NETSCOUT nGeniusONE Reviews

Over the years, it's been more for packet-capture troubleshooting. But in the last two or three years, we have been using it for application monitoring and expanded our usage because of voice over IP and the communications stuff. It has really expanded a lot, and we've creating dashboards and reports. Originally, it was just a reactive tool. If there was a problem, we'd go capture something and move on. But it has really expanded quite a bit in the last four or five years.

The solution gives us increased visibility while conducting an IT deployment. It's recording data all the time, so we have the "before" picture and the "after" picture. That's a big thing.

The Dependency Mapping is very helpful. When everything is instrumented correctly, and we can bring up a Dependency Mapping, sometimes it even surprises people in terms of what the applications are talking to and where the single failures might be.

In addition, in the troubleshooting area, we are able to zero in on an issue more quickly and get things working faster. In areas where we have instrumentation, we have seen a measurable decrease in mean time to know and mean time to repair.

The solution is very reliable.

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. Of course, we don't want a given problem to keep happening, but if we weren't able to use the solution to go back in time to when a problem happened, then we would have to hope the problem happens again so we can capture it and figure out what's going on. To be able to rewind, back in time, and see the problem as it happened, is very helpful.

In terms of additional features, they have the virtual clients here at NETSCOUT Engage 2019, and they have really expanded that. That type of coverage is going to be crucial. The COTS that they are doing now are a very good idea, to lower the price some. We work with them weekly, and if we uncover something, a feature that would be relevant, we usually report it. A lot of times it will get included.

Regarding room for improvement, on a network the size of ours, the loading times seem a little extensive, 20 or 30 seconds to load up some graphs. But there is a lot of data being crunched. That's all server hardware.

nGeniusONE is very stable. We have very few problems with it.

It scales well also. We are about up to 350 InfiniStreams. We have a multi-tier architecture for the NG1, locals and globals, and backup solutions and the failover solutions for disaster recovery work well.

Technical support is very responsive. We have two people onsite that we pay. They work for NETSCOUT and they're very helpful.

We've had NETSCOUT so long I can't even remember what previous solution we had. We did have a couple of areas where we had Riverbed Technology but we are phasing that out.

For an organization of our size, the setup was fairly complicated. We have a lot of equipment, a lot of tiers. We have a lot of security concerns so we had to shut down ports and we have firewalls and things like that. It may not have been complicated because of NETSCOUT, it just may have been complicated because of the environment.

We did not use any outside resources for the deployment, but we do have onsite people from NETSCOUT.

Take a good look at this. It's been good for us. I've looked at some other solutions and everybody has the same problems to fix. The way that NETSCOUT, the company, is integrating so you get to reuse the data, is good. One of the problems we had originally was that everybody was doing something else. If you are going to capture all this network wire data, why not use it for security and everything. It's all in there. That's a big opportunity with these guys. If you go out and get something for voice from one company, and something to work on your network issues from another company, it's really hard to work them together. You never get to that single pane of glass.

We use the solution for unified communication application performance but that's not really my area. People do use that constantly, and I don't think we'd be paying hundreds of thousands, or millions of dollars, if it didn't help with uptime and end-user experience.

I rate the product pretty highly, a nine out of ten. The biggest problem we have with this product is the expense. Also lately, the network traffic loads, getting up to 100 gigabytes, are taxing the hardware a little bit. That's a problem everywhere, so it's not really particular to NETSCOUT. They are responding to that. I rate them very highly.

Our primary use for nGeniusONE is packet inspection.

It helps out with firewall issues. Aside from having the logs that are just on the firewall, we're able to get the traffic as it's going in between, throughout our network. It isolates end sources that are having issues, where we don't have any other tools that would be able to go down to an end-user's computer to find out what's going on.

It's catching quite a few things. Most of them really aren't a big deal and we should probably adjust our tolerances for them. A lot of the things are nice to know about but we really don't dig into them because they're not a huge deal.

As far as bigger issues go, it catches those 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.

When we first got it, we used a lot of it for DDoS attacks to be able to find out where they were coming from, because we were able to actually see the packets and then get all the IPs. That enabled us to block sections of traffic that were constantly hitting us. After that it's server issues, router issues; just about everything.

Apart from the packet inspection, just being able to drill down into traffic is helpful to see where it's coming from, where it's going to, and everything that's going on with it.

