DX Spectrum vs Plixer Scrutinizer comparison

Broadcom and Plixer are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Broadcom is ranked #20 with an average rating of 8.7, while Plixer is ranked #52 with an average rating of 8.0. Broadcom holds a 1.0% mindshare in NMS, compared to Plixer’s 0.4% mindshare. Additionally, 89% of Broadcom users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of Plixer users who would recommend it.

DX Spectrum

Read 117 DX Spectrum reviews

2,800 Views
1,764 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Plixer Scrutinizer

Read 15 Plixer Scrutinizer reviews

1,289 Views
877 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

DX Spectrum

Plixer Scrutinizer

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

DX Spectrum and Plixer Scrutinizer compete in the network monitoring and analysis category. Plixer Scrutinizer has the upper hand in real-time traffic insights and integration capabilities.

Features: DX Spectrum offers network monitoring with fault isolation, topology views, and device compatibility. It is favored for ease of use and scalability. Plixer Scrutinizer is noted for detailed network traffic analysis, advanced reporting, and strong integration.

Room for Improvement: DX Spectrum should improve configurations, reporting, and reduce Java reliance. It needs better third-party integration and a more user-friendly interface. Plixer Scrutinizer could improve the update process and consider a SaaS-based solution. It requires better scalability and network tool integration.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: DX Spectrum is primarily on-premises, robust but complex in setup. Customer service varies, with mixed reviews post-Broadcom acquisition. Plixer Scrutinizer offers rapid deployment and straightforward licensing, with generally satisfied customer service.

Pricing and ROI: DX Spectrum is high-cost, suited for large enterprises due to its licensing model, with high ROI potential. Plixer Scrutinizer offers competitive pricing based on device flow data, cost-effective for medium to large businesses seeking network traffic analysis.

To learn more, read our detailed DX Spectrum vs. Plixer Scrutinizer Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

DX Spectrum vs. Plixer Scrutinizer

September 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 Monitoring Software

20th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

117

Ranking in other categories

Network Management Applications (7th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (19th), Network Troubleshooting (6th), DX NetOps (1st)

Plixer Scrutinizer

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

52nd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (11th)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 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 Plixer Scrutinizer is 0.4%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
DX Spectrum	1.0%
Plixer Scrutinizer	0.4%
Other	98.6%

Network Monitoring Software

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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Ira Mulyanti

Sales Director at ARGA SOLUSI

An affordable product with great integration capabilities

Plixer Core Platform is a valuable feature and a good software. Plixer Scrutinizer uses NetFlow analysis to monitor whatever is there in a network. Price-wise, Plixer Scrutinizer is not an expensive product. Basically, Plixer Scrutinizer is an affordable product. Plixer Scrutinizer is a tool that allows for customization, especially in scenarios where customers need new product features. Plixer Scrutinizer is a tool that can integrate with any other brand or product in the market, so it is not an area of concern.

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 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."

"Generally, I would recommend DX Spectrum because, despite its pricing issue, it is a valuable solution."

"The Spectrum tool improved our network assurance levels for our business units."

"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."

"The performance manager is very good."

"Stability has been good. We really have not had any issues."

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

"It creates transparency and makes everything work by being more transparent."

More DX Spectrum pros

"One of the most valuable features of Plixer Scrutinizer is the reporting, particularly how easy it is to drill down into the reports. Another valuable feature of the solution is its overall visibility. It's great. I also liked Plixer Scrutinizer in terms of deployment time and that it's very simple to set up. Once you get the appliance set up and connected, the customer starts to see results immediately, versus other solutions where that could take a while."

"As a network engineer, the ability to identify what traffic on the link is consuming all the bandwidth at any given time, and provide immediate feedback to the business, is the most valuable feature."

"There are other tools out there that will do what Scrutinizer does. But what I have found with Scrutinizer is that it does it very quickly. I've taken 25 million individual data fragments from the different sensors, and it has graphed that and mapped it and presented a picture within 30 seconds. It has a very efficient database algorithm that I am really impressed with."

"We didn't experience any bugs."

"Plixer Scrutinizer is an affordable product. Plixer Scrutinizer is a tool that allows for customization, especially in scenarios where customers need new product features."

"The solution helps to enrich the data context of our network traffic. It allows me to see what applications are most in use on a slightly historical basis, going back a day or week at tops. It allows me to tune QoS or traffic shaping around what's being used. It saves me from having to unnecessarily upgrade, if I don't need to."

"One feature I found most valuable in Plixer Scrutinizer is the very extensive reporting. Reporting is very flexible, though sometimes you need a little bit of support from Plixer Scrutinizer to create custom-made reporting in a very short time. Reporting is a very strong feature of the product."

"The most valuable features of the solution are the ability to track what a device is doing and to go back historically. It is also able to go down to, and identify, very low levels of traffic."

More Plixer Scrutinizer pros

Cons

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

"I would recommend AI capability built-in so it becomes more predictable and we jump ahead of the curve. This is the one really important feature I would really like to see in any product that provides alarms."

"It was somewhat complex to implement."

"The GIS map feature needs to be enhanced and synced with topology views of containers and global collections."

"A better integration with the UIM, as far as being able to do root cause analysis and that type of analytics."

