Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs NETSCOUT InfiniStreamNG comparison

Cisco and NETSCOUT are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Cisco is ranked #44 with an average rating of 8.0, while NETSCOUT is ranked #78. Cisco holds a 0.7% mindshare in NMS, compared to NETSCOUT’s 0.4% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of NETSCOUT users who would recommend it.

Cisco Provider Connectivity...

Read 24 Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance reviews

2,152 Views
1,528 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

NETSCOUT InfiniStreamNG

Read 13 NETSCOUT InfiniStreamNG reviews

554 Views
548 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Cisco Provider Connectivity...

NETSCOUT InfiniStreamNG

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 15, 2025

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance and NETSCOUT InfiniStreamNG compete in the network infrastructure management space. Cisco has an advantage in pricing and support, while NETSCOUT is preferred for its advanced feature set.

Features: Cisco offers proactive network monitoring and end-to-end assurance, enhancing issue resolution. NETSCOUT provides network traffic analysis, visibility, and packet-level insights, focusing on performance analytics. NETSCOUT’s deep network analysis gives it a competitive edge.

Room for Improvement: Cisco could enhance advanced traffic analysis, scalability, and detailed analytics. NETSCOUT may benefit from simplifying deployment, integration, and user interface complexity.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cisco provides straightforward deployment and strong customer service, ensuring efficient setup and continuous support. NETSCOUT offers comprehensive technical assistance despite complex deployment, helping organizations with their intricate setups.

Pricing and ROI: Cisco delivers competitive initial costs and good ROI with proactive features. NETSCOUT’s higher setup cost is justified by long-term ROI due to its advanced analytics, appealing to those valuing comprehensive information despite initial expenses.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. NETSCOUT InfiniStreamNG Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. NETSCOUT InfiniStreamNG

July 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

44th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (46th)

NETSCOUT InfiniStreamNG

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

78th

Average Rating

8.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance is 0.7%, down from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NETSCOUT InfiniStreamNG is 0.4%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Pifu Lin

Senior System Engineer at DYNASAFE TECHNOLOGIES PTE. LTD.

Addresses connectivity issues with real-time monitoring while offering good local support

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 quality use. This involves addressing network device issues, specifically Cisco network devices One…

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Michael Gideon Genita

Associate System Engineer at SMS Global Technologies, Inc.

Easy to set up with good documentation and helpful support

I'm using it for a customer The packet flow switch is the most valuable aspect of the solution. It's an easy product to set up. We can scale the solution if we need to. It's stable. The documentation is well-written and quite useful. It's compatible with other products. Under the pocket flow…

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

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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..."

"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."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance pros

"It's an easy product to set up."

"When we have mobile operators who are signal partners, where one is the roaming host and another is the roamer, we are able to see their traffic. Their packets are able to detect if any faults to develop, and at what point they fail."

"It is very rock solid. We hardly have any hardware issues."

"We use it for monitoring whenever we update a new circuit or site."

"The product is stable. I have never had any issue where we have lost an InfiniStream, or visibility from that particular InfiniStream, throughout the bank."

"The real-time troubleshooting and application segregation that you can do within it."

"The technical support is really good. They will go above and beyond, if you are running into a problem. You can go to a sales engineer, who will engage technical support to help you out."

"The most valuable feature is utilization."

More NETSCOUT InfiniStreamNG pros

Cons

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance cons

"The stability depends on who is using the tool, because you only can get as much out of the tool as you put into it. There are a lot of patches for this particular environment, so you have to keep on them. If you lose track of them, then the product is not useful anymore."

"The technology goes end-of-life on us every year, which is why I am looking forward to vSTREAM. I don't like when devices go end-of-life on us so quickly. If we can get more of an advanced notice of when an end-of-life is brought up, because our certification process within the organization takes a while."

"I'd like them to make the product more user-friendly."

"It's not able to communicate with our probes."

"The single pane of glass feed still needs work."

"The NetFlow Collectors could handle more flows per minute."

"Being able to manage the packet flow switches in nGeniusONE would be great."

