DX Spectrum vs LinkRunner comparison

Broadcom and NetAlly are both solutions in the Network Troubleshooting category. Broadcom is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.7, while NetAlly is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.0. Broadcom holds a 4.6% mindshare in NT, compared to NetAlly’s 16.1% mindshare. Additionally, 89% of Broadcom users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of NetAlly users who would recommend it.

DX Spectrum

Read 117 DX Spectrum reviews

2,741 Views
192 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

LinkRunner

Read 20 LinkRunner reviews

2,303 Views
2,303 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

DX Spectrum

LinkRunner

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 11, 2024

DX Spectrum and LinkRunner are competing networking tools. Despite DX Spectrum's competitive pricing and excellent customer support, LinkRunner stands out with superior features.

Features: DX Spectrum is known for its intuitive design, comprehensive reporting tools, and competitive pricing. LinkRunner offers advanced diagnostic capabilities, superior features, and efficient performance.

Room for Improvement: DX Spectrum could enhance the speed of its reporting functions, streamline its interface, and expand its feature set. LinkRunner could improve its user-friendly interface, reduce complexity in deployment, and lower its initial cost.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: DX Spectrum has a seamless deployment process and responsive customer support. LinkRunner, while slightly more complex to deploy, is commended for its user support during the setup phase.

Pricing and ROI: DX Spectrum is recognized for its cost-effectiveness and solid ROI. LinkRunner, though requiring a higher initial investment, provides substantial ROI through its advanced capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed DX Spectrum vs. LinkRunner Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

DX Spectrum vs. LinkRunner

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

DX Spectrum

Ranking in Network Troubleshooting

6th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

117

Ranking in other categories

Network Management Applications (7th), Network Monitoring Software (21st), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (21st), DX NetOps (1st)

LinkRunner

Ranking in Network Troubleshooting

2nd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

8.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Network Troubleshooting category, the mindshare of DX Spectrum is 4.6%, up from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of LinkRunner is 16.1%, down from 23.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Troubleshooting

Featured Reviews

DickBaker

Network Design Engineer DTCC at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

An all-inclusive monitoring solution that adapts to emerging technologies

The product helps to correlate events. The solution's most valuable features are its integration with Broadcom tools and scalability. DX Spectrum needs better documentation on its complex features. I have been using the product since 2005. I rate DX Spectrum's stability an eight point five…

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Jesse_B

Manager of networks and infrastructure at a government with 5,001-10,000 employees

Impressive ease of use, gives comprehensive results in seconds, and saves a lot of time and resources

I've found the VLAN test feature to be most valuable. That's because not many devices do VLAN tests. Normally, I have to send a center technician to check a line and see if it's alive. If it's working, then I have to send a network technician out to log into a switch and see which port it's on and on which VLAN that port is. That's two persons and two separate visits. This device does all of this in a matter of seconds, and that has saved me a lot of time, troubleshooting, and resources. Its ease of use is very impressive. LinkRunner allows me to have my technicians run tests that are normally too complex and require a network specialist. AutoTest works with just one click. AutoTest does a lot of testing that would normally require a network specialist to log in to a switch and check out VLAN based on a port. My technicians don't have to log in to the switch anymore. They can just do AutoTest and information is provided online. So, I no longer have to send a specialist. I can have my technician run these very complex tests. It saves me on resources, time, and site visits. When it comes to troubleshooting, based on my experience, it has given very useful and very helpful information, especially for my field technicians. It has reduced my visits and the amount of presence because it gives a very comprehensive report on your network tests. It tests multiple variables and multiple parameters and gives a very informative report that makes it easy to pinpoint what is the root cause. There are many tools in this one solution. It's basically a bunch of toolkits or tool sets in one device, which makes it very powerful testing equipment.

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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 product’s stability and robustness are valuable."

"We can monitor MPLS network VPN, network configuration, and backups. It's highly scalable for network configuration management."

"The most valuable features have been the interface and the ability to do equipment management."

"It is easy to understand and determine when and/or where the network is failing."

"It is easy to navigate."