"If nobody else has said the documentation needs improvement, let's go there. I understand, you can either write about it or you can do it. And most of us would rather they do it, but now that they've done it, those of us that didn't do it, we need to go and find: "Where did they write about this to tell us how to do it?" That's always lacking."

"We have had some issues with the spec server and the high availability replication of data. It fails over well, but it does not come back very well. We get duplicated events."

"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..."

More DX Spectrum cons

"They're working on the security areas, so it can provide more insight. What they have is still pretty much IP-concentric. If they were to make it IP and URL, they'd be a little bit ahead on that."

"Though Plixer Scrutinizer has network detection and response, it's an area that needs just a little more rounding out. Another room for improvement in the solution is its lack of SaaS offering which some customers were looking for. My company deals in small to medium businesses, mid-market, and some customers wanted the SaaS feature which Plixer Scrutinizer doesn't offer. What I'd like to see in the next release of the solution is for it to have a SaaS offering because my company also deals with educational spaces and smaller businesses that just don't have the staff that can implement this. If there's either a managed service or SaaS-based offering to just make it a little easier for those types of customers, it would be a great addition to Plixer Scrutinizer."

"From what I understand it is that the solution is not very scalable in a high volume traffic environment with a large number of flows."

"It would be useful if there was a way to back up the configuration information. E.g., if you wanted to deploy a new instance or disaster recovery, you could quite easily deploy and restore the config, as opposed to having to restore all the NetFlow data. If there was just a button that said "backup config information", that would be good."

"We couldn't get it set up properly."

"Knowing that they're coming out with a new user interface, that is an area where there is room for improvement. There are so many variables. They should limit the variables in the user interface and create some classes, like "simple," "novice," and "expert" to narrow down the variables within it."

"In Plixer Scrutinizer, scalability is an area with minor concerns where improvements are required."

"I wish the reporting side was easier to work with, but it does a decent job. I also wish the reporting side was a little more intuitive or they offered more reporting examples."

More Plixer Scrutinizer cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"The price is very high."

"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."

"In general, the license cost will be about 30% of the total TCO for this tool (hardware/support team, OS costs, and OS management)."

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

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

"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’s a great tool, but an expensive one. Learn how to use it properly."

More DX Spectrum pricing and cost advice

"We have increased the license over time. We have added more licenses as the network has grown."

"Our entire solution, amortized over five years, is in the vicinity of $40,000 to $50,000 a year."

"We recently bought a license upgrade, so we will integrate more exporters. We upgraded from a 25 exporter license to a 50 exporter license. Therefore, there will be more flows, and this will be an extension. I don't know when we will purchase a faster server, because the server that we have is quite new."

"There is a recurring maintenance fee after the initial purchase or if we want the license upgrade."

"It's about €10,000 a year for initial license and yearly maintenance costs. In addition, the hardware costs are about €10,000 once every five years."

"Compared to some of the other tools we have, it's incredibly reasonably priced."

"We just renewed. The pricing is 5,000 euro per year. This is the final price. All tax (20 percent) is included."

"I rate Plixer Scrutinizer's price a three on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price or affordable, and ten is high price or expensive."

More Plixer Scrutinizer pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Government

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	26
Midsize Enterprise	19
Large Enterprise	88

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	8

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

What do you like most about Plixer Scrutinizer?

Plixer Scrutinizer is an affordable product. Plixer Scrutinizer is a tool that allows for customization, especially in scenarios where customers need new product features.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Plixer Scrutinizer?

I rate Plixer Scrutinizer's price a three on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price or affordable, and ten is high price or expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Plixer Scrutinizer?

I don't have deep enough knowledge to comment on what requires improvements in Plixer Scrutinizer. In Plixer Scrutinizer, scalability is an area with minor concerns where improvements are required.

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 12% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs DX Spectrum

Compared 11% of the time

Nagios XI vs DX Spectrum

Compared 8% of the time

DX NetOps vs DX Spectrum

Compared 8% of the time

OpenText Network Node Manager vs DX Spectrum

Compared 5% of the time

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SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 25% of the time

Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 25% of the time

PRTG Network Monitor vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 21% of the time

Kentik vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 20% of the time

ExtraHop Reveal(x) for IT Operations vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 10% of the time

More Plixer Scrutinizer Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

DX Spectrum

October 2025

Download DX Spectrum product report

Buyer's Guide

Plixer Scrutinizer

October 2025

Download Plixer Scrutinizer 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

The Scrutinizer incident response system leverages network traffic analytics to provide active monitoring, visualization, and reporting of network and security incidents. The system quickly delivers the rich forensic data needed by IT professionals to support fast and efficient incident response.

Plixer

Sample Customers

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

Oxford Networks, Squaw Valley Ski Holdings, UltiSat, Wipro, West Aurora School District 129, SUNY Geneseo College, Bloomington Public Schools, First National Bank of Pennsylvania, Kitsap Credit Union, Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County Houston Texas, Carilion Clinic, Banner Health, IDEXX Laboratories, Phibro Animal Health Corporation, Goodwill Industries, Parmalat, Armstrong Coal Company, Flybe, James Walker

Buyer's Guide

DX Spectrum vs. Plixer Scrutinizer

September 2025

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