NETSCOUT nGeniusONE Reviews

Presently, our use case is general network usage. Also, we employ the use of the ASI extender for specific unique protocols to our company.

I use the NETSCOUT nGeniusONE product with the ATA plugin.

We use it every day for triaging of events. We can eliminate whether or not the network was at fault within a matter of minutes. Because the network team always gets blamed for slowness or something not working, so we always have that evidence putting that to bed.

The solution provides the right people in our organization with the right information in a single pane of glass view. We can point it based as a service if we want to or specify user access as to who needs it, then they can grab it when they need to.

A lot of times we can see the issue without going to a PCAP, whether there is an error code in the service monitor drill down. For other apps, we do have to go to a PCAP, but we can identify that. Our team has been pretty well-trained in that as to what to look for.

We do have unified communication (UC) application performance enabled. We don't use it a lot. We haven't had a lot of use cases go to it. We do have a dashboard that runs and looks at our overall MOS scores for our phones. We have seen it in a use case where in previous versions we had a situation analysis alert that pointed to some inappropriately configured QoS mappings on a switchboard through a drill down. So, we have used it to isolate certain problems. However, these days with a lot of calls traversing mobile phones and stuff like that, UC has become a little bit of the norm for some expected QoS mismatches.

We use ASI extenders the most, other than just general PCAP retrieval. This allows us to build a service monitor while remaining within the confines of an NDA with a vendor.

The solution provides automatic discovery and mapping of client-server relationships. It is a good way to isolate down if you have a specific link that is not doing well. We haven't run into that. Looking at it, you can see the potential if you had something that you needed to drill down to, such as, a specific link or issue that you might have.

I have another app that we use for traditional universal monitoring, where I have more features in the dashboard than I have in the grid. This is regarding TCP Zero Window. That could stand some additional improvement. 

The ability to generate reports and run a report based on a specific host that might be having an issue. Right now, you have to do a drill down in order to find it. Whereas, if that was presented upfront, that would save a lot of time.

In previous versions, we used to have an icon on the dashboard when the situation analysis would present an alert. It would be nice if that would be made available on the dashboard again. Something that could be customizable to only illuminate on certain applications.

The solution transforms packet wire data into real-time data that is ready to act on. It provides stability where we can drill down into it. It gives us a good view. It would be nice if the cache could be a bit more responsive.

I have been using nGeniusONE since it was tooled as a product in 2013. The company has used the nGenius platform since 2007 when NETSCOUT acquired Network General.

For the most part, it's relatively stable. However, there are some times where it seems like it runs a little slow and you have to reset things to get it back going again. My other comment is on NetFlow is a lot of times in order to pick up new devices, I have to do a restart on the respective NetFlow collecting server. 

I do the deployment and maintenance of this solution.

The scalability is a good thing.

I have about 50 users who are technicians.

Their technical support does a pretty good job. If I open a ticket, I usually get a response relatively quickly. Sometimes, my problems are rather complex, but they do continue to stay on top of things and follow up as things go.

Reach out to the teams and make sure you let them know specifically what you're looking for. My sales team has pretty much just told me, "I'm not going to sell you anything that I don't think you need. So, make sure you're upfront with what your objective is that you need to achieve."

A lot of things that I've picked up are when I've attended the annual ENGAGE processes or ENGAGE seminars. I've been to several of them. While some of them are kind of intuitive, generally some good webinars would be fantastic. I think there's one coming up next month on something. Getting down to the bare bones would be good. There is stuff posted, but it is more of your sales engineer kind of showing you around.

When I was first hired on, we had one InfiniStream. We've had those ever since.

We stood up the server probably within a couple of hours.

We started out as in InfiniStreams, and it was mainly for pulling PCAPs. Then, through the acquisitions, migration, and enhancements to the product, it's evolved into a totally integrated single platform that integrates InfiniStreams and NetFlow collectors, and now ATA.

If I had to start all over again from scratch, it would take some time to do the initial setup. In regards to the dependencies that are needed if you're building a server from scratch, specifically if you're building a NETSCOUT server, then you're going to have to put in a lot of packages that have nothing to do with the system. Like case in point, ABRT is a package that's required, but it's a Red Hat automatic bug reporting tool, which isn't necessary for the operation of the product. It should simply come out with just the basic package requirements, and that's all that's required. It should not enforce it on an install.

