Ixia Hawkeye vs Kentik comparison

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Ixia Hawkeye

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

Kentik and Ixia Hawkeye compete in network monitoring and performance management. Kentik's pricing and support are more favorable, while Ixia Hawkeye's features justify its higher cost.

Features: Kentik offers real-time traffic analysis, anomaly detection, and customizable dashboards. Ixia Hawkeye provides synthetic testing, service assurance, and proactive monitoring, focusing on comprehensive performance insights.

Room for Improvement:Kentik could enhance its advanced reporting capabilities, expand integration options, and improve error debugging. Ixia Hawkeye may benefit from simplified deployment options, better user interface, and enhanced scalability for smaller networks.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Kentik has a straightforward deployment model and responsive customer service focused on resolving queries. Ixia Hawkeye's deployment is complex, but its dedicated technical support is highly regarded for expertise.

Pricing and ROI: Kentik's pricing supports faster ROI due to lower setup costs and ease of deployment. Ixia Hawkeye's higher setup costs include sophisticated features that improve long-term ROI for businesses needing detailed analytics.

To learn more, read our detailed Ixia Hawkeye vs. Kentik Report (Updated: June 2025).

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Ixia Hawkeye vs. Kentik

June 2025

Helped 859,438 peers since 2012

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

Ixia Hawkeye

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

37th

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Unified Communications Monitoring (4th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (35th)

Kentik

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

33rd

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (17th)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Ixia Hawkeye is 0.2%, down from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kentik is 0.8%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

José Enrique Cano Rodriguez

Assistant Consultant at Tata Consultancy

A valuable tool for optimizing network performance and security with comprehensive network monitoring capabilities, user-friendly interface, and flexibility for scripting

Distinguishing itself from network management systems like SolarWinds Orion and Dataminer, Hawkeye offers a distinctive feature. It empowers network administrators to access specialized and detailed views for specific tests, including video streaming and performance related to specific applications like video games. In contrast, SolarWinds and Dataminer typically offer a more general evaluation of network health. Hawkeye's unique capability enables a detailed analysis of network performance through specific tests, allowing administrators to identify areas in need of improvement and take precise actions to enhance network performance.

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ADRIANA SALDARRIAGA TOBON

Sales Manager at IFX NEtworks

Client experience and cybersecurity have improved with an easy setup

The solution is valuable for client experience, especially in the financial sector. The most important feature is cybersecurity. The pricing is good, but the functionality is the most important aspect for clients. The solution is easy to deploy and requires only one person to set up, making it easy and quick. Overall, the ease of use and the fact that it meets client expectations are major positives.

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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

"It empowers network administrators to access specialized and detailed views for specific tests, including video streaming and performance related to specific applications like video games."

"The most valuable feature is the deployment because it's very easy to deploy real flow through the network."

"Our customer was happiest with the price of this product."

"The ease of setup is the most valuable aspect of this solution. It's easy to set up and run tests."

"Overall, I would give Kentik nine out of ten stars."

"In terms of the solution’s real-time visibility across our network infrastructure, I have not been able to find any other monitoring or netflow visualization tool that gives me the kind of information I get from Kentik. If I need to take a deep-dive into something that I see, it's really easy for me to do that. Whereas with most other things, I have to use five or six other tools to get that kind of data, with Kentik, I have it all in one place."

"Overall, the ease of use and the fact that it meets client expectations are major positives."

"It offers a simple yet powerful feature of classifying applications, going beyond basic statistics."

"One of the valuable features is the intuitive nature of building out reports, and then triggering actions based on specific metrics from those reports. It has a really good UI and the ability to surface data through the reporting functions is pretty good. That's helped a lot in the security space."

"Having the API access allows us to do a great deal of automation around a lot of our reporting and management tools."

"The most valuable feature is being able to pull traffic patterns; to and from destinations. We're able to understand where our traffic is going, our top talkers from an AS set, as well as where our traffic's coming from."

