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: March 2026).

Ixia Hawkeye vs. Kentik

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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

Ixia Hawkeye

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

85th

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Unified Communications Monitoring (5th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (66th)

Kentik

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

29th

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (16th)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Ixia Hawkeye is 0.4%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kentik is 1.8%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Kentik	1.8%
Ixia Hawkeye	0.4%
Other	97.8%

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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Shubham-Saxena

Network Engineer III at Fortanix

Integrating synthetic tests and network monitoring enhances traffic pattern visualization

The Kentik support team is good. If you want me to rate them on a scale, I would give them eight. I had a call with the Kentik support team for fifteen minutes, so I'm going to give them eight for now. The reason for giving them an eight is that they are good and address our issues. They have monthly calls and discuss the product roadmap with us, including what is needed and what is not. However, when we are working on some real issues with Kentik, I sometimes feel there's a delay due to the busyness of their teams. We faced some outages and were not able to get the desired results from Kentik tools, so that took a little time to resolve.

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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

"So far, this product is doing exactly what it is promised to do."

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

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

"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."

"I would recommend Ixia Hawkeye because there are some KPIs that are very useful."

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

"Before using the solution, we had to do all these manual tasks, such as running all these queries manually, and building our tech cost-report used to be a two or two-and-a-half-week effort, and using Kentik, and the automation that it provides us, we've brought that down to a day or two, which is a massive time savings."

"This product is easily the best network monitor that I’ve ever seen or heard about."

"Collecting that data and having those metrics first-hand, in real-time, allows us to make an educated decision, versus an uneducated guess."

"Kentik is worth the money to have as a tool."

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

"Monitoring operational efficiency is easy."

"Kentik excels in telemetry within data centers and works well in multi-vendor environments."

More Kentik pros

Cons

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

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

"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."

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

"Improvements in network performance are essential."

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

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

"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."

"They're moving more in a direction where they are saying, "Hey, here's information that you may be interested in or may a need," before the question has to explicitly be asked. Continuing to move in that direction would be a good thing."

"The only downside to Kentik, something that I don't like, is that it's great that it shows you where these anomalies lie, but it's not actionable."

"There is a large difference between BGP and normal nodes. I don't think this plays out to the best for the customer or Kentik."

"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."

"Version 4 of the platform is good and going in the right direction."

More Kentik cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

"The tool is cheaply priced."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Outsourcing Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

11%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Construction Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	8

Questions from the Community

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Earn 20 points

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.

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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...

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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.

See all answers

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Product Reports

Network Monitoring Software

Download Ixia Hawkeye product report

Download Kentik product report

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.

Ixia Hawkeye vs. Kentik