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DX Spectrum vs NetBrain comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 11, 2024

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
118
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (7th), Network Monitoring Software (17th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (18th), DX NetOps (1st)
NetBrain
Ranking in Network Troubleshooting
19th
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Network Automation (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Network Troubleshooting category, the mindshare of DX Spectrum is 8.2%, up from 5.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetBrain is 3.5%, down from 4.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Troubleshooting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
DX Spectrum8.2%
NetBrain3.5%
Other88.3%
Network Troubleshooting
 

Featured Reviews

PinchasAlbalya - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
Monitoring has become centralized and management now sees real‑time health of key network assets
The time investment required is significant, not because of difficulty but because of the need for free time to invest in it. We need to get the knowledge. We know there are many options, but we took an external vendor to install and make the customization. If we want to make others changes without paying for customization, we need to learn it deeply by ourselves. The tutorials are very complicated. They could work on that area. The tutorial part could be more simplified. I know there are many explanations, and you can get help or documents in one click on the current page in the product, but it is not very clear. If you want to do something new that you did not see from the vendor in the installation, it is not very simple. The documents are good for people that know how to operate the product well, but for new users, it is not simple.
Deborah Gamelin - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President at Asset Track for Cloud, LLC
Good monitoring and troubleshoot capabilities, improves overall network traffic visibility
In my organization, we had 130,000 network devices that needed to be brought into the solution and mapped. NetBrain can handle the scale but the engineers that manage those devices have to go in and update all of them to allow NetBrain permission to poll them. It can get a little stressful for everybody when you're trying to roll out new stuff when you've got other issues that have to be addressed with other devices. In some cases, our devices had no automation at all. One example is the Cisco 3650. Right now, if you went through the inventory list, you see that we have different versions running. Some are on one version, whereas others are on another version. The problem with upgrading them is that they need to be done overnight because we don't want to disrupt any network traffic during business hours. Consequently, it could take us years to upgrade the versions before we can even get them onto these new tools. This may be an internal issue but it's a big one when you have a lot of devices. Even if you had 10,000 devices, it's still an issue. You have to consider the compatibility of the device against the tool, and being able to use certain commands to upgrade it.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The automation we have in place saves us some head count and data is now more accurate."
"Spectrum does such a great job of discovering our network that we have a high confidence in what our inventory is and because of that we're confident in the reporting we get."
"Its ability to alert us on network issues before they become critical is a great benefit."
"We can monitor MPLS network VPN, network configuration, and backups. It's highly scalable for network configuration management."
"If you like to sleep at night and not be disturbed on the weekends, get Spectrum."
"The way our network is structured, CA Spectrum seems to be able to deal with problems that we have coming up in real time."
"Offers a lot of functionality."
"The network mapping functionality."
"Once it's up and running and you don't have the strange requirements I had, and you just want some basic maps, it'll work."
"Other advice to users considering the solution would be: go with NetBrain."
"This product has good network monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities."
"Chain management is a good feature. I don't get it on other solutions."
"Enables maps to be drawn out."
"NetBrain is a very simple tool."
"This tool is exactly what we wanted and needed."
"A reliable, time-saving tool for providing accurate layer 2 and layer 3 network mappings."
 

Cons

"For small/medium companies, it is still too expensive, making the ideal candidates large enterprises, which would certainly benefit from the ROI within a year."
"The only pain point I have is some issues with support and the timeliness of getting a resolution."
"Technical Support: 7-8/10 but sometimes I think that technical support could be more flexible."
"I think the interface needs a bit of a revamp. They need to adapt it to the new app world that it is now ruling (iOS, Android Apps), and it needs to offer more."
"It has a limitation in that it needed an old version of Java."
"I think the management or configuration of devices needs some improvement."
"Huawei devices are not properly supported, and there are incompatibility issues related to certain protocols."
"The biggest issue is our integration right now between UIM and Spectrum is lacking."
"Support needs to improve for the installed product and some of the reporting could be more flexible to provide more complete cataloging."
"Licensing is based on a per-device basis, which means that it can get very expensive if you have a large number of devices."
"Netbrain must get AWS functionality done."
"The pricing needs to be improved."
"The solution could integrate more automation."
"If you're comparing NetBrain as an NDR, I would rate it as a four or five, however, NetBrain has a different aspect of looking at things within the network."
"It's okay on the value, a bit expensive for just maps, but makes it a lot easier to see things visually and take it from there."
"Each device needs to be configured to allow NetBrain to poll for the information it needs, which can be very time-consuming for a large network."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is very pricey. With the current trend of enterprises moving towards cheaper and more modern looking solutions like ManageEngine, SevOne, ServicePilot, and Paesller."
"Spectrum is expensive."
"In general, the license cost will be about 30% of the total TCO for this tool (hardware/support team, OS costs, and OS management)."
"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."
"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."
"DX Spectrum's pricing is neither expensive nor cheap."
"The product, support, and maintenance are all expensive, which is another reason that we are switching to another solution."
"The price is very high."
"The product is expensive, but less expensive than some of the competition and worth the price."
"Licensing is based on a per-device basis, which means that it can get very expensive if you have a large number of devices."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Outsourcing Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise90
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with DX Spectrum?
The time investment required is significant, not because of difficulty but because of the need for free time to invest in it. We need to get the knowledge. We know there are many options, but we to...
What is your primary use case for DX Spectrum?
The university purchased DX Spectrum, called ICE. DX Spectrum NAC is working for us only on Cisco 9200 switches. It is not working on any other switch like C1000 or HG or any 2960X. Even other Cisc...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

CA Spectrum
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

National Informatics Centre India, Banese, Olympus, AlphaServe Technologies, Sicredi
CompuCon, TD Ameritrade, Move Inc.
Find out what your peers are saying about DX Spectrum vs. NetBrain and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
921,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.