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DX Spectrum vs NetMon vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of DX Spectrum is 1.0%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetMon is 0.4%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 4.5%, down from 5.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SolarWinds NPM4.5%
DX Spectrum1.0%
NetMon0.4%
Other94.1%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

DickBaker - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
AshishDubey - PeerSpot reviewer
A stable and scalable tool useful for network behavior analysis, DPA, and network forensic services
I have not worked much on LogRhythm NetMon to be able to comment on what needs improvement in the product since there is another team in our company that is working on the solution presently. LogRhythm NetMon's pricing model is an area of concern that should be made a little bit cheaper in comparison to the other players in the market currently. With players like IBM QRadar that propose QNI or Darktrace in the market, LogRhythm NetMon needs to consider a reduction in its pricing model.
Masud Alam - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers alerting service to trigger alerts and easy to manage
For end-user performance monitoring, we like features such as availability of our all devices and device/interface monitoring. We have also used NCM (Network Configuration Manager) for our network. We use the alerting service to trigger alerts based on specific thresholds, like CPU or memory utilization exceeding a certain percentage. There are AI network initiatives in SolarWinds NPM for some lengthy issues. For example, it shows availability reports. But for bandwidth monitoring, it's not very clear how much bandwidth is being consumed. SolarWinds provide real-time bandwidth monitoring. It is not difficult to manage the network with SolarWinds. We have one customer with a satellite location. If we have a large network with, let's say, 43,000 elements, and our current SolarWinds license supports only 30,000, we would need to create another polling engine to accommodate the additional 13,000 elements. It's limited to the polling engine, so we can only support 30,000 elements per engine. So it's only for 30,000, but we have at least 40,000 elements in our network.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The tool is very mature, and its valuable features are monitoring and configuration management."
"​It covers a lot of different types of hardware. It can do a lot and saves us time.​"
"​The stability of the product is key. It never breaks, really. The stability and reliability of the Spectrum product have been top-notch.​"
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the auto-discovery, which is nice because you don't have to do anything to add a new component."
"The granular access control that it provided so that you could only see devices that were related to what you were working on was great. I couldn't see the entire inventory of devices. I could only see the ones that were related to my work. It has got a very granular access control component."
"I have found the cross analysis feature to be the most valuable."
"It helps our NetOps group actually handle alarms in a way that lets them see the bigger picture of those alarms, and how they might affect our services. It helps us communicate information about the network state better to services that might be impacted by a specific network condition."
"NetMon's best feature is traffic analysis."
"LogRhythm NetMon's most impressive feature is that it's a bundled package, so you're not just relying on monthly data; you get a six-month view for more comprehensive indicators of compromise. This dual approach is precious. We implement LogRhythm NetMon in our cybersecurity strategy mainly for compliance and correlation of network, user, and decision activities, particularly for network firewalls and access control."
"The initial setup is straightforward because we can deploy an open server."
"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."
"The most valuable feature is the log, which can be analyzed by our SIEM solution."
"It has a very strong artificial intelligence engine."
"The analytics feature is the most valuable feature."
"The protocols with which you see the traffic for a particular website that a client has in their environment, for example, are valuable. We can monitor whether the traffic is up to the mark or whether they need to add more bandwidth. Also, we can see if we're able to get real-time environment data as well. The customization dashboard is really good. LogRhythm NetMon has its own in-built dashboards which are helpful in guiding customization."
"The other valuable system is the DSS (decision support system). If there's a fault in the network, SolarWinds is basically capable of rectifying and resolving that problem on its own without any intervention from an IP assistant or administrator."
"It covers everything from end to end, from the standpoint of endpoint machines and the routers and switches. The switch port also comes there."
"The product is scalable."
"The interface is user-friendly, making it easy to use."
"The most valuable feature is the way it monitors the environment, and how user-friendly the console is for the end-user. The interface is also very easy and it captures all the information very well."
"The solution is easy to install and it takes a couple of hours."
"SolarWinds is user-friendly with a manageable console."
"With just three modules, I can monitor server performance (whether it’s a VM, in the cloud, or an on-premises server."
 