This solution provides us with increased visibility while conducting an IT deployment. We have used it to monitor when we are doing troubleshooting steps and looking for spikes.

Back in 2007, when we got the initial nGenius system, we did have NETSCOUT pro service come over and give me some pointers on specific configurations on InfiniStreams and some service building. Then, it did taper off for a while because NETSCOUT didn't offer it, and I pretty much learned a lot of it on my own.

Our experience with their consultant was very good. He was very helpful and definitely would give his input. He would explain certain things, "This is what this is for. This is what you should do to create a better view."

We have seen ROI. 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.

We have seen a measurable decrease in mean time to know (MTTK). It does depend on the use case. If we're looking for something that is slowing our network down, we usually will find our top talker within minutes. Our MTTK is probably a little more important for us, because then they know how to remedy it from there.

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.

We did a head-to-head with Network Instruments. We found that their product wasn't as stable as InfiniStream due to the fact that it was using a Windows based operating system, which was a big red flag.

The solution’s ability to transform packet wire data into well-structured, contextual data is not too bad.

The solution increased our application and network uptime. We have used this tool to view where we have inefficiencies, places where there is wasted bandwidth. We have had areas where we have solved certain bandwidth issues by more than 50 percent. Others would be somewhat negligible on a larger pipe, but there are some things that we have resolved rather quickly.

I don't have plans to increase nGeniusONE as of yet, but there may be something in the process. I'm presently running seven back-end servers and, between InfiniStreams and NetFlow collectors, about 20 appliances.

Biggest lesson learnt: Packets don't lie.

I would give the solution an eight out of 10.

The solution helps to troubleshoot and put our hands on the weak points of customer networks. 

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE's pricing is higher compared to the competitors. It is more than 15-18 percent of competitor costs. It also needs to add AI features. 

I have been working with the solution for eight to nine months. 

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE is stable. 

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE's tech support is good. 

Positive

The tool's installation is straightforward if you are familiar with the product. It is complex if you don't have user training. 

The solution suits enterprise customers. Small businesses will find the cost high and the tool's capability unsuitable. I rate it an eight out of ten. 

We use the solution for data center troubleshooting and performance analysis.

The solution is stable and works best for collecting and analyzing metrics data.

They should include an application coloring feature for firewall in the solution.

We have been using the solution for 17 years.

I rate the solution's stability a ten out of ten.

We have 30 solution users in our organization. I rate its scalability a nine out of ten.

The solution's initial setup process is complicated as multiple managers, applications, and protocols are involved. It takes one or two hours for each device. We require a team of four engineers for maintenance as well.

The solution generates a return on investment for us. It works efficiently to find the root cause of errors.

We have a premium customized contract for the solution. So, it has all the features we require. There are no additional expenses.

I recommend the solution to others and rate it a ten out of ten.

We use the product to monitor infrastructure devices and troubleshoot application behavior if there is any issue.

The solution helps me understand the issues and troubleshoot.

If the connection doesn’t work, the product provides us with a code, for example, 5000. Then, we have to search the internet to understand what this number means. It would be better if the product gave us a code and its meaning while identifying issues.

The solution needs enhancements. We need to reconfigure the tool if we have a connection with dissimilar ports. The tool should ideally capture all traffic. However, it is unable to analyze unknown ports. I have to reconfigure and refine the tool to monitor the connection. This process is a waste of time.

I have been using the solution for six months.

I rate the stability a six or seven out of ten. The product crashed a few times within six months of implementation.

The solution is scalable. It works the same when we add more components. I rate the scalability a ten out of ten. Almost 50 employees are using the solution in our organization.

We need regular support from the vendor. The support is good.

Positive

The solution is not easy to install.

It took us three to four hours to deploy the tool. We needed only one engineer to deploy it.

The product is too expensive compared to other products.

We also use SolarWinds. We are trying the tool because our organization needs multiple monitoring solutions. Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

We have multiple use cases such as for remote locations, the monitoring of critical applications, and the WAN network. Apart from that, we use it for security alerts, to give us visibility into unknown traffic. I used to do integration with multiple different platforms to monitor critical storage sites for the business. 

