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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
6.8
Number of Reviews
159
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 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 4.4%, down from 5.4% 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

"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."
"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 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."
"The real-time troubleshooting and application segregation that you can do within it."
"It's an easy product to set up."
"It is very rock solid. We hardly have any hardware issues."
"The ability to troubleshoot customers' connectivity has been very beneficial."
"We use it for monitoring whenever we update a new circuit or site."
"Their support team is efficient, and it is easy to set up."
"We can proactively fix historical issues, so we won't face those problems in future."
"The benefit of this solution is the reporting. We're able to report on and see our network in a graphical form. We are able to detect when a device is added to a network."
"It did a good job of the collection and then an investigation of the net flow of information for understanding the applications that were being used at certain locations."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the alerts."
"The most valuable feature is the graphical user interface."
"The people in technical support are very good."
"There are a lot of options for customization of the dashboard, alerts, and reports."
 

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."
"Being able to manage the packet flow switches in nGeniusONE would be great."
"We don't use the single pane of glass view, even though we own it."
"It's not able to communicate with our probes."
"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 scalability has some limitations and quirks to it. I would like to be able to upgrade rather than replace the whole thing."
"SolarWinds NPM can be very slow at times. The database optimization can be done to improve the product performance."
"The solution is not always good with new features, so it's take a long time."
"If they’re going for a “cover everything” approach, then they need to do so and enable a bit more of the "cover everything approach" within every one of the tools."
"Technical support can be slow to respond."
"My team has had a lot of issues with support."
"A feature I would ask for is for them to have this solution available for Linux systems instead of Windows."
"The solution's database performance could be improved."
"Application Performance Monitoring should be included in this solution."
 

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 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."
"I would like it to be more scalable with less spend."
"The price is a little high."
"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."
"This product could be cheaper."
"The cost of the personal perpetual license for SolarWinds NPM is approximately $2,000."
"The licensing is based on the number of nodes, interfaces, and volumes."
"When I compare the cost of CA Spectrum to that of SolarWinds NPM, the cost of CA Spectrum is way too high, and the cost of SolarWinds NPM is pretty low."
"We pay approximately $700 per year for renewal of the license."
"We pay for SolarWinds NPM yearly. We buy it and then we renew it, but it's not subscription-based. I don't remember the value exactly, because it's my manager who manages pricing, but we pay $60,000 per year for all the solutions. Pricing will also depend on the number of devices. We have a lot of devices."
"It is relatively inexpensive compared to other products in the same category."
"There can be fees in addition to the licensing fees if you add on."
"Quite highly priced"
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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
18%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Energy/Utilities Company
11%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
 

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: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.