Cons

"From a functionality perspective, the product is not doing what it should. Also, there are some concerns about the accessibility. I would appreciate additional out-of-the-box troubleshooting scripts, like templates for addressing various issues. Currently, when troubleshooting online, I need to create my scripts. It would be beneficial if the platform could provide pre-built scripts or templates to help automate certain troubleshooting tasks."
"We have had one support issue that's been open for a couple of months, and it is currently open."
"The biggest issue is our integration right now between UIM and Spectrum is lacking."
"A better integration with the UIM, as far as being able to do root cause analysis and that type of analytics."
"From the users perspective the looks and feel of dashboards of Spectrum would be easier to use and for understanding as APM will be in 10.5 version which we saw in CA World."
"I think the management or configuration of devices needs some improvement."
"The solution could improve by allowing the ability to monitor the network shortly after installing the software and adding an auto-discovery function."
"Support from Broadcom could be better. Sometimes we wait a very long time for a solution to level three problems."
"Sometimes it's hard to find the network devices' self-audit logs."
"The main concern is that LogRhythm has not improved NetMon but instead introduced a separate product, which many customers, including us, would prefer to be integrated into a single platform for easier management."
"Could use a topology diagram which would help get an exact visual."
"There is an issue with tunneling in relation to how the connectivity is established between the end devices and where NetMon is installed. On the console, I often observe that there's a difference of a few seconds or maybe a minute, and this lag time should not be there."
"The platform's integration features often need to be improved."
"I would like to see better integration with multiple products. Integration is not something that is readily available for most of the products."
"The training for this product is not very good and needs to be improved."
"LogRhythm NetMon's pricing model is an area of concern that should be made a little bit cheaper in comparison to the other players in the market currently."
"If they could combine everything into one product, that would be very helpful."
"A feature I would ask for is for them to have this solution available for Linux systems instead of Windows."
"A need for improvement is in the technical support provided by SolarWinds. Customers have given feedback about the delayed response times from the technical team, especially during application-level issues."
"One of the challenges with SolarWinds is that in order to pull the data, we have to have a lot of false positives."
"Application Performance Monitoring should be included in this solution."
"The root cause analysis and installation faults are not clear."
"Fortigate firewalls are one example of a product that we are unable to monitor properly via SolarWinds NPM."
"We also had to be attentive to vulnerabilities, because SolarWinds NPM have some issues in that area. We had to work with our security team, so that they could help us check and backup the data, and check what they needed to secure."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing could be better."
"It’s a great tool, but an expensive one. Learn how to use it properly."
"The price is very high."
"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."
"It is very pricey. With the current trend of enterprises moving towards cheaper and more modern looking solutions like ManageEngine, SevOne, ServicePilot, and Paesller."
"DX Spectrum's pricing depends on the license number. It is affordable."
"The price is good enough to expect an ideal solution. It's expensive."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"I don't have visibility into the pricing of LogRhythm NetMon as it's handled through our commercial partnerships."
"The price of this solution is too high, so it should be made more practical and more valuable for the customer."
"The product is expensive for smaller companies."
"NetMon's licensing costs about $85k per year, with some extra costs for support."
"Pricing is okay. There were some competitors that were extremely expensive and there were some which were really inexpensive but LogRhythm stayed in the middle of them."
"LogRhythm's licensing part is something that depends on the license you want since they offer it on a perpetual and subscription basis."
"The pricing needs to be improved. It is too high. One full engine costs around $10 000, which is why we don't have high availability right now."
"Some solutions are open source and free."
"I would rate the pricing a five out of ten"
"We have a multi-year license for the use of this solution. There are additional costs for recourses in the environment."
"Quite highly priced"
"Price could be improved on"
"The licensing model is such that you can purchase only what you need; and then grow into the next level by paying only the difference in price and the associated maintenance costs."
"I’d suggest that people be aware that licensing has tiers."
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 31, 2015
Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor
I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
No data available
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise88
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise84
 

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.
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 ...
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. O...
What do you like most about LogRhythm NetMon?
It has a very strong artificial intelligence engine.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for LogRhythm NetMon?
I don't have visibility into the pricing of LogRhythm NetMon as it's handled through our commercial partnerships.
What needs improvement with LogRhythm NetMon?
The main concern is that LogRhythm has not improved NetMon but instead introduced a separate product, which many cust...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
It actually depends on the exact purpose or kind of devices (network devices, servers, something else). Some tools ar...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
We are partners with SolarWinds and we sell a lot of Network management to large enterprises also because of scalabil...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

CA Spectrum
LogRhythm Network Monitor
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

National Informatics Centre India, Banese, Olympus, AlphaServe Technologies, Sicredi
Sera-Brynn
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, Auvik, SolarWinds and others in Network Monitoring Software. Updated: September 2025.
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