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DX Spectrum vs NetMaster Network Intelligence comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 2, 2025

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 Management Applications
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
118
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (18th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (19th), Network Troubleshooting (7th), DX NetOps (1st)
NetMaster Network Intelligence
Ranking in Network Management Applications
20th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
8.8
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Network Management Applications category, the mindshare of DX Spectrum is 5.0%, up from 3.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetMaster Network Intelligence is 3.0%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Management Applications Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
DX Spectrum5.0%
NetMaster Network Intelligence3.0%
Other92.0%
Network Management Applications
 

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.
it_user558525 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Analyst at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Streamlines quick and effective drill-down into the network stack for better troubleshooting
I would like to see a web-based interface that mimics the ease of doing data traces, similar to something like a Wireshark which is a Windows-based network monitoring tool. Wireshark is fast. I'm an old Windows guy, it's what I know. I think the liability of NetMaster is having to do things through the panels. It's slow to generate traces, and when you're doing a real-time troubleshooting call - when you have to wait 30 seconds for a process to spawn and fire up in order to give data back - 30 seconds is a long time when there's an issue. The user interface is probably the biggest impediment to my success with it.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We were able to monitor their entire network infrastructure and receive valuable alerting in a timely fashion so that we could react to any instances when there were down devices."
"The network monitoring features are the product’s most valuable, due to the lack of these capabilities in any other monitoring tool."
"Spectrum allows us to have a holistic view of our network architecture."
"Allows us to have a single console/notification point, with the alarms of all the tools that we use for monitoring."
"The capability of handling and monitoring with SNMP and working with the SNMP traps is much better than other products."
"The ability to monitor your WAN and LAN infrastructure in a simple GUI."
"The integration point."
"The alarm and root cause analysis features are the most valuable to me, as they help to pinpoint causes of outages and performance issues and identify the specific component responsible for an issue, thus accelerating problem and issue resolution."
"The support has been excellent. It is far and away the best among the products that our team supports."
"Stability-wise, the whole product runs great, especially with the automation; that's where it really shines."
"Otherwise, I think it is one of the better network products out there."
"I consider NetMaster to be the best-of-breed for network."
"The most valuable features are SNA and IP monitoring, and it has been very easy to define many thresholds, including self-defining baselines."
 

Cons

"Definitely the way this product needs to go is more web-based. They need to put more emphasis in the web technology."
"Code is very complex."
"Stability could be improved. I find on a regular basis that those of us on-call tend to usually have to go in and restart or reboot a Spectrum server because the landscape's gone down."
"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..."
"Currently, it's using BOXI/CABI, which is terrible as it’s unclear and I don’t like this."
"The technical support is average. We've had better support from other companies and also worse support from other companies."
"SpectroSERVER and reporting databases can grow quickly if you don't keep track of trap storms; this can cause SpectroSERVER to crash and performance issues with reporting."
"OS monitoring needs to be better developed, as well as their services, e.g., cluster monitoring, URLs, etc."
"I would like to see new release migrations made easier."
"I would like to see a web-based UI (major effort now in progress)."
"I think the liability of NetMaster is having to do things through the panels."
"The automation part could use improvement, but I do not do that much with it."
"I didn't think the SNMP function was easy to set up. That caused some problems with the address space."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Spectrum is expensive."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"DX Spectrum's pricing depends on the license number. It is affordable."
"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."
"It is expensive compared to other tools in the market."
"Currently, a perpetual license but some services are moving to a subscription"
"It’s a great tool, but an expensive one. Learn how to use it properly."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Construction Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
No data available
 

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
CA NetMaster Network Management. CA NetMaster, CA NetMaster Network Management for TCP/IP, CA NetMaster Network Management for SNA, CA NetMaster Network Management for TCP/IP
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

National Informatics Centre India, Banese, Olympus, AlphaServe Technologies, Sicredi
Tieto
Find out what your peers are saying about DX Spectrum vs. NetMaster Network Intelligence and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,099 professionals have used our research since 2012.