AppNeta by Broadcom Reviews

From a technical perspective, PathView provides an effective, reliable indicator of network availability across our widely distributed physical locations. From a non-technical perspective AppNeta Customer Support remains continuously and positively engaged with us.

PathView provides immediate unequivocal confirmation of service restoration during situations that involve planned or unplanned loss of network connectivity.

Power-over-Ethernet appliances would be nice and possibly, more modular HW appliance evolution would support even more deployment flexibility.

I have been using AppNeta services for at least 5 years.

We have never had any issues with stability.

AppNeta's products are fully capable at any scale. The challenges that we have experienced result from trying to align use-case demands with an appropriate product/service density while remaining within the budget constraints that someone else enforces.

I would rate AppNeta technical support very highly: they have always been responsive and effective.

Others in our group had previously experimented with iPerf. AppNeta PathView was not really a replacement for iPerf, but in my opinion, within the operational constraints our group has, AppNeta PathView gives superior results at a far, far lower level of administrative overhead.

Much of our PathView deployment is multi-step and more advanced, requiring a more in-depth understanding of both network constructs in general and our environment in particular. From that perspective it could be judged more complicated, but I would not categorize it as complex nor would I categorize the AppNeta setup as difficult. I think basic deployments suitable for many use-cases would be straightforward and fast.

My comments here are applicable to any vendor or service provider: define your use-case and clearly link product features with intended results--particularly with regards to the expectations of those who are paying the bill--if you do that effectively, it should provide you with a blueprint to guide your licensing choices. Then, don't confuse cost with value: if something is cheap but gives you a low-priority result then it really has little value; and on the other hand something that has a high cost but gives a high-priority result is still very valuable.

No.

Generally speaking I have found that all of AppNeta's services are excellent. I have had the most experience with PathView and I would give it 8.5 out of 10. I've had the least experience with AppView and I would give it 7 out of 10. FlowView is probably the easiest and quickest-ROI netflow capture product that I have ever used; I would give it 9.5 out of 10.

Applicable to any vendor or service provider: there is no such thing as a free lunch and you never get something for nothing. While basic deployments will absolutely provide value in specific use-cases, the more careful thought, consideration and attention (ie: input) you give to AppNeta the more ROI (ie: output) you will get.

The ability to view into third party networks for visibility as to problem areas that are often outside the prevue of a standard network analysis tool. Also, the ability to utilize FlowView to capture and analyze packet flow from source and to destination has been a significant asset to our troubleshooting and remediation solutions.

We now use this tool as a pre-deployment asset for our hosted phone solution. We also use it for bring-your-own-broadband solutions for our hosted phone platform in order to validate our solution and the third party networks that it is transporting over. This has greatly improved customer satisfaction and reduced troubleshooting time. We also provide a managed service designed around this appliance and solution set.

Billing does not have a user friendly format that allows you to break down the billing of sub-companies and be able to see them with what has been spun up, what subscriptions are currently in use, what has been added new that month and to pull that in an easy to read and easy to import format.

Mass Deployment Tools – I would like to see a simple format for importing paths into the system from a CSV for customers so that we can do a full multipath deployment quicker if we have spreadsheets available.

Over 7 years.

The smaller appliances, while they can monitor a sufficient number of paths, will lock up with large Internet pipes. We have found that we needed to move to a larger appliance for clients that have large bandwidth pipes from their ISPs. Otherwise, the stability is excellent.

We have found no issues with scalability.

Technical support is exceptional. They are very available, willing to work with our technicians and engineers and very open to providing training to understand their product more thoroughly.

We used a SolarWinds application previously. We switched as this provides more visibility for less cost.

Initial setup is web based and very straightforward. It takes 15 minutes to have an appliance ready for deployment. Entry-level technicians provision the devices and we are quickly able to begin seeing what is going on in our customers network.

I advise to look at both pricing models and pick that one that makes the most sense for your organization. Both solutions work depending on your goals. We have found AppNeta flexible and easy to work with for both licensing and pricing and willing to work with us.

We reviewed some other applications, but this product was the only one that can do what it does so we did not look far.

