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NETSCOUT InfiniStreamNG vs SolarWinds NPM 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
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
158
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (6th)
 

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 SolarWinds NPM is 4.5%, down from 5.7% 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…
Masud Alam - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers alerting service to trigger alerts and easy to manage
For end-user performance monitoring, we like features such as availability of our all devices and device/interface monitoring. We have also used NCM (Network Configuration Manager) for our network. We use the alerting service to trigger alerts based on specific thresholds, like CPU or memory utilization exceeding a certain percentage. There are AI network initiatives in SolarWinds NPM for some lengthy issues. For example, it shows availability reports. But for bandwidth monitoring, it's not very clear how much bandwidth is being consumed. SolarWinds provide real-time bandwidth monitoring. It is not difficult to manage the network with SolarWinds. We have one customer with a satellite location. If we have a large network with, let's say, 43,000 elements, and our current SolarWinds license supports only 30,000, we would need to create another polling engine to accommodate the additional 13,000 elements. It's limited to the polling engine, so we can only support 30,000 elements per engine. So it's only for 30,000, but we have at least 40,000 elements in our network.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The real-time troubleshooting and application segregation that you can do within it."
"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."
"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."
"The most valuable features are speed and cost."
"It has cut our troubleshooting down by days. Once we have a product in place, we show people examples of how it can streamline their troubleshooting process."
"We use it for monitoring whenever we update a new circuit or site."
"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."
"When we have mobile operators who are signal partners, where one is the roaming host and another is the roamer, we are able to see their traffic. Their packets are able to detect if any faults to develop, and at what point they fail."
"The most valuable features of SolarWinds NPM are network performance monitoring and the overall benefit for servers."
"Their support team is efficient, and it is easy to set up."
"It is considerably cheaper compared to other tools."
"The most valuable features are language support and technical support."
"Technical support has always been great. They are very responsive. We've been satisfied with their level of support."
"The solution ranks as one of the top five monitoring tools."
"The most valuable feature is the graphical user interface."
"The most valuable features in SolarWinds NPM are the network search and diagnostic tools."
 

Cons

"Being able to manage the packet flow switches in nGeniusONE would be great."
"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."
"The technology goes end-of-life on us every year, which is why I am looking forward to vSTREAM. I don't like when devices go end-of-life on us so quickly. If we can get more of an advanced notice of when an end-of-life is brought up, because our certification process within the organization takes a while."
"The monitoring and reporting tool needs improvement. Users want more information, such as the level of detail when doing a packet analysis. They want more detail to be able to isolate down to a specific point."
"Only problems that we have had are fiber issues going into the TAPs or vSTREAMs, which are usually local site issues."
"I'd like them to make the product more user-friendly."
"I would like to see an improved level of stitching between IPs."
"We don't use the single pane of glass view, even though we own it."
"The solution's database performance could be improved."
"This solution would benefit from expanding on the capabilities within the API."
"SolarWinds needs to upscale on observability and add full-fledged observability features, including security features."
"The SolarWinds notification and alerting configuration could be simplified as it would be easier to find if it was within the NPM web application instead of in a separate client application."
"SolarWinds NPM could improve the graphics of the interface and more customized reporting."
"We'd like to see a bit more automation in the future."
"Currently lacks integration with SMS services."
"The solution's customer service is not very good because the support takes too long."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The price is a little high."
"I would like it to be more scalable with less spend."
"To capture more with the solution that we bought, you have to buy another InfiniStreamNG, and there are only four ports in the back."
"This product could be cheaper."
"USD $15,000 annually for maintenance."
"The cost is based on the number of nodes, so it is expensive when you have a lot of them."
"The standard licensing fees are what we're paying. It's about $20,000 a year for all our licensing."
"Most of the licenses are perpetual, and the annual maintenance charges are not high."
"SolarWinds NPM is very expensive, and we pay ten thousand yearly."
"The solution can become very expensive and commercially not viable in countries, such as India."
"The solution's pricing is low compared to a lot of other tools in the market."
"We pay approximately $700 per year for renewal of the license."
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 31, 2015
Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor
I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Energy/Utilities Company
10%
Real Estate/Law Firm
9%
Educational Organization
35%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
It actually depends on the exact purpose or kind of devices (network devices, servers, something else). Some tools are better for only network devices while others are better for a cloud monitoring...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
We are partners with SolarWinds and we sell a lot of Network management to large enterprises also because of scalability, products like Network Performance Monitor & Netflow Traffic Analyzer ar...
 

Also Known As

InfiniStreamNG, NETSCOUT ISNG, Infinistream
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

U.S. Department of Defense
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about NETSCOUT InfiniStreamNG vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
857,162 professionals have used our research since 2012.