"The capability of handling and monitoring with SNMP and working with the SNMP traps is much better than other products."

"The Global Collections are what I found to be most valuable. With the Global Collections, you're able to organize and categorize devices into "folders," or functional groups and categories, so that it doesn't matter which SpectroSERVER those devices are on."

"The main thing is obviously notifications about alerts, getting ahead of the curve to make sure that we do not have system going down, or if it is down we get to know it earlier."

More DX Spectrum pros

"The solution's ability to simplify network validation and configuration of copper and fiber Ethernet networks is very useful to me. Otherwise, I’m guessing. Having a tool that I can trust doesn't solve all problems, but for the problems it solves, I can trust that it has told me “yes” or “no.” I would rate it highly for that."

"LinkRunner 10G is very handy for onsite troubleshooting and implementations. We can quickly identify the links in terms of 1G, 2.5G, 5G, and 10G on the copper side, and also from 1G up to 10G on the fiber side. It is very handy for me because we deal with a lot of banks. Especially for the provisioning of new services, we use this tool to identify the link capacity and do the necessary testing to ensure all the circuits are ready before the handover to the next team to operate the technology. This is something that saves a lot of time as compared to the old days."

"AutoTest is very helpful. It's very streamlined and it's very easy to set up and very easy to identify what we want to achieve. It's probably the feature we use the most. It provides us with LLTD, which is very useful."

"It is fast in providing results. It is pretty accurate."

"In terms of documenting ad hoc additions and other changes to wired ethernet connections, this product is very good. It keeps the information in the cloud and I have the ability to name it. This makes it very nice and easy to see."

"Performance testing is the most valuable feature. It gives a brief summary of the information we're looking at, such as latency, jitter, and the available throughput."

"I like the fact that I can tell the equipment to stop at a certain point during the test of a cable, to see whether or not there is basic connectivity. I can stop it before it starts pinging the outside world, such as Google or, perhaps, our core network switch. Those basic results—do I have a basic connection and power—finish up fast and I can move on."

"Having the results sent directly, via email, from the LinkRunner itself makes it really great for logging different things that you're trying to document within your organization. You can have a paper trail of what your organization has as far as infrastructure goes."

Cons

"Support from Broadcom could be better. Sometimes we wait a very long time for a solution to level three problems."

"It doesn't really allow for multi-tenancy. If you're an ISP or an MSP and you want to use this tool to provide these types of fault management services to your customers, you would need a separate SpectroSERVER for each customer..."

"The price of DX Spectrum is not competitive when compared to other solutions, such as SolarWinds. The high price has caused us to lose many deals."

"It needs better integration with other CA products."

"Huawei devices are not properly supported, and there are incompatibility issues related to certain protocols."

"DX Spectrum needs to incorporate faster support."

"It doesn’t give you performance metrics: You need CA eHealth for this."

"There should be better integration with other Broadcom products, like network performance manager. Currently, for every part of a product, you need a separate server environment. You have something for Spectrum, you have something for network performance, and you have something for NetFlow. There are a lot of islands and server farms with different technologies. They should be redeveloped to get one platform for all."

More DX Spectrum cons

"It's a bit bulky. It would be nicer if it were a little bit smaller and packed with all its features. I would also like it if the screen were a bit bigger."

"It is very stable. That being said, there is one feature that is not quite as stable as the rest of the product. You can leave it plugged into a location where you're doing some work and connect to it remotely by a program called VNC... sometimes that function breaks down, if you've been running for a couple of days... if you're remotely controlling it, you're probably not right next to it. That can be modestly annoying."

"I wish they had software that could create continuous streams of traffic. I'm not sure if that's possible with LinkRunner, but it would be very helpful in some of the test case scenarios that clients are looking for, in regards to quality of service"

"If it weren't for the battery, it would probably get an eight out of 10. But because of the battery, it's infuriating and it's not reliable."

"It is a great tool, but in the long-term, they can make its processor more powerful to do more functions. They can upgrade the hardware to make it run faster and more efficiently from the process point of view. That'll be beneficial because the technology is evolving and the network traffic is going higher and higher. We have to leverage better spec products to handle the traffic load."

