Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs Nagios Core comparison

Cisco and Nagios are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Cisco is ranked #40 with an average rating of 8.0, while Nagios is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.2. Cisco holds a 0.9% mindshare in NMS, compared to Nagios’s 3.0% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 80% of Nagios 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

Nagios Core

Read 51 Nagios Core reviews

4,161 Views
3,242 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

Cisco Provider Connectivity...

Nagios Core

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 2025

Nagios Core and Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance are competitors in the network monitoring category. Nagios Core seems to have the upper hand for users seeking a cost-effective, flexible, open-source solution, while Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance is preferred for feature-rich, integrated solutions at a higher price.

Features: Nagios Core offers an open-source model, supports a wide array of plugins, and provides extensive customization options that fit various monitoring needs. Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance stands out with its integrated capabilities, sophisticated monitoring features, and strong enterprise appeal.

Room for Improvement: Nagios Core faces challenges with a dated interface, complex manual configurations, and limitations in scalability and modern UI. Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance could improve its UI and expand its reporting and analytical features to better meet enterprise expectations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Nagios Core relies on user forums for support, requiring user input during deployment, which is primarily on-premises with some cloud flexibility. Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance offers both on-premises and cloud options, providing better support services, appealing to companies needing reliable customer service and technical support.

Pricing and ROI: Nagios Core is cost-effective with no licensing fees due to its open-source model, offering a budget-friendly monitoring solution. Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance has a higher price but justifies the cost with advanced features and perceived higher ROI despite the initial investment.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. Nagios Core Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. Nagios Core

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

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (45th)

Nagios Core

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

11th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (13th)

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 Nagios Core is 3.0%, up from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Sylvain Germe

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.

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Nishith-Vyas

Tech Lead at STL Digital Limited

Valuable reporting and alert system with room for PDF export improvements

The NetEase reporting structure needs improvement, especially the availability report, which is weak. It should be generated automatically with minimal human intervention and should be exportable as a PDF. Besides that, an integrated PDF export feature for reports is necessary. Also, the alert mechanism and graphing mechanism need to be integrated properly into Nagios Core. Currently, integrating these requires advanced Linux knowledge. Integration of more visualization tools like Grafana and Prometheus for better graphing and visualization is also recommended.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The ability to measure performance end-to-end across the cloud data center allows us to take corrective action to keep our channels online."

"I always have the Skylight dashboard on one of my screens... Now you can create your own dashboard, specific to an application, specific to a server, or to something else."

"One valuable feature we have is real-time monitoring for connection issues."

"The response times, with the performance, are really interesting too, where you can see the packet loss."

"One valuable feature we have is real-time monitoring for connection issues."

"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..."

"This solution has helped to improve the interaction between our network, datacenter, and application teams. I have used other tools, but this tool can pinpoint the root cause of my application or network issue in the majority of the cases. So, it helps different divisions or groups in the IT department to troubleshoot together and get an issue resolved. This tool helps a lot in our day-to-day networking application and IT operations."

"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."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance pros

"Dashboard provides monitor of total assets."

"Our customers like that Nagios Core is an open source solution. It can be customized to our customers' specific needs."

"The most valuable feature depends on the project. It's great if you need to check to ensure a service is running 24/7. I can use the full solution for free, and it's flexible. If I need to add a dashboard, I can integrate it with Nagios. Cloud synchronization is wonderful."

"The solution's most valuable feature is that it offers proper alerting capabilities."

"The solution is quite efficient."

"The application performance monitoring feature is valuable."

"Key features include the GUI interface, its notification capabilities, and the real-time reporting."

"The most valuable feature of Nagios Core is it allows us to develop and add as many plugins as we want."

More Nagios Core pros

Cons

"The Accedian Skylight user interface still has room for improvement."

"Human resource costs can be high when dealing with connection issues."

"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."

"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."

"There should be an option to update and upgrade the solution to the new version without having to re-buy it. I have clients switching to other solutions. The old solution is great, but if you change your license to a new one, you have to almost re-buy it completely."

"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."

"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."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance cons

"The NetEase reporting structure needs improvement, especially the availability report, which is weak."

"There is room for improvement in the graphics."

"The dashboard should be improved."

"The interface could be improved."

"The scalability needs improvement, it's not scalable at this time."

"The tool needs to improve the integrations."

"The core version is no match for the XI version."

"Making it a little easier to configure and set up from the start would help. There are multiple layers that you have to wade through to be able to set it up, to do it the right way, and to get it to do what you want it to do."

More Nagios Core cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's not for free, clearly. But on the other hand, it offers very interesting functionality. We pay around €100,000."

"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 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."

"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."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance pricing and cost advice

"Nagios Core is an open source solution, and there are no licensing fees."

"It's free."

"We are using the free version."

"Lessening the price point would be an improvement."

"We are using the open-source, unpaid version."

"We have saved a lot of time, money, and effort in reducing disaster times, which is owed to Nagios quick alerting."

"I would rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."

"The product is cheaply priced."

More Nagios Core pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

39%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

15%

Government

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

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 Nagios Core?

What I like about Nagios Core is that it helps me ensure everything is running smoothly by checking the status of hosts and services.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nagios Core?

Nagios Core is a free and open-source product. We don't charge for the product itself, but we charge for the man-hour costs related to installation, configuration, ongoing operation, and maintenance.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Nagios Core?

The dashboard should be improved. It's very simple. I don't have a very clear or specific suggestion. You can change the skin of the dashboard, however, it's good for me.

See all answers

Comparisons

ThousandEyes vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 43% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 15% of the time

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 11% of the time

Dynatrace vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 9% of the time

Zabbix vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 5% of the time

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance Competitors

Icinga vs Nagios Core

Compared 26% of the time

Nagios XI vs Nagios Core

Compared 17% of the time

Zabbix vs Nagios Core

Compared 14% of the time

Centreon vs Nagios Core

Compared 9% of the time

OP5 Monitor vs Nagios Core

Compared 4% of the time

More Nagios Core Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

May 2025

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance report

Download Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance product report

Buyer's Guide

Nagios Core

April 2025

Download Nagios Core product report

Also Known As

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

No data available

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

This is IT infrastructure monitoring's industry-standard, open-source core. Free without professional support services.

Nagios

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

Airbnb, Cisco, PayPal, FanDuel

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. Nagios Core

April 2025

Free Report: Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. Nagios Core

Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. Nagios Core and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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