"We don't use the single pane of glass view, even though we own it."

More NETSCOUT InfiniStreamNG 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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Pricing is a little bit expensive."

"We understand there's a significant cost difference, but have yet to investigate fully."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance pricing and cost advice

"It can be scalable. It just costs too much. With a company as big as ours, it gets too expensive to accommodate every single site."

"The price is a little high."

"This product could be cheaper."

"I would like it to be more scalable with less spend."

"The scalability is good, but it comes at a cost. E.g., if you need 100 InfiniStream because you are sending gigs or terabytes of data to one InfiniStream, then you will have to purchase another InfiniStream, which are not cheap."

"To capture more with the solution that we bought, you have to buy another InfiniStreamNG, and there are only four ports in the back."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

36%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Government

Financial Services Firm

18%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Energy/Utilities Company

11%

Government

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?

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Accedian Skylight?

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

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Comparisons

ThousandEyes vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 39% of the time

Dynatrace vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 14% of the time

Zabbix vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 10% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 9% of the time

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 9% of the time

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance Competitors

Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs NETSCOUT InfiniStreamNG

Compared 28% of the time

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE vs NETSCOUT InfiniStreamNG

Compared 23% of the time

Riverbed NPM+ vs NETSCOUT InfiniStreamNG

Compared 19% of the time

cPacket cClear vs NETSCOUT InfiniStreamNG

Compared 16% of the time

NIKSUN NetVCR vs NETSCOUT InfiniStreamNG

Compared 14% of the time

More NETSCOUT InfiniStreamNG Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

August 2025

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance report

Download Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance product report

Buyer's Guide

NETSCOUT InfiniStreamNG

August 2025

Download NETSCOUT InfiniStreamNG product report

Also Known As

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

InfiniStreamNG, NETSCOUT ISNG, Infinistream

Overview

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance is known for its user-friendly approach to network analysis and performance monitoring. It excels in real-time diagnostics, helping organizations quickly resolve network issues and optimize performance effortlessly.

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance focuses on comprehensive network troubleshooting and performance monitoring, assisting in identifying bottlenecks and analyzing applications. Real-time data collection and evaluation ensure IT infrastructure efficiency. With active monitoring of latency, jitter, and throughput, users maintain smooth operations across multiple sites and applications. While highly effective, improvements in data handling, protocol support, and dashboard aesthetics are suggested to enhance user experience.

What are the key features of Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance?

Flow Matrices: Advanced analysis of network paths and traffic distribution.
SQL and DNS Analysis: In-depth insights into database and domain queries for troubleshooting.
Bandwidth Assessment: Evaluation of network capacity and utilization for performance optimization.
Real-time TWAMP Monitoring: Tracks network performance using Two-Way Active Measurement Protocol.
Application Performance Modules: Monitors the performance of various applications and services.
Customizable Dashboards: Personalized views for tracking critical network metrics and trends.
PCAP Capturing: Detailed packet analysis using tools like Wireshark for deeper insights.

What benefits and ROI should users look for in reviews?

Ease of Use: Intuitive design allowing users to swiftly diagnose network issues.
Comprehensive Monitoring: Enhanced visibility of network activity for better control.
Performance Efficiency: Optimization of throughput, reducing downtimes and improving service delivery.
Cost-Effectiveness: Balances features and functionality with competitive pricing for better ROI.

In industries such as telecommunications and finance, where network reliability is crucial, Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance offers critical network performance insights. It supports high-demand environments by providing data-driven decisions, ensuring infrastructures handle increased loads efficiently.

Cisco

NETSCOUT’s new ISNG platform harnesses the power of IP intelligence by mining traffic in real-time to deliver accurate and actionable data for service assurance, cybersecurity and business intelligence applications. The InfiniStreamNG platform fully supports the nGeniusONE and Iris application suites.

NETSCOUT

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

U.S. Department of Defense

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. NETSCOUT InfiniStreamNG

July 2025

Free Report: Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. NETSCOUT InfiniStreamNG

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