Cisco ThousandEyes vs. Nmap

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco ThousandEyes
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
Cisco ThousandEyes empowers organizations to assure every digital experience across every network, everywhere, every time.N/A
Nmap
Score 10.0 out of 10
N/A
Nmap is a free, open source network discovery, mapper, and security auditing software. Its core features include port scanning identifying unknown devices, testing for security vulnerabilities, and identifying network issues.
$7,980
Every Three Months per license
Pricing
Cisco ThousandEyesNmap
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Nmap OEM Small/Startup Company Redistribution License - Quarterly Term Maintenance Fee
$7,980
Every Three Months per license
Nmap OEM Mid-Sized Company Redistribution License - Quarterly Term Maintenance Fee
$11,980
Every Three Months per license
Nmap OEM Enterprise Redistribution License - Quarterly Term Maintenance Fee
$13,980
Every Three Months per license
Nmap OEM Small/Startup Company Redistribution License - Annual Maintenance Fee
$14,980
per year per license
Nmap OEM Mid-Sized Company Redistribution License - Annual Maintenance Fee
$19,980
per year per license
Nmap OEM Enterprise Redistribution License - Annual Maintenance Fee
$23,980
per year per license
Nmap OEM Small/Startup Company Redistribution License - Perpetual License
$49,980
one-time fee per license
Nmap OEM Small/Startup Company Redistribution License - 5 year prepay Maintenance Fee
$59,920
Every Five Years per license
Nmap OEM Mid-Sized Company Redistribution License - 5 year prepay Maintenance Fee
$79,920
Every Five Years per license
Nmap OEM Mid-Sized Company Redistribution License - Perpetual License
$79,980
one-time fee per license
Nmap OEM Enterprise Redistribution License - 5 year prepay Maintenance Fee
$95,920
Every Five Years per license
Nmap OEM Enterprise Redistribution License - Perpetual License
$98,980
one-time fee per license
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco ThousandEyesNmap
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional DetailsAll perpetual licenses include a six-month trial period during which you can cancel for any reason and receive a full refund of all money paid (including maintenance). The term license is only a 3-month commitment and cal also be terminated with full refund during the first 30 days of the initial quarter.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Cisco ThousandEyesNmap
Features
Cisco ThousandEyesNmap
Network Performance Monitoring
Comparison of Network Performance Monitoring features of Product A and Product B
Cisco ThousandEyes
-
Ratings
Nmap
5.3
Ratings
43% below category average
Automated network device discovery00 Ratings5.00 Ratings
Network monitoring00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Baseline threshold calculation00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Alerts00 Ratings3.00 Ratings
Network capacity planning00 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Packet capture analysis00 Ratings2.00 Ratings
Network mapping00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Customizable reports00 Ratings1.00 Ratings
Wireless infrastructure monitoring00 Ratings2.00 Ratings
Hardware health monitoring00 Ratings5.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Cisco ThousandEyesNmap
Small Businesses
SolarWinds Pingdom
SolarWinds Pingdom
Score 9.7 out of 10
NinjaOne
NinjaOne
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Catchpoint
Catchpoint
Score 9.2 out of 10
PingPlotter
PingPlotter
Score 9.3 out of 10
Enterprises
Nexthink
Nexthink
Score 7.0 out of 10
PingPlotter
PingPlotter
Score 9.3 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Cisco ThousandEyesNmap
Likelihood to Recommend
8.8
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
6.4
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
7.3
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.1
(0 ratings)
8.4
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco ThousandEyesNmap
Likelihood to Recommend
As a service provider that is in multiple datacenters it's a great tool to use and leverage. Alot of smaller providers are only using NMS nodes that are hosted in their HQ or in spots that aren't where their content is hosted. Being able to run tests directly from your datacenters (between them or to the content provider itself) gives more accurate results. The downside is if you have no server infrastructure you'll have to install servers/machines to utilize it.
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Nmap is the ideal solution if you are working alot in network environments. If you come to grips with the syntax and the most-used features (the online community helps alot), you will be able to much more quickly and thoroughly troubleshoot networks or check for security vulnerabilities, for instance. It is free to use and is available for Windows and Linux, so I would say it is very much warrented for any network administrator or sysadmin to take it out for a spin.
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Pros
  • Agent to Agent testing. Full round trip test. Have a customer using a Server Side API that is having an issue. Loan a Nuc, or have them install the ThousandEyes agent in their network. You'll find the issue guaranteed.
  • Device Layer vision - ability to see from the server, through the Firewall, switches Proxy and internet. Measure jitter, latency, response time, load time and see the path your packet takes.
  • Share your tests live. Provide the customer a link to a live test, they can see what you do, review your metrics and verify your tests. They can also use it as a tool to better their service. Build the trust and stickiness with your customers' most difficult users - the IT Operations team.
  • Validate your QOS and routes for VOIP, video conferences, and data traffic. Highly flexible and configurable complete with transaction-based testing, custom headers, calls and tools to mimic any scenario you need.
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  • Nmap is very good at discovering systems on your network.
  • Nmap is very good at guessing a systems operating system with a high degree of accuracy.
  • Nmap is good at validating externally facing systems to make sure that unauthorized access is not allowed.
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Cons
  • We have the product, we have a fair amount of wireless issues. You have to go through so many hoops, links and selections that I would think would've been impossible. Maybe if you have a specialized engineer, you would be able to use the thousandeyes product to troubleshoot a problem. But if I want to share with our knock, for example, would be very challenging because there is so many paths that you have to go and there is so many assumptions you have to do to actually find the root cause of the problem. What I would expect is maybe what they can do is implementing some AI today on this product to give some hints, "hey, this might be the problem because the data is there but it's difficult to find." We need an easier way to find how we can use the platform to point out where's the root cause of those problems.