We mainly use it for the packet inspection, but when we come across problems with traffic in general, we're able to isolate a source and the find out where, along the way, we're having the issues, because we're able to see deeply into the packet.

Starting off with the broad scope of everything that you're seeing, they have it set up pretty nicely, where you just keep drilling down into it by further clicks. It's pretty logical the way that it's set up. It's more like humans are meant to use it, instead of bots. I like it.

I'd like to see the nGeniusONE, the nGeniusPULSE, and the OptiView, their three separate products, work a little better together, a little more streamlined. We can hook up an OptiView to our system and it will bring it up on our nGeniusONE splash page where we can go and click on it. But we can't really use the OptiView functionality with the nGeniusONE functionality as far as throughput tests go.

If we wouldn't have to have multiple OptiViews throughout our system, and we could just have one that connects straight back and does all the functionality with nGeniusONE that two OptiViews do, that would be awesome.

Another thing that would help out is if they packaged the NetFlow monitor into nGeniusONE. Their NetFlow monitor works with nGeniusONE where you can actually get the netflow of pretty much anything you hook it up to. But it's a separate box that you have to buy. If there was a way that they could package that into nGeniusONE, it would be a complete package straight out of the box. It does a lot for you without it, but with the NetFlow monitor, in our situation, we'd be able to replace three other tools right off the bat.

We haven't had any issues with it going down or not working. The server that we're using is our own server and we have their software loaded onto it. All the issues that we've had have been our actual server. We had to replace our server once because it died on us. But as far as the software and the actual NETSCOUT appliances that we have going to the nGeniusONE go, like the Packet Flow Switch, etc., we haven't had any issues with them since I've been here, which is three years and counting. It hasn't had any downtime that was not scheduled.

We can definitely scale it higher. There's a lot more that we've found that we could be hooking the nGeniusONE up to. The possibility is there. The only issue we have is our bureaucracy.

As far as what it could be doing for us, if I had my way we'd have it taking care of everything. It's just a matter of getting it done. But the option is definitely there. We're using it mainly just for data center and core stuff, but the option is there to send it out to our distribution nodes as well.

For any issues that we've ever had, we've gone directly through our sales engineer and directly with NETSCOUT. As far as customer service goes, getting everything set up, and with any issues we've had since we started using the nGeniusONE, they've always been great with helping out and getting us completely taken care of, without having to go to a third-party.

Typically the response time is same day, depending on when I call or send an email. I understand that they've got other clients, so 24-hour turnaround is what I've experienced. It's been really good, and that's going directly to our account rep and our sales engineer. The times that I've gone to NETSCOUT technical services, I have been on the phone waiting for an engineer to help me out for five minutes, if that. The customer service part has been really good.

The last issue was doing an upgrade on our nGeniusONE server. We were having some issues with getting the upgrade to take on the server from our end. It turned out that we missed an upgrade in between. That's when we called up the technical support and they actually had us upgraded in about 30 minutes after the phone call was made.

I can't remember the name of it, but it pretty much gave us packet flow and some type of visibility into them, but it was so spotty that it wasn't reliable. They had that solution in place for about eight years, but because it was so unreliable as far as getting the actual traffic that you wanted to see, and getting the information that you were trying to get out of it, that nobody really used it.

From what I understand from the people who were using the previous solution before I got here, when they got it set up people tried to use it and it was kind of a mess and the workflow going through it was just not very well thought out. Once you finally got into it, you could see some stuff, but you couldn't ever see, what you were trying to find. People just gave up on it and it sat there. They renewed the contract on it once and when that contract expired we started looking around and we came across NETSCOUT.

I know when they ended up getting the nGeniusONE, the main reason they got it was for the actual packet inspection. We originally had it set up on the outside of our edge firewall to get visibility into all the traffic that was coming in before the firewall blocked it. A lot of the firewalls at the time wouldn't give us that information. So we'd block traffic, but we could only see some of it, and if we were getting a DDoS attack on it, we wouldn't see everything that came through. That was one of the main reasons that they wanted the nGeniusONE, to see all that information.

We've since repurposed it from that, after we realized what kind of traffic we were seeing and where it was coming from. We were able to mitigate a lot of that and we don't have the effects of the DDoS attacks like we used to. So instead of monitoring a little bit of our inside and everything coming in, we've turned the nGeniusONE to monitor everything within our network, not really caring about anything trying to come in anymore because we've upgraded our firewalls as well. It's actually getting us a lot more functionality now than it did three years ago. It's been nice that we've been able to repurpose it, and doing that has actually been pretty easy.

