Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs NETSCOUT nGeniusONE comparison

Cisco and NETSCOUT are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Cisco is ranked #43 with an average rating of 8.0, while NETSCOUT is ranked #19 with an average rating of 8.5. Cisco holds a 0.9% mindshare in NMS, compared to NETSCOUT’s 1.6% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of NETSCOUT users who would recommend it.

Cisco Provider Connectivity...

Read 24 Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance reviews

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1,078 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE

Read 49 NETSCOUT nGeniusONE reviews

2,468 Views
1,708 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Cisco Provider Connectivity...

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 2025

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE and Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance are enterprise-level network management solutions. While nGeniusONE is noted for superior data visualization, Cisco leads with comprehensive features, better pricing, and user support, which can justify its investment.

Features: NETSCOUT nGeniusONE offers robust reporting, traffic analysis, and dependency mapping. It provides extensive packet inspection and NetFlow traffic analysis, monitoring real-time communication effectively. Features cover voice traffic analysis, latency detection, and insightful dashboards. Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance delivers effective network management but lacks the depth of packet capture and analysis found in nGeniusONE.

Room for Improvement: NETSCOUT nGeniusONE's complex interface and high cost receive criticism. Enhanced GUI could improve user experience and reduce dependence on specialized staff. Modular pricing is suggested to avoid payment for unused features. Cisco could enhance intuitive configurations and workflow integrations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NETSCOUT nGeniusONE, deployed on-premises with hybrid options, is known for responsive tech support but requires dedicated staff, affecting ease of deployment. Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance offers on-premises and cloud compatibility with less complex setups and accessible support, earning higher user satisfaction.

Pricing and ROI: NETSCOUT nGeniusONE's pricing is premium, with reliability and capabilities that offset costs, but not all users make full use of its features. Licensing rigidity can lead to accumulating costs, though ROI is achieved through decreased troubleshooting time. Cisco's competitive pricing offers ROI through quick resolutions and improved customer satisfaction, reinforcing its value proposition.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. NETSCOUT nGeniusONE Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. NETSCOUT nGeniusONE

April 2025

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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

Cisco Provider Connectivity...

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

43rd

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (45th)

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

19th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance is 0.9%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NETSCOUT nGeniusONE is 1.6%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Sylvain Germe

Application and Network Performance Engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

Highly scalable, responsive support, but lacking new features

This solution is geared towards on-premise setups, and would not be useful if the company plans to move to the cloud within the next two years, such as Google Cloud for example. If the goal is to monitor bandwidth at remote sites and identify performance issues because the network is under the control, this solution is useful. However, if a company primarily uses cloud-based servers and does not manage the internet connection of its remote sites, the solution becomes less useful. I rate Accedian Skylight a seven out of ten. I have a positive opinion of the tool, but it can be challenging to set up. It is also limited in its applicability to certain use cases. I am familiar with the engineers behind the solution and have a good impression of them. However, I am not pleased with the fact that the company removed many features and raised prices after it was acquired by Accedian.

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Ruslan Melnyk

Business Unit Manager at BAKOTECH

Useful for network performance monitoring

My manager can explain the use cases attached to the product. I am a unit leader in my company, and I don't sell the product directly to our partners or customers. In my company, I manage certain processes and a team while building, developing, and providing them with a direction for the market. NETSCOUT nGeniusONE is a good solution for network performance monitoring since it is not cloud-based. My company sells NETSCOUT nGeniusONE in eight to ten countries. I think the solution is not good for capacity planning, but it is better to help find problems in applications because not every infrastructure is good at managing working applications. I think it is a solution meant for applications. The tool is useful for solving problems attached to applications. The tool's real-time network monitoring capability was used when the product was more reactive. In our company, if we use real-time monitoring, then we need to deal with raw traffic. In our company, if we don't see any problem in the real-time systems, we have the possibility to rely on the tool since it acts like a time machine for us, which can allow us to get back to the areas of problem and solve them. I recommend the product to those who plan to use it. For many users, it can be a good monitoring system that can be scaled up in the future. I think it is a good product to start with when working systems in an environment. NETSCOUT nGeniusONE is another tool used to manage raw traffic, and I find it to integrate well into our customers' network. I am not using it actively on the system. I use the tool for network packet brokers. I rate the tool a ten out of ten.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Capturing traffic [is very interesting]. Currently, with our configuration, we don't capture the payload of the packets, just the header. But when we want the body, the payload of the packets, we can do a PCAP, and then analyze it within Wireshark."