Those are the key factors so that we can identify what traffic is passing across our remote sites.

If an outage happens, the tool helps us to identify the performance of the specific application and enables us to identify the issue. It helps improve our mean time to repair.

nGeniusONE has also been able to reduce outage time. Whenever there is an outage, it's quickly able to identify it and, without pointing fingers, we can prove that it is not the network environment. It helps us understand there is another reason and helps us move towards other areas for troubleshooting and fixing issues. That's a major factor where the tool is helping in applications that have the most business impact. We're able to diagnose and fix issues at the earliest, while avoiding large outage times and the associated business loss.

The solution transforms packet wire data into real-time data that is ready to act on. That's great for our multiple network services because it provides more insight into aggregation areas, and gives a unified view of the applications. From the application point of view, ultimately we need to discover the applications and configure it and then explore the options. This is a difference between network services and application services, but I'm most involved with network services.

It also definitely provides the right people in our organization with the right information in a single-pane-of-glass view. That's 100 percent true. We have different infrastructures from different vendors. If we had just Cisco, for example, we would only need to focus on the different Cisco tools. But with Bluecoat or Symantec, we need to focus on their tools. Because of TCP/IP, we can measure all the packet data in a single dashboard and we can show it in a single, unified view of all different infrastructures.

Another advantage is the increased visibility while conducting an IT deployment. Wherever we have the internet streams running across, we can see the entire site; what is happening and what other things are going on. We get more insight from the usual wired or wireless data.

Using it we also get to root cause quickly. We have massive business transactions happening continuously during the Christmas season. We were able to have increased traffic loads. However, the business transactions were also dependent on our vendors. If a vendor was unable to handle that much traffic load, we were able to prove, with the help of nGenius' reporting module, what number of transactions were crossing the network and which ones the vendor rejected.

We have also seen an increase in application uptime. For one or two applications it's 50 to 60 percent better.

And to some extent it has consolidated tools, however not at the application level. Rather, it has done so at the TCP or packet level. The consolidation has definitely saved us money, on the order of 20 to 30 percent.

In addition, when it comes to visibility across IT silos, the solution helps to bridge the gap between the application folks and the network folks. The network folks have always been siloed within the network infrastructure, and the application folks have also been siloed in the different components. NETSCOUT helps to bring every team into the single pane of glass to identify and isolate who is missing data across the applications or the infrastructure.

It's a consolidated, single tool that talks to multiple platforms. It's not vendor-proprietary; it's independent. Its provides interoperability with different products, whether they are routing products, switching products, wireless, wired, load balancing, or proxy. It works with anything you can name. 

It's TCP/IP-based which is helpful for us to interact with any TCP/IP platform and capture the data and provide visibility to the teams.

The solution’s ability to transform packet wire data into well-structured, contextual data,
on a scale of one to 10, is an eight, because it supports that interoperability. There is no dependency on a specific vendor or platform. It interacts with multiple vendors. That's a key factor that other tools are not able to provide. We have other tools within our environment, but this tool helps us to collect the packet data and transform it into a more readable, graphical format. That helps us make a quick decision within any type of project.

I would like to see improvement in the user experience. It's hard to manage it. We need a dedicated, highly-qualified person, compared to similar tools. Obviously, it's in a higher bracket, salary-wise. That's something the NETSCOUT team needs to focus on. It's a completely niche-skill technology, where we need to have the skills to manage, maintain, and deploy it.

When it comes to implementation, if they could provide some templates or some suggestions it would be helpful because this is a complex solution. Perhaps NETSCOUT could offer predefined Professional Services through which they could guide companies. In our scenario, I and my team have complete expertise for most of the things that are involved, and we were able to do it. But for other companies, if NETSCOUT could come up with some templates or some guidelines in Professional Services, it would be great in helping to get the solution deployed.

I have been using NETSCOUT nGeniusONE for more than six years.

The solution is great. It's a solid rock.

From the solution point of view, the licensing and architecture are scalable, but for hardware, when there is physical infrastructure, they probably need to improve on large-scale deployment. They need to focus on how a large number of databases can be effectively managed. And they need to improve the performance of the hardware.