"I am able to do a lot of work on the visualization end to create different visualizations and different ways to get information out of it."

More Kentik pros

Cons

"Improvements in network performance are essential."

"Ixia has one flaw, which is that they do not print the license code on the paper licenses that are shipped to the customers."

"You can't delete more than one thing at a time. It would be great to be able to highlight three out of five things and delete them, whether it's a test or an actual report."

"The customization of tests and even the results can be improved."

"There is room for improvement around the usability of the API. It's a hugely complex task to call it and you need a lot of backing to be able to do it. I should say, as someone who's not in networking, maybe it's easier for people who are in networking, but for me that one part is not very user-friendly."

"I've checked out the V4 version of the interface and it's still a little bit clunky for me to use. I still go back to the old interface. That's definitely one that they still need to work on. It doesn't seem like everything that you get in the V3, the older interface, is there. For instance, I was trying to add a user or do the administrative tasks in V4, and I couldn't figure out where I was supposed to do that."

"The product could strive for more improvements to become closer to perfect."

"I consider the pricing model as an area for improvement."

"In recent months, I've noticed that while the industry is trending towards AI, Kentik has room for improvement in this area."

"I would like to see them explore the area of cost analysis."

"I believe they're already working on this, but I would love for them to create better integrations from network flow data to application performance — tracing — so that we could overlay that data more readily. With more companies going hybrid, flow logs and flow data, whether it be VPC or on-prem, matched with application performance and trace data, is pretty important."

"We had faced some issues during an outage and were not able to get the desired results from Kentik tools. It took time to resolve these issues, which is why I give them eight points."

More Kentik cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It cost us approximately 25,000 for two years. This is cheaper than ThousandEyes."

"In larger networks, the costs for licenses tend to be more reasonable, but for smaller networks, it appears relatively costly."

"We have an annual contract with Kentik that we renew each year for a set number of licenses. We also have some burstable licenses which we can spin up and spin down, and those are paid as they are used."

"The tool is cheaply priced."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

12%

Energy/Utilities Company

Government

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Ixia Hawkeye?

It empowers network administrators to access specialized and detailed views for specific tests, including video streaming and performance related to specific applications like video games.

What needs improvement with Ixia Hawkeye?

Improvements in network performance are essential.

What is your primary use case for Ixia Hawkeye?

Our objective is to evaluate the performance of GPON and DOCSIS networks which involves considering factors such as pricing, sales, and the technical aspects of conducting tests. To achieve this, v...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kentik?

I would say Kentik's pricing is not cheap. From my perspective as part of the technical team, I would not categorize it as expensive, but I know it is not cheap.

What needs improvement with Kentik?

There's always room for improvements and better relations when using any kind of product. We faced some issues with Kentik UI and alerting, which we asked them to fix, and they succeeded. They have...

What is your primary use case for Kentik?

We are using Kentik mostly for synthetic tests, and from one last year, network monitoring as well. We are using it for inter DC BGP tests and server monitoring as well.

ThousandEyes vs Ixia Hawkeye

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Compared 12% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs Ixia Hawkeye

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Datadog vs Kentik

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Arbor DDoS vs Kentik

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Product Reports

Network Monitoring Software

May 2025

Download Ixia Hawkeye product report

Download Kentik product report

June 2025

Overview

Hawkeye quickly and effectively validates network performance, isolates problems, and proactively detects issues by running scheduled verification tests. Using a combination of hardware and software agents called Performance Endpoints, Hawkeye simulates application traffic and sends key performance metrics to a central console for fast action.

Keysight Technologies

Kentik's AIOps Network Traffic Intelligence platform unifies network operations, performance, security, and business intelligence.

With a purpose-built big data engine delivered as public or private SaaS, Kentik captures a high-resolution view of actual network traffic data and enriches it with critical application and business data, so every network event or analysis can be tied to revenue & costs, customer & user experience, performance & risk.

Sample Customers

EMA

Pandora, Yelp, Neustar, Box, University of Washington, Zoom, Tata, and Cogent.