NETSCOUT nGeniusONE vs OptiView XG [EOL] comparison

"The valuable features include packet analysis, packet capture, and [that] it's easy to use."

"From the standpoint of VoLTE and related things, it's providing visibility into the network and how it operates."

"The most valuable feature is visibility."

"Deep packet inspection is a very useful tool as it works in real time and uses serial packet-level analysis."

"For me, the most valuable features are the dashboards which we use to highlight the overall impact to the customers, and being able to drill down into the nitty-gritty of the customer experience."

"It gives me the MOS, latency, and jitter."

"The best feature is when we have it connected permanently via TAPs. That enables us to constantly collect data and then we can go back in time... To be able to rewind, back in time, and see the problem as it happened, is very helpful."

"The solution helps us get to root cause quickly by using the Media Monitor to help identify QoS mismatches for voice calls on the network."

"It is a very valuable tool. It goes out and does a discovery, which is a great process of it. You could have something like a rogue DHCP server, and it will identify it, and then you can see to which switch port it is connected. It is quite an impressive tool. I really liked it because you didn't have to install an agent on anything. It would just go out and do its discovery. For me, that's great."

"Gives us the ability to see our network."

"Trying to set up dashboards is hard to figure out at times, if you don't do it every day. It's not really intuitive to set them all up... If there were a wizard to take us through, step-by-step, creating dashboards and the like, that would be really helpful."

"We would like more encryption of customer data, because we have a very security conscious company. We have a lot of regulation coming in which requires us to make customer data private."

"NG1 has been stable for a while in our environment - at least we have what we needed. But with nBA, there's a lot of room for improvement."

"It would be beneficial to see more AI capabilities included in nGeniusONE to further streamline processes and allow lower-level tech support to handle issues more effectively without escalating them."

"The product was lacking for awhile when they did the Arbor acquisition. I was waiting to see more security stuff, which they did eventually add, and is now impressive."

"Our biggest area of concern right now, supporting the applications, is that while NETSCOUT does a good job of monitoring the network and the applications, we need more visibility into system health and performance monitoring."

"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."

"Its price can be improved. Their support can also be improved a little bit. In terms of features, it did everything I wanted it to do. With more features, I would have to start installing network agents or something else, and I don't want to have to install anything. This was the value for me about this device."

"I would like a built-in tap feature which doesn't interfere with the network, and it allows you to see what is happening there."

"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."

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

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

"Their pricing is very competitive with other solutions... But what I like about NETSCOUT's licensing is that it's shared across all their platforms. They don't create a new licensing scheme for every one of their products. So for nGeniusONE, you buy a certain license level, and it works on all of their products."

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

"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 have a premium customized contract for the solution."

"The scalability becomes very expensive quickly."

"Its price was a bit excessive. The device that I had died. It is under warranty, and they want $20,000 for another one. I just don't want to spend that kind of money, so I'm trying to find an alternate solution. They have annual maintenance on it, which probably was 10% a year, so it all starts to add up."