"I think the analytics features are okay. My customer also likes the interface, the GUI, because it's easy to operate."

"The solution’s UI and single pane of glass is good. The new dashboard is modern with its new design. The look of it is not pretty, but it is efficient, which is good. It is user-friendly; you can find what you need on the interface quickly."

"The performance of Accedian Skylight is better than other vendors."

"The response times, with the performance, are really interesting too, where you can see the packet loss."

"If [the problem] is something related to HTTP or VoIP, then I can have a quick look into the protocols, a process which gives me some good ideas..."

"The ability to measure performance end-to-end across the cloud data center allows us to take corrective action to keep our channels online."

"One valuable feature we have is real-time monitoring for connection issues."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance pros

"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 most valuable features are visibility, real-time, on-demand."

"The system's ability to prevent downtime represents a significant return on investment, but I do not have specific numerical data."

"It catches bigger issues on a weekly basis. That's how often we find something big enough that the only reason we know about it is because of the nGeniusONE. The bigger issues are mostly security-type issues: Odd traffic leaving our network or coming into it, that has found its way past a firewall."

"The ability of the dashboards is useful for discover, mapping and understanding of application behaviour."

"The product is very good. We have very few problems."

"The most valuable feature is visibility."

"Packet decode and bandwidth analysis reports are the two most valuable features."

More NETSCOUT nGeniusONE pros

Cons

"The Accedian Skylight user interface still has room for improvement."

"Human resource costs can be high when dealing with connection issues."

"It needs the possibility to export data because it is not easy to see larger data sets, e.g., for one month. It would be interesting to export data into a PDF or dashboard to keep a history of the situation."

"For the PVX, they are in the process of getting the results to export to cloud and SaaS for analytics. They told me that this will happen later this year. Right now, for the most part, I create that data myself."

"The UI interface of Accedian Skylight could improve."

"If you want a new version, you go to the website. The hardest part is finding the link, where is that .bin file? Sometimes it's pretty hidden in a document... it's hidden in the release notes or in another file somewhere. And it's usually not on the first page either."

"Some of the Skylight applications are a little newer, and they're still moving through initial revs. There are certain bugs, but nothing is insurmountable... It will just take a little bit of time for their user interface to get a little bit better."

"There should be an option to update and upgrade the solution to the new version without having to re-buy it. I have clients switching to other solutions. The old solution is great, but if you change your license to a new one, you have to almost re-buy it completely."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance cons

"Initially, we were having a lot of issues with bugs when using version 6.1.1. There were a lot of problems with the dashboard causing confusion. We worked with our SE and the NETSCOUT engineering team to fix the visibility with the data. There should be a patch release to fix this issue. However, this seems to be working fine for us right now after the 6.2.2 upgrade."

"For individual subscriber tracings, sometimes it does not capture all the messages. There is a little bit of room for improvement there."

"It's not intuitive, it's not simple to use. It is probably the only monitoring tool, out of all the ones that I have, that I really need an expert on, an expert from nGenius, a contractor that I have to pay, to manage the tool. And that's because it's simply not easy to use. Netscout needs to focus on making it easier to use."

"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."

"The technical support could improve a bit with quicker responses for early on questions. What I think are simple questions are taking a long time to get answers to."

"The solution is not easy to install."

"The single pane of glass view is a challenge. I like the graphics, they're easy to understand, but when more digging is required, it's more complicated to get what I'm expecting."

"There are so many features that it makes it hard to know it all. You end up paying for things that you don't use and probably don't even need. It might be better if Netscout came up with a modular way to pay for what you're going to use and not pay for all of this "white elephant" without being able to take advantage of all of it."

More NETSCOUT nGeniusONE cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is competitive overall, depending on the type of customer."

"The pricing is cheaper than other competing products, which is better for our budgets."

"The pricing of Accedian Skylight is really good. The sensors are low cost. Their model to analytics for sensors is by license, endpoint, or session. With the probes for their analytics, if they get deployed virtually, they are free. The licensing is only based on flows. So, you can effectively deploy probes everywhere in your network. Then, if you want to look at a specific type of traffic, you can enter into it with a very low cost license. You can just use things like spam ports, mirrors, TAPs, and aggregators to optimize what sort of traffic you send to these analysis tools. Then, if you want to start looking at more, you can up your licensed as you go. You are not getting forced into expensive appliances or subscription models."

"The solution was previously well-regarded, but after being acquired by Accedian, the prices have significantly increased. This has made it challenging to sell the product due to its high cost. It is an expensive solution."

"Pricing is a little bit expensive."