I wasn't actually with the company when they did the initial setup for the nGeniusONE. That happened about a year before I started. I know that typically, you can have it up and going within a couple weeks.

We're currently in the process of repurposing it again and we're adding an SDN networking solution. We're getting into all those leaves and switches that are back there. We've torn it down and we're rebuilding it so we can get information about what's going on in there and in the rest of our data center. 

When they first got it, everyone loved what it did, seeing the outside traffic come in. When we moved it into the actual interior of the network, we were able to pick up a lot of issues before they really manifested: packets dropping and errors going across. We have been able to dig into stuff before it actually becomes a problem where people are really noticing that something is going on.

So it's cut down our troubleshooting time and response time to actual issues within the network itself. In my opinion, we've been able to solve problems before they've become a big issue. That's the main reason anybody would want visibility into their network: If you have fewer people yelling at you, you're doing your job.

There's a five-minute lag time for the dashboard to update itself, but we're able to see if there are any significant changes within every five to ten minutes. Before, our response time would be when an end user actually got to the point of getting annoyed with it and then called in. Typically, that would be 30 minutes down the road, after they'd tried all their troubleshooting, and then they would call in to our basic troubleshooting helpdesk and have to go through things with them for another 15 minutes. So as far as end users are concerned, we're able to work on issues about 45 minutes faster than before because we're able to see the problems that they'd be encountering before the users have to make their way through the channels to get them fixed.

If you're looking to implement it or to purchase, once you actually see the usability of it I think the decision will already be made. If you're looking at other similar options, I would definitely advise looking into NETSCOUT and the nGeniusONE, along with all the other NETSCOUT products; at least the ones we've used, the OptiView and the nGeniusPULSE. 

I really feel that anybody who has contacted NETSCOUT to look into purchasing it, and has seen demos and proofs of concept on their own networks, for the most part, will end up purchasing it, regardless of what anyone says. They'll be able to see exactly what it's doing for them and what they didn't have visibility into before. The product pretty much speaks for itself.

In terms of increasing usage, that's why we ended up getting OptiViews and the nGeniusPULSE devices and server, to take care of some of that load in a less expensive way. It's cheaper for us to be able to use nGeniusPULSE devices out on remote sites than to use a virtual NG1 out there, or to have multiple OptiViews. But if we need to dig down into stuff, we have the options there through NETSCOUT products. That's one thing that they've done well. If you don't have the money to put nGeniusONE devices out everywhere, you can get some of that functionality through different products at a cost that's more reasonable.

We have five people using it on a daily basis. Their role is pretty much monitoring, for the most part. We have it set up to get all of the traffic that we want for application services, etc. But for the most part, it's just a monitoring role, and when there is an issue we just dig down into it from there. They are the same people who are dealing with the maintenance.

I would rate it a nine out of ten and the reason is the integration issue with OptiView and the nGeniusPULSE. If they made it so that the nGeniusONE product would be able to do traffic testing with the OptiView, at that point it would be perfect, for what I use it for.

The main use cases are primarily customer experience management for telecom operators. I've been working with telecom operators, mainly in the commercial enterprise sector for the telecom side. 

It's very valuable for a telecom operator for customer experience management to see the network end-to-end to the unit. KPIs reports for network enhancement, network optimization, and the end-user customer experience.

The most valuable feature is that it is in line with the traffic. It already captures the raw traffic itself and then filters it, giving us the correct image. Some other companies may just extract what they think is valuable from the traffic itself. nGeniusONE is in line. So from the probes themselves from NETSCOUT probes, it gets the real data, real chunks of data, and then we have the correct vision about our network.

Maybe the optics cost could be improved. It's not about the product itself, but the optics cost from other companies is very high, which affects the business. When you buy a $1 million product, you shouldn't be expected to pay $500,000 for support. So, support, operation, and professional services are very expensive. It's the main weakness.  

There were some issues that have been addressed now. There's the new JTP correlation and the Smart User Plan feature, and they've already implemented them.

I have been working with this solution for five years now. 

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE is very stable.

It's very scalable and very easy to scale.