We have between 10 and 15 teams using the solution. Each team's role is NOC support or SOC and, on the business team, there are people doing capacity analysis and people using it for reporting. For deployment and maintenance of the solution there are three or four involved, who are tool administrators.

We're using it fully in our organization. It's covering more than 90 percent. Increased usage depends on the infrastructure visibility. We may look at some expansion, but not immediately.

Their support team, during and since deployment, has been great; a nine out of 10. They stepped up whenever we required them, no matter what. They have provided feedback and support and have helped us.

nGeniusONE is the first solution we have used in this area.

I'm the architect of the complete solution. I ran the entire process from day one. I designed and deployed and have operated it, and it's a little bit complex. 

When we started doing the network deployment,the architecture, we needed to understand the enterprise architecture and where the main NETSCOUT deployment needed to capture it. It was not only in a specific area. It was all the applications relying on the packet data. It included on-premises, off-premises, remote sites, and cloud. It was capturing on a large, enterprise-level scale. We had to understand the architecture and then understand the application dependency then design the NETSCOUT solution accordingly. 

And, when rolling out everything, since it was not greenfield but brownfield, we needed to figure out the proper maintenance windows to not impact any of the production applications. Then we had to start educating the users how to use it and where to use it. After architecting it and deploying it, a large proportion of the focus was on bringing the users into the picture to make them familiar with the solution.

Deployment can take between six months and one year, in an environment like ours.

NETSCOUT provided some basic training through their portal, but since everything has gone live on the production system, we have also had some engagements with some of the NETSCOUT folks to get some assistance.

We have made on and off use of the NETSCOUT team. 

We save a lot of time. Before the solution was deployed, the teams used to spend more than a day on root cause analysis, and now they're spending only a couple of hours, and they're more aware of the next activities.

Licensing is flexible, it's not tied to anything else. We can easily switch up the licensing piece. Pricing is something that our budget team takes care of. Obviously, NETSCOUT is a little bit in the higher range, but it gives you value for money. You get what you pay for.

We did evaluate other solutions but NETSCOUT was better for our infrastructure.

With the visibility of the packet data, we can do whatever we need to do. It might be for the NOC or the SOC, but it helps our operations. We can dive into it and drill down into the information. Also, packet data was just packet data when we were using Wireshark, but when it comes to NetScout it provides business data as well. We can show actual numbers to the business team so they can understand and judge the quality of the network and the quality of the applications. We can show them solid proof with the data.

The automatic discovery and mapping of client-server relationships is a six or seven out of 10. It doesn't discover everything, but with it we do get some automatic discovery with the client-server. It doesn't get 100 percent of the data from the environment.

In terms of the dependency maps for visualizing the current state of the service and application environment, there are some limitations to the discovery maps due to our being a large enterprise. But if I focus on a small, specific area, it's great. It's able to discover the application dependencies and services dependencies, which have been used in that one, specific environment. For smaller areas, it's great, but for the larger portion of the infrastructure, it doesn't help a lot, so I need to break it down into individual areas.

The use case depends on the use case of the customer. For example, service providers will check the subscriber control plan or maybe the user input. However, banking customers might use it for their internet banking service.

The most valuable feature of NETSCOUT nGeniusONE is it helps customer to understand what risks are in their network. For example, if a customer has some wrong configurations. It could cost them some critical services to slow down.

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE can improve the detection of what area of the infrastructure could be having an issue, such as an application, server, or network. It needs to find evidence of a fault.

I have been using NETSCOUT nGeniusONE for approximately 10 years.

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE is stable.

The scalability of NETSCOUT nGeniusONE can be good but it depends on the customer's budget.

In my company, we have 12 people using the solutions.

Most of the support agents are good.

The initial setup of NETSCOUT nGeniusONE for enterprise is simple. It only takes one to two hours to complete. However, the time for the implementation can increase depending on the use case of the customer. For example, there are some proprietary customer applications or they have special network designs. We need to receive more information from customers to discuss it with them to decide how we can fine-tune the system.

For a service provider, it will be more complicated because in one total solution they will combine five or more NETSCOUT solutions inside.

For some customers, we need to work with them to receive many parts, such as some applications, which we will need to speak to the applications team. Additionally, there could be some services we need to monitor in the database, and in this case, we have to contact their database team.

