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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
77th
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
160
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (5th), Cloud Monitoring Software (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of NETSCOUT InfiniStreamNG is 0.5%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.4%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SolarWinds NPM3.4%
NETSCOUT InfiniStreamNG0.5%
Other96.1%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Michael Gideon Genita - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate System Engineer at SMS Global Technologies, Inc.
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…
Vivek Jaiswal - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager IT at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Central monitoring has improved outage alerts and now needs smarter detection and modern dashboards
Regarding the automated network topology and mapping feature in SolarWinds NPM, I am not satisfied with it. For static monitoring, it is acceptable. However, if it is possible, I would need a feature in SolarWinds in the future for some kind of malfunctioning detection, such as malware attacks or that type of environment. We did not have any facility to detect that in SolarWinds. I think it would be better to incorporate those types of features. Regarding customization options in SolarWinds, the ability to customize the dashboard has room for improvement. The dashboard is quite old, and we need some improvement in it. Nowadays, we have multiple tools with AI-based monitoring and web-based dashboards. SolarWinds also has a web-based dashboard, but I think there is scope for improvement in the UI. There may be other areas I would like to improve in SolarWinds NPM.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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's an easy product to set up."
"I love the single pane of glass view. It makes it easier to not have to navigate everywhere. It allows more simplistic visibility, without having to go from tool to tool to tool, or from window to window to window."
"We use it for monitoring whenever we update a new circuit or site."
"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."
"The product is stable. I have never had any issue where we have lost an InfiniStream, or visibility from that particular InfiniStream, throughout the bank."
"The most valuable feature is utilization."
"Can easily be interconnected with other management systems."
"The set up was very easy. We didn't have any problems with the setup. The deployment took less than an hour."
"Their support team is efficient, and it is easy to set up."
"We had some interfaces where the SFP Ports were having some problems after a while. We found which of the SFP Ports was having the error and changed it, so the bandwidth become okay."
"Through SolarWinds NPM, we discovered some interfaces were having issues, which we subsequently corrected; this has been very helpful for our operations."
"The product is scalable."
"The most valuable feature is the user-friendly interface and the ease of deployment."
"We can proactively fix historical issues, so we won't face those problems in future."
 

Cons

"The NetFlow Collectors could handle more flows per minute."
"Only problems that we have had are fiber issues going into the TAPs or vSTREAMs, which are usually local site issues."
"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."
"There is a timeout feature that we have been asking for awhile."
"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."
"The scalability has some limitations and quirks to it. I would like to be able to upgrade rather than replace the whole thing."
"It's not able to communicate with our probes."
"I'd like them to make the product more user-friendly."
"They need to work on their automation and automatically discover devices. They are not very good at automatically discovering devices."
"The aesthetic widgets should be dynamic widgets, so the customization can be even more customizable."
"In terms of scalability, there is room for improvement. When you start monitoring, if you have so many interfaces and you're trying to monitor them at a faster interval, or a shorter interval, you get to a point where you need to request another node."
"Complex and overly detailed setup."
"If they did some type of synthetic monitoring, it would have been better."
"They don't have a local support team."
"The improvement would be that SolarWinds NPM thoroughly checks its patches before releasing them to the market. Better testing, alpha testing, and then releasing it to the market."
"Fortigate firewalls are one example of a product that we are unable to monitor properly via SolarWinds NPM."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This product could be cheaper."
"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."
"I would like it to be more scalable with less spend."
"The price is a little high."
"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."
"To capture more with the solution that we bought, you have to buy another InfiniStreamNG, and there are only four ports in the back."
"I think that the cost has risen, but the functionality and versatility is way above other products."
"Though I don't remember the price for SolarWinds NPM, its price is somewhat okay when you compare it with other tools in the market. The price isn't too high and isn't too low, so it's okay."
"I’d suggest that people be aware that licensing has tiers."
"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."
"The pricing needs to be improved. It is too high. One full engine costs around $10 000, which is why we don't have high availability right now."
"It is expensive."
"The price points are more than competitive when compared to other vendors."
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
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
Manufacturing Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Government
8%
Energy/Utilities Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise85
 

Questions from the Community

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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: December 2025.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.