"It does take a little while to boot up if it's turned off."

"Being really nitpicky about the LinkRunner G2, I wish the form factor was a little bit smaller. However, I'm sure that the size of the unit is compromised by the fact that the battery is large. If that were to mean having less battery life, I would not change it."

"One of the things I'd like to see in future versions of LinkRunner is a wireless dongle embedded into the product so that I don't need to have a separate wireless dongle. It should be built into that."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost of some of these products are a little cost prohibitive, which is unfortunate. We have to find lower cost solutions for some of the things that we have to pull in. For the most part, CA has capabilities in pretty much everything that you would need. You just have to figure out where are you going to spend the most money for what you have to actually get done. You can do all these things but, which ones do you have to do? And that's hard to choose sometimes because you want to do them all."

"The price of the solution is reasonable."

"It is expensive compared to other tools in the market."

"DX Spectrum's pricing depends on the license number. It is affordable."

"The price is very high."

"Currently, a perpetual license but some services are moving to a subscription"

"The product, support, and maintenance are all expensive, which is another reason that we are switching to another solution."

"Since the acquisition by Broadcom, we have not had such a good experience with licensing and pricing. Since they were bought by Broadcom, every sales contract is getting complicated. It's very complicated, and it's much more expensive than before. It's not a good pricing strategy from Broadcom."

More DX Spectrum pricing and cost advice

"The cost of this device is very expensive, especially with the NetAlly Care on top of the costs. It is not for personal use and would be very expensive for smaller businesses."

"Its pricing is all right. Of course, from the business point of view, the cheaper it is, the better it is, but I prefer to spend a bit more money to get a quick response, which is helpful especially when we are onsite or in a very critical situation. We are not only paying for the product. We are paying for the people behind the product in terms of developers and technical support. When you need some help, they will be behind it, and they'll support you. There are no additional costs other than the standard licensing fee."

"The 10Gig ones are quite expensive, and we have only two of them, but I know that this option was cheaper than the other 10Gig option we looked at, and we're very happy with it."

"They offer one price. I do like paying for support because I get software updates that way."

"It's reasonably priced in my market. It provides good value for money. The device is competitively priced as compared to other solutions. It gives you a lot of functionality and saves you a lot of time and resources. I see it as a good buy and good value for money. I stand for it."

"We... decided to go with NetAlly for the price and the bang for the buck."

"It was difficult to sell this to my management because the price is really high compared to other testing tools. However, we've seen a pretty good return on investment considering our outcomes and the time we have saved. The first year has been great."

"I didn't have to buy it, but if I was going to have my choice, I wouldn't buy it just because of the price point. It works pretty well to do one thing. For the cost, it is definitely not worth it. There are other products out there that can do the same thing for probably 70% less. I am not aware of any additional costs."

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Healthcare Company

University

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about DX Spectrum?

The solution's most valuable features are its integration with Broadcom tools and scalability.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for DX Spectrum?

The price of DX Spectrum is not competitive when compared to other solutions, such as SolarWinds. The high price has caused us to lose many deals.

See all answers

What needs improvement with DX Spectrum?

I would like to see improvements in making the interface more user-friendly. Many people find it not simple to use. One of the common customer complaints is about the alarm notifications. Currently...

See all answers

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Comparisons

Zabbix vs DX Spectrum

Compared 13% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs DX Spectrum

Compared 10% of the time

DX NetOps vs DX Spectrum

Compared 10% of the time

Nagios XI vs DX Spectrum

Compared 8% of the time

Broadcom Network Flow Analysis vs DX Spectrum

Compared 6% of the time

More DX Spectrum Competitors

NetAlly EtherScope nXG vs LinkRunner

Compared 31% of the time

IxChariot vs LinkRunner

Compared 30% of the time

LinkSprinter vs LinkRunner

Compared 24% of the time

AirCheck G3 vs LinkRunner

Compared 15% of the time

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

DX Spectrum

August 2025

Download DX Spectrum product report

Buyer's Guide

LinkRunner

August 2025

Download LinkRunner product report

Also Known As

CA Spectrum

No data available

Overview

DX Spectrum is a complete event and fault management system for network operations teams. The tool provides powerful capabilities for managing your dynamic, complex IT infrastructure, which includes physical, virtual, and cloud environments.The technology allows you to manage and optimize the infrastructure and the professional services that operate on top of it. DX Spectrum is a unified platform that helps your company enhance network service levels while lowering monitoring costs.