I recommend others plan their portal and their deployment strategy for management. We have a naming convention for our appliances as well as how we name our paths. This provides an easier process in reviewing the alerts and knowing what we are looking at quickly without having to dig into documentation. The solution itself is easy to implement, how you use it should be thought out.

We use the product for real-time user application monitoring. This involves tracking user performance and assessing the time users spend accessing various pages within applications.

The product helps us understand networks and user experience. It helps us to understand the issues. 

AppNeta by Broadcom needs to add more features to its dashboards. It also needs to work on providing out-of-the-box reports. 

I have been working with the product for two years. 

We haven't found any bugs within the current setup. 

AppNeta by Broadcom is scalable. My company has more than 1000 users. 

We have encountered delays in getting support. 

Positive

AppNeta by Broadcom's deployment is easy. 

The solution is worth its money. 

AppNeta by Broadcom is not expensive. 

This product will be ideal for monitoring the network's performance and seeing real-time throughput, bandwidth utilization, and connectivity between nodes. I rate it an eight out of ten. 

End-to-End video testing - we would deploy m22s into a client’s network where we plan to deploy a high end video endpoint. This allows us to ensure that the client's network is capable of handling the planned video traffic. We run it over 24 hours or 7 days so that we can see the effect of any other traffic on the network, such as nightly backups.

We run 24 hour or 7 day video based network path assessments to ensure our customers networks are ready for video systems.

The VMware version doesn’t support video, so we have to ship hardware to remote locations.

So if we have a client with offices in for example Russia or Australia, we have to ship internationally these m22 boxes to these location in order to run a 24 hour video test and then ship them back. There is a Windows software client that can run on a client's laptop but we do not find that reliable enough for these video tests due to the impact the laptop's OS and hardware can have on this.

AppNeta has now got a V30 VMware based appliance which seems like it would allow us an alternative to shipping these devices internationally. However, while they have the core platform built the video add-on is not yet available.

Two years.

We discovered the m22 was incorrectly reporting packet loss.

We would like to be able to pull out a CSV from the video tests so we can report when peaks happen. Currently AppNeta provide graphs so we need to zoom in gradually to find the two minute period when a peak happened so we can report this to the customer so they can compare this on any other tools they have. We can get the data by manually reading the graphs but you need to zoom in to hunt for the peaks if they are short lived so it is time consuming.

It is only a limited deployment.

The packet loss issue was seen as a high priority and the support team very responsive.

AppNeta analysed the issue on our units and some of theirs. They replicated the issue and identified the source. They were then able to roll out a fix as part of their software update. They lent us m30 units as a temporary work around.

No.

Yes, to setup just build the config online and save it to a USB to import into the unit.

No others were evaluated.

Be careful with the simulated traffic not to flood your network.

Packet Captures, Path Lists and Voice Tests. We are a VOIP company that relies on a stable and well-tested network. The AppNeta device has allowed us to troubleshoot and pinpoint where there are failures, bottlenecks and misstated service levels on numerous networks.

It has been a help to our company and customers.

With one of our federal customers, we deployed these throughout their network and found multiple cases of misconfigured routers and NICs, which allowed the customer to move to a VOIP solution.

Because of the nature of how AppNeta works in terms of using bursts to depict how a network path performs, it is hard to correlate 24 hour performance 100% accurately. When using reports with clients, it can make it look like the network is fully failing when there could be some high jitter from time to time or something similarly distracting.

Since 2012

We have deployed over a 110 of these devices throughout our customers, and have not had an issue. The only thing that I would like is if the software sequencer came with a m30 or r40 license that could be temporarily used if we wanted to troubleshoot a specific computer and capture and report back to PathView Cloud.

I would rate them a 10/10, they have always been responsive and helped with resolution in a timely manner.

We were looking at a few others, but wanted to get away from using SNMP traps.

Very straightforward, in that we cloned a USB with the configuration and it was plug and play.

We implemented using an in-house team, however, for sites across the country we used a contractor where we could not physically go. In terms of advice, it is a straight forward implementation. I, however, would look and make sure that the notifications and reporting are tuned appropriately so that the team does not get blasted with more messages than they can handle.