We require more than two people for the deployment and maintenance of the solution.

My clients have received a return on investments and have expanded.

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

My advice to others is if you need a solution to monitor your critical events or critical service based on an IP environment, then you must use this kind of solution

I rate NETSCOUT nGeniusONE a nine out of ten.

It's deployed at a customer in the banking environment and it monitors the perimeter edge in the data center. It's used for visibility inside the environment as well. The traffic is only being sent via TAP data currently. We don't have any NetFlow data to the system, as yet. We have the NETSCOUT TruView system in and that performs for TAP data and NetFlow to monitor the branches.

For some of the applications we've managed to drill down and get more granular data, because it provides such small granularity — a microsecond or a millisecond of data — that you can actually get finer response-time detail out of it. That helps a lot.

It has improved some of the visibility of some of the unified communications with the ability to drill down into finer time increments in the packet data. We are able to search through those and get those Wireshark-types of views, with some extra flexibility and visibility on packet data or wire data.

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. It enables drilling down for reporting.

The solution transforms packet wire data into real-time data that is ready to act on. We've set some of the alerts to alert on it. We can look at that packet data, or we'll use scenario-based alerts, to then further drill down and see what the system has picked up as an anomaly or a scenario that's being analyzed by the system. We can investigate it further and see how we can resolve the issue or alert on it for the client.

We received some documentation to integrate it with ServiceNow. We're busy looking at that for the near future to integrate into that or another vendor's ticket system, and then alert on things in real-time, so there's less delay from our interpreting of data first. And then we can act on it.

They can improve still on the workflows, document their workflows that are commonly used.

Also, if you do backups of the system or try to do configuration changes, there are a lot of different formats that you need to separately interpret. It doesn't flow nicely. With config backup, for example, there are a few variants that you have to collect. Otherwise, you have to use the system backup, which we haven't restored yet, so I don't know exactly how that process works.

There are one or two things for the grids that would be nice to have. And it would be nice to be able to change some of the metrics, here and there, on the normal overviews.

Currently it's working. We had a lot of issues in the beginning with patches that we had to load, but that was more of the teething and learning how to configure the system as well. It's not quite the same as the TruView which has end-user response metrics. The nGeniusONE doesn't quite do the same thing.

It's a more technical tool compared to what we're used to, or what the client is used to with TruView. For some of the stuff we've seen we have had to build multiple sections or multiple pages to get a view of the environment or branch or application.

On a scale of one to 10, the solution's ability to transform packet wire data into well-structured, contextual data is a seven. There is room for improvement. It goes back to the workflows. We don't know some of the workflows yet, and it's not something that you can just read up in the manual. There is some stuff in the help manual and online, but it's to a point where you need to purchase extra training and services from them. You can't just go and read up on it yourself and learn from A to Z and then, if you require extra training or certification, you could go further in-depth into that. That's part of the business model, I assume.

Also, it's not always the case that the solution provides the right people in our organization with the right information in a single pane of glass view. There are times where we would want to get a different view on some of the service dashboards. We can't really get all the views that we would want on a single pane of glass.

Overall, there is room for improvement, but so far it is a useful system.

We deployed NETSCOUT nGeniusONE last year around April, so it's just over a year now.

Currently we're running quite stable. There were a few hiccups in the beginning with stuff not working. But currently we're running more or less stable. We are running on version 6.2.2. There are a few useful things in 6.3, but we were advised not to go that route yet because it's not 100 percent stable. Our sales engineer said to hold on, just to see how some of their other clients experience it and see how many issues are still being noted in the system before we move over to that newer version.

We'll probably increase visibility in future because it needs to replace TruView. Currently we are only using packet TAP data. Later on, as NetFlow and those things evolve, we will need to move over to NetFlow collectors on the system as well. Currently we're using them on TruView.

And we need to expand to some of the newer data centers that the client has moved into, as well as the cloud section. We need to expand into those as soon as the client has a bit more budget and they are happy that the system is working and the views and the consolidated views are giving them what they want. Then they'll expand more on the system.

The key thing for us is to get the VAR service up and running, which should be starting from today. They've sorted out their remote access. That took us a few months just to get into the banking environment with all the nondisclosures and security checks. We are quite happy to get that started and to see how they can assist us on the system. We want to do a sanity check on the system to see what we've missed.