The tech support is very competent but not very flexible. I don't know if it's maybe the American mentality versus the Northeastern Indian mentality. Sometimes, if our support is finished on October 1st, they will not support us by 2nd October by any means. So it's about high cost and less flexibility, but the competence itself is very high.

Positive

I worked with PoleStar. It's also another competitive product.

PoleStar tells you what you want to hear. NETSCOUT gives you the truth, whether it's good or bad. 

Polestar will give you what you want to hear. It's not that reliable. Also, NETSCOUT has its own hardware ports, while Polestar uses a lot of third-party products.

The initial setup is not overly complex. We have a good training program, and the setup process is fairly straightforward. From the perspective of the telecom environment, it's even easier in the enterprise environment.

For both cloud and on-prem deployments, we typically start by setting up the environment. We receive the devices, connect them, and then install the initial software and perform the initial configuration. However, the more complex and advanced configuration tasks are typically handled by NETSCOUT's cloud professional services team.

Typically, one or two people per site are sufficient for deployment. It's a bit of a snowball effect. The first site may take a couple of weeks to deploy, while subsequent sites may only take a couple of days.

It's fairly standard maintenance. It may involve changing power supplies or cards, but nothing fancy or complicated.

It's fairly expensive, and the licensing is very hard. So the competition here will be Huawei. Huawei's SmartCare solution gives a better ROI, return with the cost, not with the return itself. The cost is much, much less, so it's very flat.

If you can afford the system, the support, and the professional service, which can be quite expensive, I would recommend it anytime for any application for any sector, industry sector.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

Troubleshooting is our primary use case for the solution.

We get increased visibility from nGenius while conducting an IT deployment. If the deployment has issues then we can always go back, look at the logs, and figure out what may be happening.

A lot of times people blame the network, and since I'm responsible for the network, people call me. Through troubleshooting using the tool, I verify that it's not our issue, and I also use the tool to help figure out what the issue really is.

It helps us get to root cause quickly. For example, troubleshooting an application issue without the tool would mean we wouldn't have the collection of data to go through to figure out what the problem is. Now that we have X number of hours, maybe even days of data, depending on what we're actually watching, we can look at the data. It's possible that somebody's having an application issue and they come to us figure out what the problem is and we can help them solve their issue a little faster.

We have seen a measurable decrease in mean time to know and mean time to repair. It's a little hard to say how much because it depends on what you're troubleshooting, but I would estimate it at 25 percent, or even less, of what it would normally be. And our overall troubleshooting time, in most cases, is down to a day, as opposed to multiple days. Without the data, it's almost impossible to figure out what a problem may have been.

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.

In terms of the single pane of glass view, it's good, but 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. Other than that, it's a good dashboard. A lot of people are using it.

If there were a wizard to take us through, step-by-step, creating dashboards and the like, that would be really helpful.

It's very stable. Every once in a great while we'll have to reboot the nGeniusONE server. That may be server-related and not application related.

We haven't really scaled it very much. We're not a really big shop. We've got five InfiniStreams collecting into our nGeniusONE. It's supposed to scale pretty well, but I don't really have much comment on it because we're pretty small as it is.

Technical support is very good.

We didn't have a previous solution at all, other than Wireshark to capture packets when we needed them. We knew we needed something better than that.

The initial setup was a little complex, only because it was the first time we were getting into such a tool. We didn't know much about it. We had to learn while going along. It was complex, but quite doable.

We did it ourselves.

I don't see the numbers, because I'm a technical guy. But I would imagine there probably is a return on investment because we're fixing these applications faster, causing less of an outage. I would say we're actually saving money, or at least not losing as much money when these applications are down. It's a big help there.

I would show someone who is looking into this type of product what I know about the product, how I use it, and help them make a decision on whether it's the right product for them.

The product has a lot of capabilities and we're just using a small fraction of it. So, right now, I would call the solution a nine out of ten, because we only use a small portion of it. But for what we do, it helps us out tremendously.

The primary use case is network monitoring for telecoms.

Everybody is using the same tool set. Therefore, we are speaking the same language.

Network faults are easily and quickly identified through dashboards and drill down.

It has versatility to correlate different traffic types and performance management statistics.

The single pane of glass view is very simple and good. For my users, having all the applications in one place is the aim.

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.

There is a lot more integration work that needs to be finalized for simpler tool set. The integration of many products into a much simpler single pane of glass is where we want to be.

