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Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs DX Performance Management comparison

Cisco and Broadcom are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Cisco is ranked #40 with an average rating of 8.0, while Broadcom is ranked #56 with an average rating of 8.5. Cisco holds a 0.9% mindshare in NMS, compared to Broadcom’s 0.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.
Cisco Provider Connectivity...
Read 24 Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance reviews
  • 1,670 Views
  • 1,083 Comparison Views
100% willing to recommend
DX Performance Management
Read 32 DX Performance Management reviews
  • 423 Views
  • 258 Comparison Views
96% willing to recommend
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 2025

DX Performance Management and Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance compete in network performance and reliability. Based on data comparisons, DX Performance Management seems to have the upper hand in affordability and customer support, while Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance leads with its comprehensive feature set.

Features: DX Performance Management provides real-time analytics, customizable dashboards, and deep network insights. Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance offers robust connectivity testing, fault localization, and high network reliability.

Room for Improvement: DX Performance Management could enhance its connectivity testing, fault localization, and expand its documentation. Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance can improve deployment simplicity, cost-effectiveness, and streamline its ROI process.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: DX Performance Management offers a streamlined deployment process and responsive customer support for complex IT environments. Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance provides thorough documentation and dedicated support teams, though deployment may be more complex due to advanced features.

Pricing and ROI: DX Performance Management offers cost-effective solutions with quicker ROI due to lower setup costs and efficient support. Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance requires higher initial investment, leading to longer ROI periods, balanced by superior network assurance benefits.

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To learn more, read our detailed Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. DX Performance Management Report (Updated: April 2025).
Buyer's Guide
Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. DX Performance Management
April 2025
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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...
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
40th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (46th)
DX Performance Management
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
56th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Infrastructure Capacity Planning (2nd), DX NetOps (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance is 0.9%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of DX Performance Management is 0.2%, down from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Sylvain Germe - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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Sandip Kheni - PeerSpot reviewer
The vertical database loads faster than any other product available
We experience disconnections between the solutions own components. In the last five years, there have been many intermittent connection issues with the four components and we still don't know the reasons. The solution has issues when loading groups that have been created in the application interfaces. It would be nice to have a mobile application. In the current industry and technical word, the mobile phone is the only thing that is always in your hands. Other Broadcom products have mobile applications but the solution doesn't offer one. It would be great to view device parameters and view or download graphs from a mobile device.
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

"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."
"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."
"The performance of Accedian Skylight is better than other vendors."
"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."
"If [the problem] is something related to HTTP or VoIP, then I can have a quick look into the protocols, a process which gives me some good ideas..."
"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."
"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."
"The response times, with the performance, are really interesting too, where you can see the packet loss."
More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance pros
"Spectrum is very good at monitoring all network faults and configurations."
"The out-of-the-box dashboards are valuable, in terms of being able to visualize performance data in ways that we haven't in the past."
"One of the most valuable features is the ease of use."
"We're able to present data from multiple back-end collection sources into a single dashboard for the users. So they don't have to go to multiple locations to get data about a particular item, or device."
"What is most useful is visibility."
"The tool helps us understand network performance."
"It gave us one location, one place to do all of group administration, and to build dashboards, and device administration, inventory counts... it really reduced our overall administrative overhead."
"The integration with NetFlow, the NFA solution, so that we can have our flow forensics paired with the SNMP polling performance metrics on the same page."
More DX Performance Management pros
 

Cons

"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."
"I would like to see some improvements in parts of their synthetic transactions, which includes all the latency, jitter, and throughput. I would like to see some Layer 7 analytics in there. I want to be able to do a DNS request, HTTP GET request, or even SIP call point-to-point or via registration."
"The Accedian Skylight user interface still has room for improvement."
"The UI interface of Accedian Skylight could improve."
"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."
"This solution is expensive compared to some others."
"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."
"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."
More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance cons
"This solution is not very scalable."
"For CA PM, there should be a way of easily migrating the reports coming from eHealth going to CA Performance Center, since CA PC is replacing eHealth."
"We experience disconnections between the solutions own components."
"Install is done as root, which is a security no-no, and the database IO requirements were not stated correctly, which lead to a year of instability."
"Policies could be improved."
"Even though we can see when something is not available, it would also be it would be nice if some sort of alerting took place to that you could know immediately if something went down."
"When it goes through discovery, or whatever it is doing in the back-end that slows it down, sometimes we get some failures with it. ​"
"CA PM Business Hours Filtering: I understand that all monitoring systems have defects. The Business Hours Filtering does not always function properly. Sometimes, when applying business hours to CA PM reports that are 30 or more days in duration, the report generation times out and does not display results. We have other CA PM reports that, when we apply Business Hours Filtering, the report results displayed are the same as without the filter. We are not sure if this is a defect in CA PM or if it is a result of our complex configuration (folder structure) and application of business hours."
More DX Performance Management cons
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"It provides value and the cost is not huge."
"It's not for free, clearly. But on the other hand, it offers very interesting functionality. We pay around €100,000."
"The price is competitive overall, depending on the type of customer."
"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."
"Pricing is a little bit expensive."
More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance pricing and cost advice
"We were looking at other vendors in the marketplace for NetFlow, and CA just beat everybody else in price, cost, and the size to implement. ​"
"The tool's pricing is based on the number of network devices."
"We purchase a license to use the solution every three years and we have multiple contracts. They have been increasing the price annually. We have a baseline for three years and then we need to pay the difference from the baseline, and we are in the process of negotiating a new price for all the licenses we need. The price overall is affordable."
"They should provide more scalable licensing for the product."
"Do your homework and know how many devices you will be managing out of the gate. Be sure to project what your growth will be each year."
"I like the licensing model because it's device-based."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
39%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
28%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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?
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 ...
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 do you like most about DX Performance Management?
The tool helps us understand network performance.
See all answers
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for DX Performance Management?
The tool's pricing is based on the number of network devices.
See all answers
What needs improvement with DX Performance Management?
Spectrum's topology view sometimes does not rebuild automatically when a device is shut down and reconnected. It requires manual discovery and rebuilding of the topology, which I hope can be improved.
See all answers
 