We have an account with them and each engineer has an account where they can log TAC cases, and our sales engineer sees some of the stuff that we seldom hear and assists where he can. Otherwise, we work with the guys overseas. It depends which section of the system it is for unified communication. Cases have been escalated, eventually, to assist configuring some of the things.

We've had a few issues with one of the InfiniStream storage units, and that took a long time to resolve. The guys are still learning some of the things on the system themselves, but that eventually got resolved. But that may also depend on the support model we took.

Once you get to the higher-tier support guys, your issue normally gets resolved quite quickly.

We've been using TruView. We've known for a while that we would need to switch because it was an old Fluke Networks product which was bought by or moved to NETSCOUT. We knew at some point in time it was going end-of-life. We need to keep it up and running for as long as possible, at least another two or three years, until the end of the contract, and see how long it lasts after that. Slowly but surely we'll migrate to nGeniusONE as we expand visibility.

The setup was a bit complex, documentation-wise. There is a long list of documentation just to deploy the system, with a lot of variations. There's tons of documentation. Their portals reflect all the documentation and you need to go through various sections of the documentation to find what you're actually looking for.

We managed to get it in in a weekend. It was a relatively short time just to get the equipment in. The InfiniStream we took uses attached storage. It has an IPMI which wasn't mentioned in the original deployment documents. I managed to eventually find out what the base system is, a Supermicro server base. I then managed to get documentation around how to configure it and what the default IP address is for those. I had to configure that, because there are certain things that you can't do if you don't have that to update the firmware of your storage array — shut it down, restart it, those types of things. That wasn't on the original one-page install glossy.

It's a lot different than what we're used to in terms of the various sections that you need to configure. The workflow for some of the stuff could use some improvement. It sometimes feels like the system is silo-based or sectional-based, and that it was then all put in one system. There isn't just one place you can configure your application site or a quick-start "how-to." If you want to configure an application and then get it on your dashboard or your service views, it would be nice if it gave you an auto wizard which would say, "You want to configure an application? Okay, next." You would fill in what is required, click "next" to get you to the next step and keep on following the same workflow so that you can't really deviate. If you know which sections you want to configure, maybe then you would configure it manually, but a wizard-based workflow that's set out to be followed would be good.

As we learn stuff we've transferred the knowledge to our client and they have learned themselves as well, playing with the system. As they run into a workflow issue, then we try to assist or we contact our sales engineer to ask if there is a better workflow for some of this, and how to get to the pane that we would want to be on more quickly. For some of it, there was a quicker way, and for some of them the system is built in such a way that there is not a quicker way to get to some of the views.

It requires quite a lot of staff to set up and manage the tool; there's quite a learning curve. What we normally like to do is load it offsite, deploy the system, prepare it properly, get the base configuration on, and load at least some of the applications, but we didn't have the luxury of that kind of time. It took us a bit of time compared to what we've been used to on the TruView. We tried to configure the applications, but it's not quite the same. In workflows we've missed things here and there, things like going to a different view to associate applications to a site or an interface. We missed that at times. That's where the automated workflow wizard would help a lot, to make it easier for anyone to use the system, to climb in and start configuring it.

We're still busy streamlining and working on our alerting, to get those properly set up. NETSCOUT, from their side, is PoC-ing the VAR service to assist us for three or six months in streamlining the system, see where we're running short, and also to do system checks and see what else they're going to have to improve on the system.

We're not really a proactive system yet because we're still trying to define some of the things. The system is not at a scale where it can monitor each and every thing. There are a lot of things in the environment that we learn and get to know of on a daily basis, as they deploy new things. There are also things that we've not heard of because some of the environments are still silo-based.

I don't know what the client is looking at, because they can acquire from other vendors.  Because we're part of the networks team, we're more focused on the actual network component.

It's not an easy system, it's a very technical system. There are some views that you could get for a management or objective overview. Even our client mentioned that it's more a technical tool. That comes back to the workflows and the drill-down and the amount of time you spend to drill down into a scenario. That sometimes makes it too long in a real-time troubleshooting scenario or focus session. That makes it a bit difficult. If there's an outage in the environment they might start looking at you because they're waiting for you to provide information. I assume that would improve a bit when VAR service comes on board to show us what we're missing and how we can set up scenarios or extra alerting on the system to improve drill-down and the time to respond to or the time to resolve issues.

