NETSCOUT nGeniusONE vs Network Instruments Observer comparison

"The quick drill-down views are similar to Wireshark views. Those are quite nice, with the views on how you interpret some of the data. The granularity of how far you can drill down into milliseconds or microseconds is a very nice feature. It actually stores quite a lot of data in its database."

"We've saved a lot of time in triaging. We have found root cause identities on packet captures and have been able to feed that information back to a specific vendor, because a lot of our technology is emerging. So, we're able to give that feedback to our vendors and have them solve the problems that they need to fix, and they have the evidence to do so."

"The packet capture is the most valuable feature for us. It gathers data from the device. In case somebody has a problem, I can go back X amount of time - days, hours - and get the data to do real troubleshooting."

"It is the ability to collect data and analyze it, especially key performance indicators. This is before a customer would call to the service center to complain that they have had bad coverage or a dropped call."

"It helps us get to the root cause quickly. It helps us find massive error codes, then we drill down on that error code, knowing that is the source of our problem."

"Deep packet inspection is probably the strongest feature."

"Other than those bugs I mentioned, we haven't encountered any issues with stability."

"The biggest benefit is the ability to do low-level packet inspection, which reduces troubleshooting time because you can get a much better view into the communications path between servers, database servers, web servers, and understand what's going on."

"The product has allowed us to have a recording of all business critical network data."

"The initial deployment is tedious and requires a lot of build, deployment and configuration time."

"A lot of tools highlight what's going on but they don't actually pinpoint the user experience. It would be good if there were a small message or something highlighting what the user experience is like and any degradation that's actually occurring."

"The scalability is difficult. Packet capture and packet broker are hard to do because you ultimately have to build a separate overlay network, so you can capture the packets."

"I think it could have an easier to understand interface."

"Datadog is more stable than NETSCOUT nGeniusONE, being a SaaS-based solution compared to on-prem solutions like NETSCOUT."

"Trying to set up dashboards is hard to figure out at times, if you don't do it every day."

"There's a little too much investigation that the user has to do at this point."

"I'd like to see the nGeniusONE, the nGeniusPULSE, and the OptiView, their three separate products, work a little better together, a little more streamlined."

"Customer service was below average and the local value added reseller did not know the product very well."

"The price is only for acquisition; it's not a licence."

"Make sure you get the low down on your licensing and understand the licensing requirements before making a purchase, especially when it comes to an upgrade. Make sure that it suits your needs before you commit to it. For example, we purchased ATA at version 6.2.1. At that time, the licensing covered everything we need. NETSCOUT comes out with 6.2.2, stating that in order to upgrade, you had to purchase CyberStream licensing. Now that requires some additional funding from both a capital investment and a maintenance cost. That's something that should have been said, "Well, if you want these additional features, you will need to purchase these CyberStreams." Otherwise, we should be allowed to continue on the basic operations as it is now through the newer releases without being stuck."

"There is a need to make yearly payments towards the licensing charges attached to the product. The product may come across as a cheap tool for some, while it may seem costly for others."

"I rate the price of NETSCOUT nGeniusONE a four out of five."

"The biggest problem we have with this product is the expense."

"It can be expensive, but if you have a good configuration, based on what you are looking for, it's okay, it's manageable."

"This solution has saved us more than $50,000 a month and freed up 30 percent of our bandwidth."

"It is a little overall pricey and expensive, but you get what you pay for."