Comparisons

ThousandEyes vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance Logo
ThousandEyes vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance
Compared 43% of the time
SolarWinds NPM vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance Logo
SolarWinds NPM vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance
Compared 15% of the time
NETSCOUT nGeniusONE vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance Logo
NETSCOUT nGeniusONE vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance
Compared 11% of the time
Dynatrace vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance Logo
Dynatrace vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance
Compared 9% of the time
Zabbix vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance Logo
Zabbix vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance
Compared 5% of the time
More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance Competitors
IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) vs DX Performance Management Logo
IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) vs DX Performance Management
Compared 42% of the time
SolarWinds AppOptics vs DX Performance Management Logo
SolarWinds AppOptics vs DX Performance Management
Compared 30% of the time
DX Spectrum vs DX Performance Management Logo
DX Spectrum vs DX Performance Management
Compared 28% of the time
More DX Performance Management Competitors
 

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance
May 2025
Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance reportDownload Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance product report
Buyer's Guide
DX Performance Management
May 2025
DX Performance Management reportDownload DX Performance Management product report
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance offers real-time application and network performance monitoring, VPN management, and network diagnostics across multiple sites.

Organizations use Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance for active and passive monitoring, stress testing, and troubleshooting performance issues. Deployed both on-premise and in the cloud, it supports IT infrastructure, security, and analytics with end-to-end performance measurement across cloud data centers. The modern, intuitive interface features TWAMP for real-time traffic accuracy and standardized reports, along with insightful dashboards for circuit performance, latency, jitter, and throughput monitoring.

What are the most important features?
  • TWAMP: Provides real-time traffic accuracy and standardized reporting.
  • Insightful Dashboards: Monitor circuit performance, latency, jitter, and throughput.
  • Security Integration: Compatible with tools like Splunk for enhanced security.
  • Application Support: Facilitates comprehensive network performance analysis.
What benefits or ROI should users look for in reviews?
  • Quick Corrective Actions: Immediate response capabilities for performance issues.
  • Easy Navigation: User-friendly layouts simplify monitoring and troubleshooting.
  • Comprehensive Analytics: Advanced tools for in-depth network performance insights.
  • Cloud and On-Premise Options: Flexible deployment to meet different needs.

In industries like finance and healthcare, Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance ensures robust performance monitoring and quick diagnostics for VPNs and internet lines. It aids in maintaining the integrity and security of data transference, facilitating active and passive monitoring, stress testing, and performance troubleshooting across geographically dispersed locations, ensuring seamless operation and compliance with industry standards.

Cisco

CA Performance Management is a comprehensive and highly scalable network performance monitoring and analytics platform. It was built to meet the unique demands of big data and modern networks architectures, including highly dynamic and complex hybrid cloud and software-defined networks (SDN).

The platform is design to reduce complexity inherent in modern networks built across numerous technology stacks through advanced network performance monitoring and relationship mapping for improved operational assurance.

Combined with CA Virtual Network Assurance, the platform extends operator visibility through advanced discovery and network performance monitoring of highly sensitive cloud and multi-layered SDN networks and service chains.

Broadcom
 

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
Jack Henry & Assoc, Target, CenturyLink, Bell Canada, BrightHouse Networks, Telus, Unisys, Verizon, Southern California Edison, GEICO, Fidelity Investments, Wells Fargo, American Family Insurance Group, Deutsche Telekom AG 
Buyer's Guide
Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. DX Performance Management
April 2025
Free Report: Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. DX Performance Management
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