It does auto-discover some of the stuff. I don't think we've really used everything that's available. We've used some of the auto-discovery for URLs or web-related links, as it picks them up. We've used some of those and then we further define it. I'm not sure if there's another way or extra things that can auto-discover. Normally we'll get an application and environment from the client, and then we'll define it from there, or we'll use TruView to look at the NetFlow data to see what ports, for example, are being used. Then we will interact with the client to further see what is there. Or we can use nGenius' packet data and pull down what ports are being used from there. Then we can go back to the client and say, "You said port 123," for example, "is being used. We see 123 and another port. Is this other port also part of your application, or what function does it have in your applications?"

As for whether nGeniusONE helps us to get to root cause quickly, it's "yes" and "no." It fits in more with some of the workflows that we're still learning or we may not have the correct workflow. We've learned quite a lot over the last year or so but there is some room to improve, or it might be something that we don't know about; how to navigate a bit faster and better. One thing the client did say, if you compare it to TruView, is that with TruView you get to most of your issues in three clicks. In nGenius you need a few more clicks just to get to where you want to be. And sometimes you need to take a different route through the system to navigate to a different view.

When it comes to seeing a measurable decrease in mean time to repair, or mean time to know, there might be some workflows we're missing, that we don't know. We've used the system now for just over a year, and we're constantly learning new ways to configure the system and new workflows and how to improve our troubleshooting time. But compared to our older TruView system, it takes a bit longer to navigate to certain sections of the system or down to where we want to be, to the packet data, or to drill down into some of the applications.

We use nGeniusONE for Microsoft Teams. There is a case that we want the VAR service to take on for us to tie up some of the communications from external to internal Teams calls as they pass through the firewall. We're going to look at that to see what the VAR can assist us with. The client needs to expand on some of its TAP-ing visibility as well when, in the near future, they change their design.

As far as I know the solution has not enabled us to consolidate tools, because our client uses various systems. An example is Dynatrace as an internal banking application that they use for Layer 7 and agent-based monitoring on some of the servers and applications. And we still use TruView. Then they're constantly expanding to see where they can add something to fill in gaps. They're busy PoC-ing ThousandEyes to get some visibility on a different front. On the network side, we monitor the network components to clear that and make sure that it runs, or assist if there are notable response-time issues, to try and resolve where the issue would be located.

From our company, which is from the vendor side, we have about five or six users. In our client's organization we're expanding every now and then, but currently there are about 50 users, maybe more.

Because of COVID, everything is standing still currently. We started building grids and consolidated views to see what we can display on the centralized screens to improve visibility for Office 365, and those types of things. We would like to get that extra NOC-type of visibility, or an overview of the environment for certain sections. The client's strategy was that the more people that have access to the system, the more people will call us to inform us that there's something wrong in the system or in the environment, before that system even alerts us. The user base plays a big role in how the organization runs.

We are a telco company and we are using nGeniusONE to do a survey of our core network. We created different services based on nodes and based on services like VoLTE and the like. Our use cases are mainly to provide KPIs and to detect anomalies in case of an issue in the network.

Before we were pretty weak in network KPIs. That's the area where we have improved as a result of the solution, based on the service.

The solution transforms packet wire data into real-time data that is actionable. It helps us with faster detection of issues and allows us to create alerts.

It also provides the right people in our company with the right information in a single pane of glass view. There is always a place for improvement, but it does so. We have created a special dashboard for different teams so that each team has a relevant dashboard for the system.

In addition, nGeniusONE provides us with increased visibility while conducting an IT deployment. When we are launching a new node or a new application, it gives us a way to check that traffic has moved from one node to the other and that we still have the same level of traffic and the same success ratios.

It also helps us to get to root cause quickly, for sure, with the drill-down. If we see an issue on a KPI or we have an alert, we drill down to get into the special cases — tracing and that kind of thing — to detect the root cause.

Using nGeniusONE for unified communication application performance for VoIP helps us with uptime and user experience. We can see, for a given call, if it is a one-way or there are gaps.

