Kentik vs Observer GigaStor comparison

Kentik and Viavi Solutions are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Kentik is ranked #29 with an average rating of 9.0, while Viavi Solutions is ranked #86. Kentik holds a 1.8% mindshare in NMS, compared to Viavi Solutions’s 0.4% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Kentik users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Viavi Solutions users who would recommend it.

Kentik

Read 16 Kentik reviews

3,784 Views
3,368 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Observer GigaStor

Read 7 Observer GigaStor reviews

1,238 Views
780 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Kentik

Observer GigaStor

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

Kentik and Observer GigaStor compete in network performance monitoring and diagnostics. Observer GigaStor is perceived to have an upper hand due to its comprehensive features and perceived value for cost.

Features: Kentik provides advanced data visualizations, real-time traffic insights, and adaptable integrations, which help offer a seamless network performance overview. Observer GigaStor delivers detailed packet-level analysis, extensive historical data storage, and forensic capabilities, catering specifically to intricate security investigations.

Room for Improvement: Kentik could enhance its packet analysis capabilities, improve historical data archiving, and bolster its security features for more thorough investigations. Observer GigaStor might benefit from simplifying its deployment process, reducing its upfront costs, and improving its integration within cloud environments.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Kentik supports cloud-native deployments for quick, scalable setups and offers adaptive support for diverse network architectures. Observer GigaStor's appliance-based model requires more initial setup effort but excels in customer service, aiding complex deployments.

Pricing and ROI: Kentik offers competitive pricing and cost-efficient solutions, providing significant ROI through analytics capabilities. Observer GigaStor involves a higher upfront investment, justifying costs with its in-depth network forensics capabilities and long-term ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Kentik vs. Observer GigaStor Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Kentik vs. Observer GigaStor

March 2026

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Helped 884,976 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

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)

Observer GigaStor

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

86th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

8.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Troubleshooting (14th), Network Packet Broker (NPB) (9th)

Mindshare comparison

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

Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Kentik	1.8%
Observer GigaStor	0.4%
Other	97.8%

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

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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Jeroen-Dubbelman

Director at Bitrate

Aids significantly in the threat-hunting process and provides a score-based evaluation of user experience

There are many valuable features, but understanding end-user response times stands out. It provides a score-based evaluation of user experience, helping customers quickly pinpoint whether issues originate from the network, server, client, or application. Additionally, it facilitates in-depth analysis of application dependencies. The retrospective network analysis capability of Observer GigaStor has been beneficial. It's a pivotal feature for network performance solutions. However, I prefer to consider the entire solution suite - GigaStor, along with GigaFlow and Apex - for comprehensive network visibility and monitoring. So, I prefer to integrate all three solutions to provide the best visibility. They complement each other well, with Apex aggregating and correlating data from both GigaStor and GigaFlow to enhance environmental understanding and troubleshooting efficiency.

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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

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

"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."

"The most valuable features have been anything around traffic engineering: being able to determine the source or destination of a surge of traffic, whether it's DDoS-related, or a customer just happened to have a sudden uptick in traffic. Being able to tell where that's coming from or where it's going to enables us to do things based on that."

"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."

"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."

"We're pretty happy with the API functionality. It's web, and it's very simple to set up queries. It has served us well and you don't need to be an expert on the API or the product to set these things up."

"Honestly, it is one of those products that I would suggest to almost any network operator."

More Kentik pros

"Industry-leading line rates, packet-capture technology and data-mining capabilities are the most valuable features."

"This solution allows us to see exactly what is going on in the network and we can very quickly solve issues with users."

"I have no regrets using this product, I am very satisfied for what I paid for it and for the things I am able to do with the product."

"It's able to capture packets and, after a long time, you can come and use that information; to check, to analyze - everything you would want to do. So it's very good and helpful if you want to protect your data. It is stored in a certain place where you can access it every time you want to analyze it."

"There are many valuable features, but understanding end-user response times stands out. It provides a score-based evaluation of user experience, helping customers quickly pinpoint whether issues originate from the network, server, client, or application. Additionally, it facilitates in-depth analysis of application dependencies."

"If you have the opportunity, I would strongly encourage you to get it, because it makes the IT experience easier and more flexible, by providing the ability to see things in your networks like the directory packet label."

"Enables us to go back in time to capture an issue and analyze it for a solution, and this after the fact analysis is key to overcoming the bump in the night issues."

"I also have the ability to see an application's performance, to see what's going on, why a network is slow, why this program for this user is experiencing a delay or some network issue"

More Observer GigaStor pros

Cons

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

"It also detects anomalies proactively, but the same is not so true when it comes to real network problems, since they tend to just happen."

"I've checked out the V4 version of the interface and it's still a little bit clunky for me to use."

"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."

"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."

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

"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 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."

More Kentik cons

"I would like to have more than 4TB of storage available in the portable version of this solution."

"The Observer Console UI is consistent and stable, but could use some updating to be more modern."

"As of this moment, the graphics might need some improvement, because a lot of the information there must be input first to have full potential."

"The interface is pretty complex, so for the average user, it takes a while to get up to speed with it. I would like it to be more user-friendly."

"Graphics need improvement. Because a lot of the information there you have to input first in some case to have full potential. It could be more automated."

"There are some issues, in our environment that puts processing restraints on the Gigastor when turning on trending data to be sent to APEX."

"Maybe the graphical user interface could be simplified to allow people to use it more easily."

"Maybe the graphical user interface could be simplified to allow people to use it more easily. It's already good, but they can work more on it to make it even easier."

More Observer GigaStor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"It's quite expensive."

"It depends on the requirements you have. There are three types of license. There's the updates license, the work group license, and the workstation license."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Computer Software Company

Construction Company

Financial Services Firm

16%

Construction Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Large Enterprise	3

Questions from the Community

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...

See all answers

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

What do you like most about Observer GigaStor?

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Observer GigaStor?

I would rate the pricing a ten out of ten. It's quite expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Observer GigaStor?

GigaStor feeds into Apex. So, the area where there could be improvement would be in artificial intelligence. For example, the incorporation of more advanced machine learning or AI capabilities coul...

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Kentik

March 2026

Download Kentik product report

Buyer's Guide

Observer GigaStor

March 2026

Download Observer GigaStor product report

Overview

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.

Kentik

Observer GigaStor is a network analysis tool that comes in a variety of form factors, including rack mount, portable, and virtual. Capable of storing up to a petabyte of traffic for later analysis, GigaStor helps ensure optimal network and application performance.

Viavi Solutions

Sample Customers

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

Cisco Systems, Hawaiian Telecom, Renown Health, State of Nevada, U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, Allstate Insurance, Jack Henry & Associates, United States Airforce, US Bank, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, Chicago Board Options Exchange

Buyer's Guide

Kentik vs. Observer GigaStor

March 2026

Free Report: Kentik vs. Observer GigaStor

Find out what your peers are saying about Kentik vs. Observer GigaStor and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.

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