DX Spectrum has intelligent event correlation and root-cause analysis capabilities. It can pinpoint the precise components that are causing issues with availability and network settings. Reports and dashboards can be customized with role-based views. Change management solutions can also be used by teams to govern, track, and remediate changes across network devices.

DX Spectrum can identify multi-technology and multi-vendor stacks, as well as new software-defined networks (SDNs). It supports Multicast, MPLS, VPN, and VRF, among other routing protocols and technologies.

DX Spectrum Features

DX Spectrum has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Service management: DX Spectrum assists personnel in discovering, modeling, visualizing, monitoring, and managing the links between infrastructure and the business services it supports.

Fault detection: DX Spectrum offers unique solutions that automate device discovery and root cause analysis, allowing for faster issue detection and resolution.

Change management capabilities: DX Spectrum gives administrators the visibility and control they need to prevent erroneous modifications from causing network performance problems and outages.

Comprehensive visibility: With DX Spectrum, managers can receive comprehensive insight across physical, virtualized, and cloud environments, as well as a variety of technologies, platforms, and suppliers.

Customization: DX Spectrum provides administrators, users, and customers with pre-packaged, easily configurable dashboards and reports that may be adjusted to their individual needs. For maximum performance and visibility, it is intimately connected with other solutions within the DX Service Assurance and DX Service Management systems.

DX Spectrum Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing DX Spectrum. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Reduce symptomatic alarms and hasten resolution with DX Spectrum’s root-cause analysis and robust event correlation. Automatically map the relationships between your network infrastructure to find the source of service issues for faster resolution. Whether it's a network configuration or availability issue, our network fault management system pinpoints the exact component responsible for the issue.
DX Spectrum supports network access from wireless wearables, mobile phones, tablets, and laptops. Provide network operators with the tools they need to manage their wireless networks, decrease outages, and make them as stable as their wired networks. For wired and wireless networks, DX Spectrum offers a unified view.

Fault and event management can be integrated across the Agile Ops, Network Operations, and Analytics portfolios. Fault, inventory, and topology knowledge are combined with performance, application, and log monitoring and a unified view across a full-stack NetOps solution. Additional connections include business service and service desk management.

Reviews from Real Users

DX Spectrum stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its robust root cause analysis and its event correlation tool. PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews:

Umair A., Enterprise Solutions & Services Head at Duroob Technologies, writes of the product, “It covers networks very well. It has all the capabilities that you're looking for when it comes to monitoring. Spectrum is great for root cause analysis. It has excellent correlation event management. Spectrum's stability and scalability are also amazing. If you have a CA Service Desk, then it can be integrated so that if you have open tickets they can be closed automatically.”

Itarchit, an IT Architect at a comms service provider, notes, “The most valuable feature is the event correlation mechanism. I also like the product's multi-customer approach.” He adds, “We haven't seen a better product. Overall, I am happy with this solution. Based on the current market, I would rate DX Spectrum a nine out of ten.”

Broadcom

LinkRunner AT 3000 & 4000. Next Generation Copper and Fiber Ethernet AutoTester. Fast and comprehensive validation of network links and powerful copper and fiber network connectivity troubleshooting. Tests from 10Mbps to 10Gbps, PoE, VLAN, switch port, path analysis, packet capture, topology mapping and so much more!

NetAlly

Sample Customers

National Informatics Centre India, Banese, Olympus, AlphaServe Technologies, Sicredi

Philips Healthcare, HCA Healthcare, University of South Dakota, Memorial Hermann, Baltimore County Public Schools, Aaramrak.

Buyer's Guide

DX Spectrum vs. LinkRunner

July 2025

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