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NETSCOUT InfiniStreamNG vs Plixer Scrutinizer comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

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

NETSCOUT InfiniStreamNG
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
78th
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Plixer Scrutinizer
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
54th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of NETSCOUT InfiniStreamNG is 0.4%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Plixer Scrutinizer is 0.4%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Michael Gideon Genita - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to set up with good documentation and helpful support
I'm using it for a customer The packet flow switch is the most valuable aspect of the solution.  It's an easy product to set up. We can scale the solution if we need to. It's stable.  The documentation is well-written and quite useful. It's compatible with other products.  Under the pocket flow…
Ira Mulyanti - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It helps us to assist our customers to isolate problems. If it is us who is having the problem, then we can use it to streamline the process."
"The real-time troubleshooting and application segregation that you can do within it."
"The ability to troubleshoot customers' connectivity has been very beneficial."
"The tool has the ability to look back within a month's data. It is very easy to navigate within the tool and troubleshoot the problem, compared to other solutions that we've used in the past."
"We use it for monitoring whenever we update a new circuit or site."
"It helps us get to root cause quickly. With utilization and consumption of bandwidth, we can usually see what application is taking as much as they should (or shouldn't), then account for it accordingly."
"It allows us to get quicker resolutions. We can see exactly what is using up the bandwidth, so we can assist end users."
"The most valuable features are speed and cost."
"It shows us the saturation of the network of devices. It gives us a clear view of the flows in the network to understand, for instance, planning upgrades in the network to get an idea of what's going on the network on traffic flows. It gives us insight, for instance, on what's going on on our VPN Client. There are a lot of things where it provides very helpful information. It also gives us our security reports with quite detailed information on what's going on in the network, and whether there are data exfiltrations and so on."
"The most valuable features of Plixer Scrutinizer are its ease of use, accessibility, and UI."
"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."
"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."
"It's agnostic as far as what your network gear is. As long as it supports an sFlow, JFlow, NetFlow, some kind of flow monitoring, Plixer will support it very well."
"Visualization of the network traffic is the most valuable feature. It allows you to drill into information quite quickly."
"It helps us determine what is going on with our Internet and who is hogging it all up. If we get a real high throughput or a throughput that's going over and getting dropped fairly quickly, we can tell who (or what device) is consuming that traffic."
"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."
 

Cons

"It's not able to communicate with our probes."
"The stability depends on who is using the tool, because you only can get as much out of the tool as you put into it. There are a lot of patches for this particular environment, so you have to keep on them. If you lose track of them, then the product is not useful anymore."
"Only problems that we have had are fiber issues going into the TAPs or vSTREAMs, which are usually local site issues."
"The single pane of glass feed still needs work."
"The scalability has some limitations and quirks to it. I would like to be able to upgrade rather than replace the whole thing."
"I would like to see an improved level of stitching between IPs."
"Being able to manage the packet flow switches in nGeniusONE would be great."
"There is a timeout feature that we have been asking for awhile."
"We couldn't get it set up properly."
"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."
"The visual acuity of how it presents data can sometimes be confusing. It takes a bit for people to spin up how to look at the graphs."
"Data retention needs improvement. Data retention is a thing where we are looking for a better way to collect flow data for a longer time to do forensic research on security incidents. By default, data retention is quite low. We need detailed data in safe storage for a longer time, e.g., for a couple of months. An improvement would be a way to export data into a secure long-term storage."
"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."
"In Plixer Scrutinizer, scalability is an area with minor concerns where improvements are required."
"The solution creates a visual map of a particular location and how the network flows. You need to spend time to generate all those maps. If they could figure out a way to reduce the time needed to generate the maps, that would be great."
"For updating the Scrutinizer platform, when we have the actual data, it never happens in one day. Every time we have the data, we are obliged to install a new server in order to integrate the old data, and every time it has a problem. Most of the time, we were obliged to scrap all the data because we couldn't transfer it to the new server. So, it would be very good if they could improve this part."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"To capture more with the solution that we bought, you have to buy another InfiniStreamNG, and there are only four ports in the back."
"The price is a little high."
"This product could be cheaper."
"I would like it to be more scalable with less spend."
"It can be scalable. It just costs too much. With a company as big as ours, it gets too expensive to accommodate every single site."
"The scalability is good, but it comes at a cost. E.g., if you need 100 InfiniStream because you are sending gigs or terabytes of data to one InfiniStream, then you will have to purchase another InfiniStream, which are not cheap."
"We just renewed. The pricing is 5,000 euro per year. This is the final price. All tax (20 percent) is included."
"We have increased the license over time. We have added more licenses as the network has grown."
"Compared to some of the other tools we have, it's incredibly reasonably priced."
"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."
"We pay our one-off cost for the licenses, per device, in blocks of 50. And then we pay an annual maintenance fee of about $15,000 Australian, which is, at this point in time, about $9,000 US, for those 250 devices. The upfront costs for the 250-license use, were about $50,000 Australian, which is about $32,000 US."
"Our entire solution, amortized over five years, is in the vicinity of $40,000 to $50,000 a year."
"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."
"The licensing cost for Plixer Scrutinizer is in the middle. It's not the cheapest, but it's not the most expensive. Its licensing model is based on how many exporters, how many devices export information to the system. Plixer Scrutinizer has different modules you could add such as the security module which would cost extra."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Energy/Utilities Company
10%
Real Estate/Law Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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.
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.
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.
 

Also Known As

InfiniStreamNG, NETSCOUT ISNG, Infinistream
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

U.S. Department of Defense
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
Find out what your peers are saying about NETSCOUT InfiniStreamNG vs. Plixer Scrutinizer and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.