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  • exporting, There's a serious lack of ability to export the information in a readable format to present to VPs and such. I always find myself doing a lot of data massaging to get it in a pretty format
  • some scans can trigger sensitive IDS/IPS
  • SYN scans can be particularly aggressive and cause problems on remote systems.
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Likelihood to Renew
We will definitely renew and maybe even extend our usage of ThousandEyes. We have been using ThousandEyes now for a couple of years and it has shown us major benefits. With the new options it offers for SD-WAN for us it is a no brainer to renew our current licenses
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No answers on this topic
Usability
There is definitely a learning curve to ThousandEyes, but once you understand how the client deployment works and how to set up monitoring, things go pretty smoothly. I think the initial setting up of clients on endpoints can be a little tricky though.
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Nmap uses are very practical and I don't think there is a better tools for what Nmap does. It is open-sources that therefore there is no cost to use it. It offers a number of benefits, including but not limited to network mapping, port scanning and more. It is very reliable as a network scanning tool.
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Reliability and Availability
Being cloud hosted means that you are at the mercy of Cisco web services, but we've had absolutely no issues with its availability.
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No answers on this topic
Performance
The client is very lightweight on endpoints and the user interface is very fast and fluid.
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No answers on this topic
Support Rating
You have online support from the tool itself 24/7 and they are very responsive. We also have a specific account manager and specific engineer assigned to help us with very specific questions for our environment. The level of response to our requirements is always super high. We have requested specific features to be added and these have been developed and introduced very quick tot he product (within weeks). Their DevOps and agile approach seems to pay off.
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There is a very large support community and a robust selection of add-ons and scripts. Once you get the use down this is one of the most powerful tools and you can find anything you are looking for as far as examples on the web. While not having official support its not lacking by any means.
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In-Person Training
Our Cisco reps actually had someone teach us a few things about the functionality of ThousandEyes, and it helped a lot. The training was good and we had follow-up assistance as well when we had questions about the monitoring and reporting functions. Overall, we were satisfied with the training and support.
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No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Our implementation was pretty straightforward, with some issues loading clients on endpoints. We didn't have any notable issues, and I don't really have any additional insights.
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No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
It is a similar product to Cisco ThousandEyes. Both solutions give good network monitoring and traffic analysis. But Cisco ThousandEyes works better with Cisco devices and has real-time alerts that are very useful. It also helps to see network problems faster and make troubleshooting easier. Cisco ThousandEyes is also better for checking SaaS and cloud apps like Azure, AWS, Webex, etc. It has endpoint agents that show network quality directly from user devices. The web interface is simple to use, so the learning curve is not too steep. Also, it has many monitoring points around the world, making it easy to check performance outside the company network.
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A similar but more basic alternative is available on Android, called Fing. It's very useful for diagnosing issues on networks when you only have your mobile device to hand.
A graphical user interface alternative to Nmap, is Zenmap. It's the official GUI for Nmap and does use Nmap under the hood. It makes things a bit more 'point and click'.
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Scalability
I think this product would be infinitely scalable since it's all cloud hosted and can support thousands of endpoints if needed. We are only using it for a limited number of endpoints, so we never really considered scalability.
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No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
  • ThousandEyes has helped us quickly isolate issues on some high-profile (within the organization) incidents and whether the network (internally or on the Internet) is at fault. If it is, it becomes easier to see the "where" of the issues quicker so we can move onto what the issue is faster. In the case of non-network related issues, it helps us get the appropriate teams or individuals involved sooner.
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  • NMap being free of charge has a positive impact on our budget. It is an enterprise-class tool that anyone can download and use.
  • NMap, both command line and GUI, is a very advanced tool that is easy to use, so there's very little learning curve involved, which has a positive impact on productivity and security.
  • A valuable feature that is a huge time saver is that you can compare scans. This saves hours of searching manually for differences in scan results. Faster results means faster mitigation of problems, which can be a real money saver.
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ScreenShots

Cisco ThousandEyes Screenshots

Screenshot of global availability issues for users trying to use Slack application.Screenshot of the path visibility feature pinpointing where in the transit path an outage or event is occurring.Screenshot of ThousandEyes Internet Insights™, which combines a massive data set with algorithmic outage detection to provide near real-time insights into a business's SaaS applications.  and networks. Internet Insights can be used to manage digital experience at Internet scale.Screenshot of ThousandEyes Event Detection diagnosing events as server or network issue.