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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 April 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

"It is easy to understand and determine when and/or where the network is failing."
"We were able to clearly identify the root cause of incidents visually and with specimen alerts with the topology design."
"DX Spectrum has been great for us; it's the strongest available, the main problem is the pricing, but it's in accordance with the features."
"It's a good tool. It's simple to do the configuration."
"Everything being centrally located in one infrastructure management tool allows anyone anywhere, between the IT help desk, to Windows teams, Unix teams, or the network team to see exactly what devices are causing the issue, as well as the severity of those issues."
"The network mapping functionality."
"This is a very good, refined product that, in the fault-tolerant configuration, approaches being bulletproof."
"Its scalability is very good, as it can be used in huge environments."
"The GUI is easy to use."
"The solution is easy to install and use."
"Wireshark does exactly what I want and leaves me with no need to look elsewhere."
"The best thing about Wireshark is the community/ecosystem."
"I have found the most valuable feature you can design your sniffer the way you want to."
"The feature to incorporate Voice over IP (VoIP) incidents into network traffic analysis is valuable. Capturing voice or SIP communication allows for examination of interactions between SIP clients and SIP servers. This helps the team investigate or analyze issues related to call center servers and operators."
"The drill-down available for packet analysis is great. It gives a network security engineer insight into what is going on at the packet level and enables better troubleshooting."
"Wireshark is very good for network engineers; it's free software, you can install it very easily, and there are a lot of features."
 

Cons

"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."
"DX Spectrum could be improved by them getting rid of the Java console. It would also be better with Turkish language support."
"Integration with some other tools, and integration with some Network Packet Broker, need some improvement."
"What I additionally would like to see is utilization information."
"It's really tough to say because it really does have a lot to do with how much time you put into it."
"The price of DX Spectrum is not competitive when compared to other solutions, such as SolarWinds. The high price has caused us to lose many deals."
"Technical support for this product is not so good. It needs improvement."
"The price is very high. It makes it very difficult with respect to the business because, with any other product, we have to look at a lower-cost licensing model."
"I would like to see Wireshark improve the ease of application of the command. The command is very powerful, but not easy to apply."
"Its user interface was a little less friendly. They can make its user interface a little bit more friendly."
"Big trace files (more than 1,000,000 packets) can be slow, but then you can use "TraceWrangler" (also free) to help with slicing and dicing the data."
"DNS could be improved."
"It needs the ability to follow multiple interfaces for specific traffic from different network zones/virtual networks. It would help to understand how any packet is going through the network."
"Wireshark is similar to an OS defense tool, meaning that it runs on an OS such as Ubuntu and Fedora, but I'm unsure if it's compatible with Windows or if it's a straightforward process to run it on Windows. Right now, my team needs to run Wireshark from a dongle to use it, so it's an OS-dependable tool, and that's an area for improvement. I was unable to use Wireshark on Windows, and I couldn't capture it, as I'm unsure how to configure the wireless card into monitoring mode on Windows. The process was straightforward on Linux, but it wasn't the case on Windows OS. It seems Wireshark isn't compatible with all OS. For example, you can analyze the log, and you can analyze it on the Windows server, but you can't do a capture in Windows. Configuring Wireshark for Windows isn't as easy as configuring it for Linux."
"We'd like to be able to extract the output into an Excel table."
"Wireshark's UI isn't easy to handle and doesn't have as nice a view as Omnipeek."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Spectrum is expensive."
"In general, the license cost will be about 30% of the total TCO for this tool (hardware/support team, OS costs, and OS management)."
"Currently, a perpetual license but some services are moving to a subscription"
"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."
"DX Spectrum's pricing depends on the license number. It is affordable."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"It is expensive compared to other tools in the market."
"The price is good enough to expect an ideal solution. It's expensive."
"I've never personally had to pay for it, making it a highly valuable internet resource that's accessible for use. While they offer some paid versions, our firm has utilized the free version for the past three years."
"Wireshark is open-source and free of charge."
"Wireshark is free software, so you don't have to pay any licensing fee. Individual people can use it and then donate to Wireshark."
"I am using the free version of this solution."
"It is an open-source solution."
"The solution is open source so is free."
"It is free to download and install. It runs on multiple platforms, so how can you go wrong?"
"This is an open-source product that can be used free of charge."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
University
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

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.
 

Comparisons

 

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.
885,880 professionals have used our research since 2012.