Make sure that the reporting and paths are tuned correctly. Make sure that you are targeting appropriate IPs and not targeting every IP in your network because you will over inflate your reporting. I would also make sure FlowView is used and packet captures, because they are great tools to point out issues in the network or misuse of the network.

The tool allows us to ensure the capacity/bandwidth/packet loss of our VPN based WAN within our thresholds and this is done end-to-end. It is different from SNMP/Netflow based monitoring, which we also make use of.

For example, the tool helped in identifying unreliable ISPs or intermittent instability on WAN/VPN connections – both real time and based on historical metrics.

Fully Monitoring asymmetrical links is more costly and complex than symmetrical ones. But this is understandable by the functionality.

With Pathview, we are monitoring the estimated capacity of our links. For example, we upgrade an internet link from 10mb/s to 20mb/s and we can use Pathview to confirm that without filling the link with test traffic. Also, we see in the history graph if we had phases with less bandwidth on the link, but this only works with symmetrical links (up and download is the same speed). AppNeta has a solution for asymmetrical (like 20down/5up mb/s) links which is to deploy another sequencer at the remote location and creating a path pair, but this is becoming more expensive and creates administrative overhead, if you have a large number of sites.

We have been using this tool successfully for more than five years.

The stability is very good. Not having to maintain our own Server and Reporting database infrastructure is a big benefit.

Scalability is good, if you are investing in Path and Appliance licenses.

The technical and administrative support is quick and helpful.

The tools we used before were intrusive and affected production users. This tool overcame that problem by creating little traffic overhead.

The setup is straightforward if you understand the nature of the tool, which is ICMP. The User Interface of the tool is straightforward and intuitive.

When you add licenses – sync them with the existing ones in regards to runtime, otherwise billing becomes complex.

We had an existing toolset with rich features but those could not fill the gap VPN WAN monitoring opened.

Get a test license and have a play.

I rated it 8/10 because it works very well for what it’s intended but we have to team it with other monitoring solutions to cover all monitoring requirements. To be precise, we have not evaluated all features AppNeta offers, as we had other tools already in-place.

The most valuable feature for us is its ability to provide quick visualizations of many aspects (front end, back end, software layers, etc.) of application performance in one place.

Since we implemented it, we've seen multiple performance improvements, which in turn results in increases in revenue and efficiency.

It needs more improvements in monitoring of video streaming performance as well as more layers of breakdown in the front end performance.

I've used it for two years.

Yes, we had some issues with deployment. Specifically, there were a few slight issues with method signatures changing. These issues were, however, easy to debug since support was readily available.

We had no issues with stability.

We had no issues with scalability.

I'd rate customer service a 10 out of 10.

I'd rate technical support a 10 out of 10.

Other teams had this initiative before, but I’m not aware of the tools themselves. They weren’t as widely deployed in our company.

The initial setup was straightforward because both documentation and support were readily available.

We implemented it with our in-house team.

It's hard to measure ROI due to our company structure. I can safely say, though, that sales increased overall as a result of having applied improvements based on the data analyzed.

I am not fully in contact with the pricing and licensing aspects since they were handled by someone else.

I know the company evaluated other options, but I can't comment since the evaluation was done by other teams.

Take the time to apply and study the functionalities. It can do a lot, and it’s usually not utilized to its full potential.

Pathview is the most valuable feature. It does the following:

• Gives us details of how bandwidth is consumed
• Gives details about the assigned bandwidth to the link and used bandwidth
• Shows the events happening during the monitoring

We can keep track of bandwidth utilization and data loss.

I would like to see the following improvements in accessibility:

• The ability to see the details concerning incidents and their reasons right on the graph
• The ability to open those events right from the graph
• The ability to see the applications being used at that time

I have been using the solution for three years.

We have not encountered any stability issues.

We have not encountered any scalability issues.

We have never used technical support.

I am not aware of any previous solutions as I have been using the same tool since I starting working here.

It is a great tool to keep track of your network.