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DX Spectrum vs Wireshark comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 11, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

DX Spectrum
Ranking in Network Troubleshooting
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
118
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (11th), Network Monitoring Software (30th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (29th), DX NetOps (1st)
Wireshark
Ranking in Network Troubleshooting
4th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Network Troubleshooting category, the mindshare of DX Spectrum is 4.9%, up from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Wireshark is 14.3%, up from 12.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Troubleshooting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Wireshark14.3%
DX Spectrum4.9%
Other80.8%
Network Troubleshooting
 

Featured Reviews

PinchasAlbalya - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
Monitoring has become centralized and management now sees real‑time health of key network assets
The time investment required is significant, not because of difficulty but because of the need for free time to invest in it. We need to get the knowledge. We know there are many options, but we took an external vendor to install and make the customization. If we want to make others changes without paying for customization, we need to learn it deeply by ourselves. The tutorials are very complicated. They could work on that area. The tutorial part could be more simplified. I know there are many explanations, and you can get help or documents in one click on the current page in the product, but it is not very clear. If you want to do something new that you did not see from the vendor in the installation, it is not very simple. The documents are good for people that know how to operate the product well, but for new users, it is not simple.
Vijay Duggal - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Specialist at Squarepoint Capital
Provides detailed traffic analysis and helps troubleshoot issues
There is a disadvantage when it comes to sampling intervals. While the solution supports sampling as fine as one millisecond, it requires a copy at that interval. My Python script allows me to achieve a granularity of up to ten microseconds, but I can't go beyond that. When dealing with provisioning on both issues, it would be beneficial if I could go down to the microsecond level, if not the nanosecond. Additionally, I've heard from a colleague that Wireshark might be less effective in the voice domain.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"This tool makes it more transparent to the customers, and they can be alerted and be proactive based on the data we are getting."
"Spectrum is a very stable product."
"The flexibility is impressive, as it is so customizable that you can almost make it do anything you want it to do, with many ways to tailor it to your environment and business needs that I have not seen in other products in this space."
"The most valuable feature is that after setup, using it is very straightforward."
"The product’s stability and robustness are valuable."
"It is very stable. We have not had any major issues in over 10 years."
"I found Spectrum as being a complete network management solution with a great user friendly GUI."
"​Stability has been good. We really have not had any issues.​"
"I find Wireshark a very useful tool. Its best feature is that it allows me to deeply understand what's going on at the packet level, as well as any adverse signatures that I can analyze. When I need to create an IPS rule, I need to check the traffic deeply to get more insights about the actual traffic, what's the name of certain flags, etc., and I'm able to do all that through Wireshark. The tool is also user-friendly."
"It helps in analyzing if something looks suspicious, such as a brute force attack or scanning from somewhere."
"It's easy to troubleshoot issues because there's a large online community."
"The drill-down available for packet analysis is great, as it gives a network security engineer insight into what is going on at the packet level and enables better troubleshooting."
"The most valuable feature is the traffic gate, which shows which IPs are getting more bandwidth or traffic."
"It gives us the ability to pinpoint problems and to communicate network problems with software and hardware vendors."
"Wireshark's best features are that it lets us see what traffic is in the network and what data should be encrypted."
"Wireshark has a tool called tshark that can parse the files without opening them so that you can take large captures, say 2-10GB, and return only relevant information."
 

Cons

"Every versions running on Windows Server 2008 (R2) that I've worked after that (versions 9.2, 9.3 and 9.4) have had some issues either with OneClick/Spectro Server communication (hanged alarms for instance) or with global loss of SNMP communication with network devices, or DDMdb increasing indefinitely or with some unexplainable SSDB crashes."
"The GIS map feature needs to be enhanced and synced with topology views of containers and global collections."
"It takes some time to learn how to use this solution."
"I switched from Spectrum to Nimsoft because it's a better product for me."
"CA Spectrum is expensive."
"Integrations with other CA products A better way to create reports"
"The CA Technologies sales team destroyed their relationship with our business units."
"There appears to be no intelligence within Spectrum itself, for example if we were to move a network device to a different switch port, it will see the neighbor as being available, but the link or switch port as down."
"Great scalability, but they are beginning to sacrifice ease of use for complexity."
"Wireshark does not allow you to make any changes relevant to the network; in other words, you can only observe the network."
"The only thing that I don't like is sometimes there is an update, and something that I was using is either no longer there or it has changed."
"It would be better if they offered a hybrid version like My Cloud Control."
"It is not an easy program. You will need to study to use it to its full capabilities (follow a course)."
"With Wireshark, you cannot download and utilize the packet in automation."
"Wireshark's UI isn't easy to handle and doesn't have as nice a view as Omnipeek."
"I have not used Wireshark to an advanced point where I could provide a detailed opinion on improvements needed."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In general, the license cost will be about 30% of the total TCO for this tool (hardware/support team, OS costs, and OS management)."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"It is expensive compared to other tools in the market."
"Spectrum is expensive."
"DX Spectrum's pricing depends on the license number. It is affordable."
"Since the acquisition by Broadcom, we have not had such a good experience with licensing and pricing. Since they were bought by Broadcom, every sales contract is getting complicated. It's very complicated, and it's much more expensive than before. It's not a good pricing strategy from Broadcom."
"The product, support, and maintenance are all expensive, which is another reason that we are switching to another solution."
"It is very pricey. With the current trend of enterprises moving towards cheaper and more modern looking solutions like ManageEngine, SevOne, ServicePilot, and Paesller."
"This is an open-source product that can be used free of charge."
"Wireshark is open source and gives great value and functionality to the network investigation."
"It's free."
"It is an open-source solution."
"Wireshark is an open-source product, so it's free to use."
"The solution is open source so is free."
"Wireshark is free software, so you can download it and use it for free with no licensing fees."
"It is free to download and install. It runs on multiple platforms, so how can you go wrong?"
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Marketing Services Firm
6%
University
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise90
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise27
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with DX Spectrum?
The time investment required is significant, not because of difficulty but because of the need for free time to invest in it. We need to get the knowledge. We know there are many options, but we to...
What is your primary use case for DX Spectrum?
The university purchased DX Spectrum, called ICE. DX Spectrum NAC is working for us only on Cisco 9200 switches. It is not working on any other switch like C1000 or HG or any 2960X. Even other Cisc...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Wireshark?
Wireshark is priced at a medium range, not too high, not too low. The pricing could be more flexible, and they might make it more expensive. That said, compared to other products, it is competitive.
What needs improvement with Wireshark?
The speed of the Internet could be improved, especially its performance. Performance can sometimes be a challenge due to numerous factors.
 

Also Known As

CA Spectrum
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

National Informatics Centre India, Banese, Olympus, AlphaServe Technologies, Sicredi
Comversion, ADP, Talbots
Find out what your peers are saying about DX Spectrum vs. Wireshark and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,976 professionals have used our research since 2012.