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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
6.9
Number of Reviews
158
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (5th), Cloud Monitoring Software (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 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 4.6%, down from 5.9% 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…
MohitKumar - PeerSpot reviewer
High-level, comprehensive, and proactive monitoring in a user-friendly interface
The solution needs to integrate with additional SDN technologies that are part of the hyper market. The solution supports many vendors by default and just included Meraki SDN with the new release, but continued expansion is important. We created a custom method to pair with unsupported vendors but that can produce a lag in performance so future releases should expand SDN support. The solution does a good job of automating features but could expand that even more.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"We use it for monitoring whenever we update a new circuit or site."
"It is very rock solid. We hardly have any hardware issues."
"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 ability to troubleshoot customers' connectivity has been very beneficial."
"The most valuable feature is utilization."
"The technical support is really good. They will go above and beyond, if you are running into a problem. You can go to a sales engineer, who will engage technical support to help you out."
"SolarWinds is reasonably priced."
"The abnormal traffic notifications are good. Most of them are remote, and it is very good for notifications and monitoring for the traffic."
"SolarWinds' network and server application monitoring features are strong."
"As we look to add more servers to our virtual environment and to understand the impact, the solution allows us to dig into the historical charts related to capacity planning."
"The stability is fantastic."
"The most valuable features of SolarWinds NPM are network performance monitoring and the overall benefit for servers."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the alerts."
"The nice thing about SolarWinds is that it's kind of all-in-one. I can manage the status of my networking devices, whether they are up or down, I can see how much traffic is going across an interface, and I can run a report that tells me exactly what that traffic is."
 

Cons

"I'd like them to make the product more user-friendly."
"Being able to manage the packet flow switches in nGeniusONE would be great."
"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."
"I would like to see an improved level of stitching between IPs."
"The single pane of glass feed still needs work."
"Only problems that we have had are fiber issues going into the TAPs or vSTREAMs, which are usually local site issues."
"The response time of the support team needs to improve"
"The dashboard of the solution is an area with certain shortcomings that need improvement."
"A feature I would ask for is for them to have this solution available for Linux systems instead of Windows."
"Currently lacks integration with SMS services."
"Technical support can be slow to respond."
"The solution could be more secure."
"Application Performance Monitoring should be included in this solution."
"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."
 

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."
"The price is a little high."
"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 would like it to be more scalable with less spend."
"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 points are more than competitive when compared to other vendors."
"The cost is based on the number of nodes, so it is expensive when you have a lot of them."
"SolarWinds NPM has different pricing models available. The cost of the solution is less than some competitors."
"The price is more expensive than some other products, such as ManageEngine."
"There can be fees in addition to the licensing fees if you add on."
"We pay approximately $4,000 annually for SolarWinds NPM. There are no additional fees required other than the standard fees."
"Price could be improved on"
"I believe the original setup cost was around $3500 with an annual cost of around $1200-$1500 to renew the support license. This would bring the average day-to-day cost of around $5-$6 over three years."
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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
22%
Computer Software Company
10%
Energy/Utilities Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Educational Organization
54%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
5%
 

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: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.