"We understand there's a significant cost difference, but have yet to investigate fully."

"It provides value and the cost is not huge."

"It's not for free, clearly. But on the other hand, it offers very interesting functionality. We pay around €100,000."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance pricing and cost advice

"It is very expensive, but it's well worth the money."

"The platform is expensive."

"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."

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

"The license becomes cost prohibitive very quickly."

"The product is too expensive compared to other products."

"Like any company, we always want better pricing. The pricing is okay, but it's not a cheap solution. When you want to deploy it across an enterprise as large as ours, you go into seven figures. It's not a cheap solution to get out there."

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

More NETSCOUT nGeniusONE pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

40%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Accedian Skylight?

Human resource costs can be high when dealing with connection issues. I require more tools to file and resolve these issues efficiently.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Accedian Skylight?

I had prepared for COC and the client. I work as a vendor for a client using Flow Mount for network performance monitoring. I focus on resolving client-side issues related to Packy Performance and ...

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What advice do you have for others considering Accedian Skylight?

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

See all answers

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?

I would say if it’s an ISP that will build a scrubbing center, Netscout/Arbor is a good solution. In all other solutions, Imperva is a great choice.

See all answers

What do you like most about NETSCOUT nGeniusONE?

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NETSCOUT nGeniusONE?

The pricing is a bit high yet not overly expensive. The cost depends on the size of the customer, as sizing controls the pricing.

See all answers

Comparisons

ThousandEyes vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 44% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 16% of the time

Dynatrace vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 8% of the time

Zabbix vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 5% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 4% of the time

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance Competitors

Dynatrace vs NETSCOUT nGeniusONE

Compared 12% of the time

Gigamon Deep Observability Pipeline vs NETSCOUT nGeniusONE

Compared 10% of the time

ThousandEyes vs NETSCOUT nGeniusONE

Compared 9% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs NETSCOUT nGeniusONE

Compared 8% of the time

NetBrain vs NETSCOUT nGeniusONE

Compared 4% of the time

More NETSCOUT nGeniusONE Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

April 2025

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance report

Download Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance product report

Buyer's Guide

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE

March 2025

Download NETSCOUT nGeniusONE product report

Also Known As

Accedian Skylight, Accedian SkyLIGHT PVX, SkyLIGHT PVX, SecurActive, Performance Vision

NETSCOUT nGenius, nGeniusONE

Overview

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance offers real-time application and network performance monitoring, VPN management, and network diagnostics across multiple sites.

Organizations use Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance for active and passive monitoring, stress testing, and troubleshooting performance issues. Deployed both on-premise and in the cloud, it supports IT infrastructure, security, and analytics with end-to-end performance measurement across cloud data centers. The modern, intuitive interface features TWAMP for real-time traffic accuracy and standardized reports, along with insightful dashboards for circuit performance, latency, jitter, and throughput monitoring.

What are the most important features?

TWAMP: Provides real-time traffic accuracy and standardized reporting.
Insightful Dashboards: Monitor circuit performance, latency, jitter, and throughput.
Security Integration: Compatible with tools like Splunk for enhanced security.
Application Support: Facilitates comprehensive network performance analysis.

What benefits or ROI should users look for in reviews?

Quick Corrective Actions: Immediate response capabilities for performance issues.
Easy Navigation: User-friendly layouts simplify monitoring and troubleshooting.
Comprehensive Analytics: Advanced tools for in-depth network performance insights.
Cloud and On-Premise Options: Flexible deployment to meet different needs.

In industries like finance and healthcare, Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance ensures robust performance monitoring and quick diagnostics for VPNs and internet lines. It aids in maintaining the integrity and security of data transference, facilitating active and passive monitoring, stress testing, and performance troubleshooting across geographically dispersed locations, ensuring seamless operation and compliance with industry standards.

Cisco

The nGenius Real-Time Monitor software provides you with tools to monitor and display information about your network both historically and in real time. The nGenius Real-Time Monitor software allows you to understand your current network usage and to plan for future needs. It also allows you to proactively troubleshoot problem areas in your network.

NETSCOUT

Sample Customers

T-Systems, Thomson Reuters, Bordeaux Metropole, CGI, Citadelle Regional Hospital Center, Lorraine Institute of Oncology, Luxembourg Institute of Health, Groupe BPCE, Group S, Splitpoint, Horus-Net, Audatex, Indexis, Province de Liège, EASI, Spie Batignolles, Faymonville

Cerner Corporation

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. NETSCOUT nGeniusONE

April 2025

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