The stability is good. We haven't had a major failure for years. Apart from the hardware's age, the software is pretty robust.

The current solution is not easy to scale, because it is an appliance-based solution. So, you have to swap everything out.

The technical support is OK. While it is not outstanding, we don't have any complaints.

We did not have another solution previously.

The initial setup is relatively straightforward, as any network integration can be. The complexity comes when you are trying to tune it.

We used a reseller for the deployment. They were very good. We have a good working relationship with them.

We have seen some ROI with the root cause analysis. It is quicker to root cause analysis. We are seeing increased network uptime, because if we're spotting, and if we're getting root cause analysis quicker, then we know what comes up quicker.

From my user community, I am getting the impression that something which use to take days has now gone to hours for troubleshooting.

Troubleshooting our LTE network - any situations that come up in our cellular network. We also use the solution for proactive monitoring of remote sites, as we use it to monitor all the towers in our cellular network, as well as our core applications.

We're still in the beginning stages, learning how to use it.

It's a great monitoring tool. At a glance, we can get an idea of what's going on in our network.

Also, while I don't track it personally, I know that time to repair has been reduced and that it has cut our overall troubleshooting time.

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.

Some of the filters could be easier to see and to set up. That's the only thing that I've ever had any trouble with. The ones that I've seen here, at NETSCOUT Engage 2019, are part of a newer version that we don't have yet, and it looks better. So, it may already have been fixed.

It's 100 percent stable.

The scalability is great.

I'm sure it's great, but I haven't had to deal with technical support. I'm a technician.

I assume the setup was straightforward. I'm a telecom tech. The engineers did all the setup and I only use the tool. I didn't help set it up.

I would recommend it. It's the best tool that I've used as far as troubleshooting quickly, at a glance, and for being able to drill down into any issues, any complaints we might have from customers.

I do know that we would like to get TrueCall, but we don't have that yet. We're working on it.

I would rate nGenius a nine out of ten because I don't rate anything a ten. There's always room for improvement.

The primary use case is to have the ability to detect issues that a customer would eventually see. It's a more proactive approach for making the customers have a better satisfaction in terms of their usage and performance.

It gives us quicker reaction times and more proactive diagnostics, especially in terms of needing to set up an alarm if a threshold was exceeded.

It gives us a deep package inspection. It provides that sort of visibility. It also has the ability to get the data in real-time.

This solution helps us get to root cause quickly, especially as we dive deep capturing packets.  

• The quick ability to troubleshoot.
• The ability to look forward.
• The ability to develop proactive solutions.

It is the ability to collect data and analyze it, especially key performance indicators. This is before a customer would call to the service center to complain that they have had bad coverage or a dropped call.

While it is good, the single pane of glass view is too high level. It is better for management or someone doing sanity checks. A lot of times, I need to go deeper into the additional screens to get what I want out of it.

We would like to have increased performance in the future. Eventually, we will need more horsepower.

We would like NETSCOUT to add additional topics to the data that it collects, because big data is important going forward.

It's very stable. 

When we first got the tool, there were some performance issues. Eventually, they worked out the issues through various upgrades and server hardware enhancements. That was a plus.

We do have two onsite NETSCOUT engineers, who are excellent. Especially when we encounter an issue, we tell them right away, "We have an issue. Can you fix it?"

We don't have to wait a few days for something to be solved.

The initial setup was a probably a little complex. We had to get things up and running, do field trials, fine tune the performance, then evaluate it under load, and fine tune it again.

We worked closely with NETSCOUT for the deployment. 

We have our own IT department who channels the server, infrastructure, and networking. I'm on the engineering side, and we work directly side-by-side with NETSCOUT. 

We don't use a third party vendor.

Proactive versus a customer having a bad experience: That is the key point. Because you get a bad experience, and you lose customers. You always want tools to make your customer happy.

The solution gives us a forward looking vision. We develop custom applications on top of the data that we collect. It gives us that ability, which is an advantage.

It's definitely decreased troubleshooting time. We get a direct window into the infrastructure and various probes, especially the ability to capture certain KPIs that we look at. Normally, if we didn't have this tool, we would have to collect them under various vendor boxes. That takes time and experience.

Deep packet inspection is the key point for NETSCOUT versus the other competitive tools that we also use.

Take a look at it. If not, you're losing the opportunity to improve your performance in terms of its customer aspects.

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.