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Netscout vs Riverbed
March 09, 2025 | Author: Michael Stromann
12★
The real-time network visibility platform for performance, security, and availability, at any scale.
4★
The Riverbed Network and Application Performance Platform enables organizations to visualize, optimize, accelerate and remediate the performance of any network for any application.
See also:
Top 10 Intrusion Detection Systems
Top 10 Intrusion Detection Systems
NetScout and Riverbed, despite sounding like rival factions in an intergalactic trade war, actually do quite similar things. Both are deeply obsessed with making sure networks don’t collapse under the weight of their own inefficiency, providing tools to monitor, optimize and generally keep things ticking. They poke around in data packets with all the enthusiasm of a starship engineer looking for a misaligned quantum flux capacitor and offer their services to enterprises that, rather unfortunately, rely on the internet to do business. Whether you’re trying to keep a global financial system afloat or just making sure a cat video loads in under three seconds, these two have something to say about it.
NetScout, which has been around since 1984 (possibly predating the invention of networking as far as some IT veterans are concerned), leans heavily into the serious business of carrier-grade service assurance. They make sure telecom giants, governments and similarly colossal entities don’t wake up one morning to discover their entire infrastructure has been eaten by a rogue packet storm. With an added flair for cybersecurity, they also enjoy spotting and neutralizing DDoS attacks before anyone has time to panic. They are, in many ways, the grizzled veterans of network visibility, relying on specialized hardware, high-scale packet brokers and a general air of “we were here before the internet was cool.”
Riverbed, the relative youngster founded in 2002, takes a more performance-obsessed, end-user-friendly approach. They have a particular soft spot for making sluggish, long-distance networks behave like they’re in the same room, which is why their SteelHead appliances are beloved by IT departments that don’t enjoy explaining slow applications to impatient executives. With a strong focus on WAN optimization, cloud acceleration and digital experience monitoring, Riverbed ensures that SaaS applications don’t move at the speed of tectonic plates. Their solutions are particularly handy for sprawling enterprises that don’t want geography to be an obstacle to productivity or at the very least, don’t want to hear about it in every quarterly review.
See also: Top 10 Intrusion Detection Systems
NetScout, which has been around since 1984 (possibly predating the invention of networking as far as some IT veterans are concerned), leans heavily into the serious business of carrier-grade service assurance. They make sure telecom giants, governments and similarly colossal entities don’t wake up one morning to discover their entire infrastructure has been eaten by a rogue packet storm. With an added flair for cybersecurity, they also enjoy spotting and neutralizing DDoS attacks before anyone has time to panic. They are, in many ways, the grizzled veterans of network visibility, relying on specialized hardware, high-scale packet brokers and a general air of “we were here before the internet was cool.”
Riverbed, the relative youngster founded in 2002, takes a more performance-obsessed, end-user-friendly approach. They have a particular soft spot for making sluggish, long-distance networks behave like they’re in the same room, which is why their SteelHead appliances are beloved by IT departments that don’t enjoy explaining slow applications to impatient executives. With a strong focus on WAN optimization, cloud acceleration and digital experience monitoring, Riverbed ensures that SaaS applications don’t move at the speed of tectonic plates. Their solutions are particularly handy for sprawling enterprises that don’t want geography to be an obstacle to productivity or at the very least, don’t want to hear about it in every quarterly review.
See also: Top 10 Intrusion Detection Systems
