Cisco Catalyst Center vs. PingPlotter

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco Catalyst Center
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Cisco Catalyst Center provides an intent-based platform for managing enterprise networks across campus, branch, and edge environments. It combines automation, analytics, and assurance to streamline IT operations, improve security posture, and reduce manual tasks. With integratedAI/ML-driven insights, policy-based controls, and end-to-end visibility across wired and wireless infrastructures, Catalyst Center empowers IT teams toproactively detect issues, enforce compliance, and accelerate…N/A
PingPlotter
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
PingPlotter is a graphical traceroute and ping tool that visualizes network performance in a way that makes identifying the source of problems quicker and easier for everyone from online gamers and video streamers to VoIP admins and IT pros. Features for remote deployment, network monitoring, scripting, and a web interface are included along with several additional capabilities.
$0
per user
Pricing
Cisco Catalyst CenterPingPlotter
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
PingPlotter Free
$0.00
per user
PingPlotter Free
$0.00
per user
PingPlotter Standard
$6.99
per user per month
PingPlotter Professional
$29.00
per user per month
PingPlotter Standard
$39.99
per user
PingPlotter Professional
$349.00
per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco Catalyst CenterPingPlotter
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Cisco Catalyst CenterPingPlotter
Features
Cisco Catalyst CenterPingPlotter
Network Performance Monitoring
Comparison of Network Performance Monitoring features of Product A and Product B
Cisco Catalyst Center
-
Ratings
PingPlotter
8.3
29 Ratings
4% above category average
Automated network device discovery00 Ratings8.719 Ratings
Network monitoring00 Ratings9.029 Ratings
Baseline threshold calculation00 Ratings8.520 Ratings
Alerts00 Ratings8.016 Ratings
Customizable reports00 Ratings7.616 Ratings
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Cisco Catalyst CenterPingPlotter
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Score 9.3 out of 10
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User Ratings
Cisco Catalyst CenterPingPlotter
Likelihood to Recommend
8.6
(230 ratings)
9.4
(25 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.7
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(17 ratings)
9.1
(5 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(32 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
7.3
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco Catalyst CenterPingPlotter
Likelihood to Recommend
Cisco
Security with identity-based access control and segmentation via integration with Cisco ISE, supporting zero-trust architectures. Centralized Management for a large campus environment with centralized management of wired and wireless equipment. Automation of tasks like: provisioning, configuration, and software upgrade, reducing manual effort of those tasks. It could be improved to Multi-Vendor Support.
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Pingman Tools
It is well suited for performing monitoring and testing from a single device. It is less appropriate if you have to monitor from multiple different endpoints. That type of deployment would be more of an enterprise application. If you are looking for an end user monitoring solution then PingPlotter is the one for you.
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Pros
Cisco
  • I enjoy having a more modern tool for viewing PSIRTs and CVEs on our catalyst devices.
  • I enjoy all the different views I have for my inventory.
  • I think templates work well for zero day configuration.
  • I love the newer features for showing what configuration is going to be changed and deployed before you deploy it.
  • I like that I can see in-band and out-of-band configuration history.
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Pingman Tools
  • Monitor traffic in network
  • Measure stops when contacting network locations such as websites
  • Measures the lag and latency it takes to contact network locations
  • Gives you both induvidual measurements as well as good oversight
  • identifies when network lag or disconnect occurs
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Cons
Cisco
  • Granularity. And so for us, and our use case might not be the same as a majority of customers, but we have a environment which frequently changes. So we're not a traditional corporate environment which stays relatively static or still reprovision. We want to reconfigure our environment to meet whatever the needs of our customers are. And at the moment it's like for some of the ways that we have to configure it, we just want to give something a little tap, but we have to hit it with a sledgehammer, which then often has knock on impacts other services.
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Pingman Tools
  • Its a little confusing to see which targets are currently running pings and which ones are displayed in the plots.
  • Starting and stopping pings requires a right click and that would be better with a play/pause button I think.
  • Ability to drag and drop the graphs to reorder them.
  • more columns to show which targets are running and which are displayed. Currently this is done with symbols so you cant sort by just the running targets for example I've found.
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Likelihood to Renew
Cisco
I think new products are often "half-baked" or over hyped when they release, as was the case with DNAC. We were well ahead of the curve in acquiring it. But as it has matured it is now a fantastic addition to our infrastructure. I think we are easing into a stage where it is hard to envision a large organization NOT having Catalyst Center in place. If for nothing outside of the mapping and troubleshooting aspects; using it as a "source of truth".
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Pingman Tools
No answers on this topic
Usability
Cisco
Cisco DNA Center is going to help us in security, simplicity and ease of administration. Cisco DNA Center is complete management and control platform that simplifies and streamlines network operations. Cisco DNA Center offers a single dashboard for every core function in your network. With this platform, IT can become more nimble and respond to changes and challenges faster and more intelligently.
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Pingman Tools
I installed it and it just started working. I realized I could then tweak it to show what I needed but didn't have to spend a long time configuring it before use, editing YAML files etc. Maybe that's fine for a network professional, but I only need this software if something goes wrong, and then need it to work quickly out of the box.
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Support Rating
Cisco
El soporte de CISCO DNA Center es muy bueno, responden a mis dudas pero no he tenido oportunidad de reportar un incidente o determinar un tiempo de respuesta critico. The support of CISCO DNA Center is very good, they answer my questions, but I have not had the opportunity to report an incident or determine a critical response time.
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Pingman Tools
I have not had much contact with the PingPlotter support, only one time have I went to them and it was a positive experience. The questions I had were answered quickly and professionally. I have no issue with the experience I had with the Support team. This was from before and after the purchase of the product.
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Online Training
Cisco
It was informative, but the labs were not available long enough for us to get intimately familiar with CCNA before it was closed. The course instructor was well informed and got us as close to ready as she could.
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Pingman Tools
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Cisco
We started out with using Cisco Prime infrastructure and we migrated to DNA center or Catalyst Center from Prime Infrastructure. We found that it wasn't apples to Apples migration. It wasn't exactly, it wasn't a direct upgrade. There were a lot of key differences, but yeah, I think that that was probably the most similar thing
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Pingman Tools
A balance of a generic tool vs a network equipment product is necessary when investigating network incidents or disruptions. Need to train the engineer to use both tools to perform their analysis and to dive down to the issues as fast as they can. Experience with the tools will continue to play a part if we were to adopt PingPlotter
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Return on Investment
Cisco
  • Yeah, I mean that last one for sure. The software independent of the hardware, I mean, it's just easy. They made it so easy to just, and fast and efficient to upgrade your entire organization within days, weeks, months. And you're not spending, your maintenance windows get a lot shorter. You can schedule more maintenance windows just because you know there's going to be some type of consistency with it and there's just, I'm sure there will be a hiccup one day, but there just hasn't really been too many issues with us using that product, especially for maintenance, window upgrades, things like that.
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Pingman Tools
  • Great ROI, troubleshooting time has been reduced by 90%
  • Network Discoveries used to take 2 to 3 hours and were inconsistent - now it is a matter of minutes
  • lacks integration into our MSP toolkit, and we now use it as a stand alone product
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ScreenShots

Cisco Catalyst Center Screenshots

Screenshot of AIOpsScreenshot of BaselinesScreenshot of PoliciesScreenshot of HealthScreenshot of Network HierarchyScreenshot of PoE

PingPlotter Screenshots

Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of