Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs SolarWinds Network Device Monitor comparison

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. SolarWinds Network Device Monitor

Download the complete report

Helped 860,168 peers since 2012

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

42nd

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

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

SolarWinds Network Device M...

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

30th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance is 0.8%, down from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is 0.6%, up from 0.6% 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…

Read full review

Vijay Samant

Assistant Manager at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Monitor network utilization and manage bandwidth efficiently with live monitoring and reliable fault management capabilities

I use SolarWinds Network Device Monitor for monitoring network utilization, bandwidth utilization, uptime, and downtime. It also assists in incident management SolarWinds Network Device Monitor provides live monitoring capabilities, which are very useful. Its fault management capabilities are…

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

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

"The performance of Accedian Skylight is better than other vendors."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance pros

"Link monitoring is the most valuable feature of this solution."

"SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is a straightforward product with valuable functionality."

"I rate the product's initial setup process a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one means it is a difficult phase and ten is an easy process."

"The solution and its interface are elaborate and fully integrate all monitored items for easy analysis and troubleshooting."

"There are vital features of auto-plugin core ports"

"You can create an attractive dashboard and create a hierarchy."

"I like the mapping that you could do and the dashboards were very pretty."

"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is it shows you the utilization of devices to allow you to take proactive action before something goes down or reaches the saturation point. You can take proactive action to fix the problem before it occurs."

More SolarWinds Network Device Monitor pros

Cons

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"This solution is expensive compared to some others."

"The UI interface of Accedian Skylight could improve."

"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."

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

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance cons

"The solution lacks in performance monitoring."

"When an organization's network grows, the complexity of the dashboard becomes an area of concern where improvements are required."

"SolarWinds Network Device Monitor lacks the granularity of other monitoring tools like LiveNX."

"The initial setup of the SolarWinds Network Device Monitor could be easier. It took us approximately one month to complete the implementation."

"The main disadvantage of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is the licensing cost, which is expensive."

"SolarWinds Network Device Monitor could improve the features. We don't have the complete model for the database, and the monitoring for the database is up and down. We expect that we could monitor the blocking items on the database but we don't have that feature."

"The security could always be improved."

"The security needs improvement, which is why we are moving away from Solar Winds. We have security concerns."

More SolarWinds Network Device Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"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 pricing is cheaper than other competing products, which is better for our budgets."

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

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance pricing and cost advice

"The enterprise license is good for the SolarWinds Network Device Monitor. However, it is expensive, they should reduce their price."

"The product is expensive."

"Thankfully, it doesn't take a lot of manpower to install and deploy."

"The price of the SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is good."

"I find the cost of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor reasonable for our company. Though, I'm not aware of the exact licensing cost."

"SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is not an expensive solution."

"I rate the product's price as three to three and a half or on a scale of one to ten, where one means low price, and ten means high price."

"Well, we had a perpetual license and the renewal was $20 to $25,000."

More SolarWinds Network Device Monitor pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Network Monitoring Software solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

37%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

13%

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.

What is your primary use case for Accedian Skylight?

What advice do you have for others considering Accedian Skylight?

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

What do you like most about SolarWinds Network Device Monitor?

I rate the product's initial setup process a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one means it is a difficult phase and ten is an easy process.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds Network Device Monitor?

SolarWinds pricing is on the higher side, and in India, every customer is cautious about commercial aspects.

What needs improvement with SolarWinds Network Device Monitor?

SolarWinds Network Device Monitor should include automatic diagrams in its network solutions. Additionally, there is a challenge with having to add an additional polling engine after 10,000 element...

ThousandEyes vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Comparisons

Compared 45% of the time

Dynatrace vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 14% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 12% of the time

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 10% of the time

Zabbix vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 8% of the time

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance Competitors

ScienceLogic vs SolarWinds Network Device Monitor

Compared 25% of the time

IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) vs SolarWinds Network Device Monitor

Compared 23% of the time

FortiMonitor vs SolarWinds Network Device Monitor

Compared 20% of the time

Checkmk vs SolarWinds Network Device Monitor

Compared 9% of the time

Zabbix vs SolarWinds Network Device Monitor

Compared 8% of the time

More SolarWinds Network Device Monitor Competitors

Product Reports

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Download Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance product report

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance report

SolarWinds Network Device Monitor

Download SolarWinds Network Device Monitor product report

SolarWinds Network Device Monitor report

Also Known As

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

Network Device Monitor

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

Network Device Monitor is a free tool that makes it easy to monitor the real-time performance and health of a single device on your network with a desktop dashboard that alerts you when your device is in trouble.

SolarWinds

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

Air Rarotonga

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. SolarWinds Network Device Monitor