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NETSCOUT nGeniusONE vs NetBrain comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

NetBrain
Average Rating
7.2
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Network Troubleshooting (14th), Network Automation (6th)
NETSCOUT nGeniusONE
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (23rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Network Management solutions, they serve different purposes. NetBrain is designed for Network Troubleshooting and holds a mindshare of 1.9%, up 1.8% compared to last year.
NETSCOUT nGeniusONE, on the other hand, focuses on Network Monitoring Software, holds 1.7% mindshare, up 1.5% since last year.
Network Troubleshooting
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Deborah Gamelin - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 14, 2022
Good monitoring and troubleshoot capabilities, improves overall network traffic visibility
In my organization, we had 130,000 network devices that needed to be brought into the solution and mapped. NetBrain can handle the scale but the engineers that manage those devices have to go in and update all of them to allow NetBrain permission to poll them. It can get a little stressful for everybody when you're trying to roll out new stuff when you've got other issues that have to be addressed with other devices. In some cases, our devices had no automation at all. One example is the Cisco 3650. Right now, if you went through the inventory list, you see that we have different versions running. Some are on one version, whereas others are on another version. The problem with upgrading them is that they need to be done overnight because we don't want to disrupt any network traffic during business hours. Consequently, it could take us years to upgrade the versions before we can even get them onto these new tools. This may be an internal issue but it's a big one when you have a lot of devices. Even if you had 10,000 devices, it's still an issue. You have to consider the compatibility of the device against the tool, and being able to use certain commands to upgrade it.
Ruslan Melnyk - PeerSpot reviewer
Mar 20, 2024
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Chain management is a good feature. I don't get it on other solutions."
"A reliable, time-saving tool for providing accurate layer 2 and layer 3 network mappings."
"NetBrain is a very simple tool."
"This product has good network monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities."
"Enables maps to be drawn out."
"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."
"We build application dashboards and performance indexes for locations."
"Network faults are easily and quickly identified through dashboards and drill down."
"Valuable features include data threat detection, network analytics, and overall bandwidth monitoring."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is being able to drill down into any kind of troubles that are reported to us, by use of identifiers."
"The speed that you can get from the top of a problem all the way down to the packet layer of troubleshooting analysis."
"It is a scalable product."
"We are using nGeniusONE to run our bandwidth capacity management reports. In the past, we used to be very reactive, we used to depend a lot on suppliers to tell us which sites are our hot sites, meaning, which have high bandwidth utilization. Now we do this in a much more proactive way and we are moving to a more predictive approach in that aspect, thanks to nGeniusONE."
 

Cons

"The IP interface brief isn't consistent."
"Support needs to improve for the installed product and some of the reporting could be more flexible to provide more complete cataloging."
"Each device needs to be configured to allow NetBrain to poll for the information it needs, which can be very time-consuming for a large network."
"It would be nice if the setup was a little simpler. Also, if the solution could provide more training materials for new people coming into our company so they can quickly learn how to use the functionalities."
"The solution could integrate more automation."
"The current solution is not easy to scale, because it is an appliance-based solution. So, you have to swap everything out."
"The stability is only fair. It goes down a lot."
"We see it overload once in a while. It doesn't have built-in protection. Therefore, once it gets too much data, it tends to crash. Then, we have to recover it."
"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."
"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."
"NETSCOUT nGeniusONE is a complex product since it deals in areas like network packet brokers and packet analysis, making the tool complicated for end users."
"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."
"We would like better end-to-end data flows. This is something that my users always complain about, as they don't know what the data flows are on the network. We would like to know every point along the line."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing is based on a per-device basis, which means that it can get very expensive if you have a large number of devices."
"The product is expensive, but less expensive than some of the competition and worth the price."
"I rate the price of NETSCOUT nGeniusONE a four out of five."
"The platform is expensive."
"The scalability becomes very expensive quickly."
"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."
"The price is only for acquisition; it's not a licence."
"If you are able and you are willing to use everything that Netscout provides to you, it's probably a relatively fair price. The problem is that it's such a large and such a complex tool that I'm not sure that many companies would be able to use it entirely, the way it's expected to be used."
"The biggest problem we have with this product is the expense."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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.
What do you like most about NETSCOUT nGeniusONE?
Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NETSCOUT nGeniusONE?
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.
 

Also Known As

No data available
NETSCOUT nGenius, nGeniusONE
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CompuCon, TD Ameritrade, Move Inc.
Cerner Corporation
Find out what your peers are saying about NETSCOUT nGeniusONE vs. NetBrain and other solutions. Updated: February 2023.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.