monitor bandwidth at remote sites and identify performance issues because the network is under the control, this solution is useful. However, if a company primarily uses cloud-based servers and does not manage the internet connection of its remote sites, the solution becomes less useful. I rate Accedian Skylight a seven out of ten. I have a positive opinion of the tool, but it can be challenging to set up. It is also limited in its applicability to certain use cases. I am familiar with the engineers behind the solution and have a good impression of them. However, I am not pleased with the fact that the company removed many features and raised prices after it was acquired by Accedian.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product offers an intuitive and automated way to manage user networks. It gives me an insight into the network health."
"I like that we can easily configure any new hardware. It's also easy to deploy and easy to troubleshoot."
"Cisco DNA Center is a user-friendly solution."
"The monitoring is very valuable to me."
"The product gives a consolidated view."
"The most valuable features were the monitoring, maintenance, and configuration."
"Has a good processing feature with a high level of accuracy."
"Cisco DNA Center provides operational support, compliance support, security vulnerability detection, and automatic scheduling."
"For us, the most valuable feature is something called TWAMP that allows for real-time traffic in a way that is 10 times lighter than things like SolarWinds. It's in the sub-milliseconds of accuracy, and you can divide tasks so that you can literally see things like the tagging for Quality of Service. That had been incorrect with the carrier, but there was no way on this planet you'd be able to tell a carrier that they're wrong. I have dozens of scenarios where we found "No, that's not right," and got it resolved instantly."
"The performance of Accedian Skylight is better than other vendors."
"What I like most about Accedian Skylight is that it's a UI application, so using it is easy. I also like that the support for Accedian Skylight is helpful."
"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."
"The feature I used to like the most was its ability to decode layer seven protocols, although this is becoming less useful now that encryption is so widespread."
"One valuable feature we have is real-time monitoring for connection issues."
"I think the analytics features are okay. My customer also likes the interface, the GUI, because it's easy to operate."
"Capturing traffic [is very interesting]. Currently, with our configuration, we don't capture the payload of the packets, just the header. But when we want the body, the payload of the packets, we can do a PCAP, and then analyze it within Wireshark."
 

Cons

"There are some software problems from version to version. It takes a long time for DNA Center to recognize the video and control access devices."
"Cisco DNA Center should improve its configuration management. It is better to have a dev version before pushing it."
"The solution can be quite pricey."
"The product has many features that do not work properly."
"In my opinion, the client history in Cisco DNA Center can be longer than 10 days, perhaps extending to 15 or 20 days."
"Requires more focus on the digital side of things."
"In terms of the clustering part, there are some concerns."
"What I want to see in Cisco DNA Center in the future is more support for other platforms so that you can manage third-party products, such as Fortinet."
"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."
"For the PVX, they are in the process of getting the results to export to cloud and SaaS for analytics. They told me that this will happen later this year. Right now, for the most part, I create that data myself."
"If you want a new version, you go to the website. The hardest part is finding the link, where is that .bin file? Sometimes it's pretty hidden in a document... it's hidden in the release notes or in another file somewhere. And it's usually not on the first page either."
"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."
"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."
"Human resource costs can be high when dealing with connection issues."
"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."
"This solution is expensive compared to some others."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is medium-priced."
"The price could be better. It's a very expensive tool."
"The partnership price is notably high, but it ultimately depends on the chosen business model."
"The tool's licensing may not come across as something that may be friendly for users."
"The price of the solution is expensive. The hardware is licensed on the device, but the hardware on the server is expensive."
"We get a yearly license at the time we buy the product."
"Cisco DNA Center is expensive."
"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."
"We understand there's a significant cost difference, but have yet to investigate fully."
"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."
"If you look into Riverbed, it's a licensing nightmare. You need to pay for every type of analysis... If you don't look into licensing, Riverbed and SolarWinds are pretty comparable. But if you look into licensing it would not be smart to go for either of them. On the pure, bare-metal basis, it's the same. But when you get the bare metal and a few basic licenses, then you need all those other licenses just to be sure that there's no issue... One of the great things about Skylight is you have them all, and you actually need them all."
"It provides value and the cost is not huge."
"The price is competitive overall, depending on the type of customer."
"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."
"Pricing is a little bit expensive."
"The pricing is cheaper than other competing products, which is better for our budgets."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Computer Software Company
25%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise25
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise9
 

Questions from the Community

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?
In my opinion, the client history in Cisco DNA Center can be longer than 10 days, perhaps extending to 15 or 20 days. I am using it in a huge factory in Turkey, and sometimes I need to see what occ...
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.
What is your primary use case for Accedian Skylight?
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 ...
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco DNA Center vs. Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.