The main feature, for us, is the dashboard. That is the main way we are using the solution to detect issues and to create alarms.

The drill-down is definitely interesting.

We are also using another tool from NETSCOUT, for tracing, called Iris Session Analyzer.

The solution's ability to transform packet wire data into well-structured contextual data works pretty well. But sometimes we've had issues because when we want to present some KPIs, not all the formats are available at the same time. When we think it would be better to present a KPI in a certain way, that means we have to remove another presentation. For example, there was a point in GTP where we were creating services on nodes and after that we wanted to have services on APN. We can't have both. That should come with the next release, but we are still not on version 6.3. So there are some limitations with these types of things. When we would like to use a feature, we have to remove another one. For me it's a bit of a drawback. I'm a bit frustrated with it. I would like to have everything, at all times.

For me, it would also be good to be able to split the system. For example, I would like a user to have rights for some probes but not the same rights for other probes. I'm thinking about a laboratory where we have probes and I would like to give all the rights in the laboratory to all users. I would like to have everything in the same system. We have users who can use both production and the laboratory but we aren't always able to specify that a user has access to only this part of the installation, or the hardware, while another user has access to another part. I would like to give a user rights to see everything in one part, but to have limitations in other parts, due to data protection.

Otherwise, the product is efficient and we are able to do most of the work which is required.

I have been using NETSCOUT nGeniusONE for about five years.

The stability could be a bit better. We are working right now to find solutions to improve the stability and we are in discussions with NETSCOUT about that.

The solution's distributed architecture, in terms of being both lightweight and scalable, is pretty good. The ability to distribute the solution is good. We have more and more use cases with virtualized systems, so we need a way to be able to distribute the solution on different clouds and sites.

There are about 100 users.

Previously we were using Tektronix, and that became NETSCOUT. We took nGeniusONE to improve our ability to detect issues. We were mainly working with a tracing system and nGeniusONE brought us more network visibility, with KPIs based on the network itself, and on the traffic in the network.

The initial setup was pretty complex. For me it was complex to configure everything as needed to be efficient: to get all the data, to have some reliability, and some confidence in the data quality. It was time-consuming. We need to understand what was possible, what was the best solution for evaluating a service, etc.

In one sense, the deployment is a never ending story, because each year we have new services and we need more capacity. We are always implementing new things. But the initial deployment itself took us almost a year.

In terms of our experience with NETSCOUT's customer support during deployment and post deployment, here are two levels. The first level was their people who are in direct contact with us and that level was good. When they needed support from development and R&D, at that level we had some quite long delays, at times, and the response was less good.

As for the learning curve, when people are used to working with the system, it's okay. At the beginning we had some training, but now, if a new colleague comes in, we can train him internally. We help colleagues on different teams by giving them training. With one day of training, you can already provide a lot of hints and information. After that, people need to learn by doing.

When it comes to administration, there are three of us who are mainly involved, but it's not 100 percent of the time for any of us. It might be the equivalent of one FTE. I'm a network engineer and I'm mainly involved in the monitoring and probing of new applications. When new services come out I work on increasing the capacity and evolving the system. So I'm not the main user working each day with it.

We have worked directly with a NETSCOUT consultant. We have a reseller, but direct contact with NETSCOUT is very important for me.

We needed this type of a solution. Without it we are fully blind. We can't even launch a service without one solution or another. We needed to put something in place, but I don't have figures or a monetary value for ROI. It gives us visibility.

The pricing is fair.

We have a yearly agreement that covers extensions, etc. There are no additional costs.

We didn't evaluate other solutions much because we already had a probe installed with Tektronix. NETSCOUT was quite a natural way to extend what already existed. We decided not to remove everything that was in place, but to extend instead.

It's a good tool. You need to have a clear view of what you need before you evaluate the system.

Automatic discovery and mapping of client-server relationships is not something we are using much, because we are more at the level of the network and a bit less at the level of all the servers and the internet application server.

The biggest lesson I have learned from using nGeniusONE is that to get good results from the system, you need good knowledge of the network. The system will, for sure, help to find issues, but it's not possible to have someone working with it, someone who doesn't know the network, and have that person fully use this type of system.