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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
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
117
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (7th), Network Monitoring Software (21st), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (20th), DX NetOps (1st)
Wireshark
Ranking in Network Troubleshooting
3rd
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 2025, in the Network Troubleshooting category, the mindshare of DX Spectrum is 3.7%, up from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Wireshark is 13.2%, up from 12.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Troubleshooting
 

Featured Reviews

DickBaker - PeerSpot reviewer
An all-inclusive monitoring solution that adapts to emerging technologies
The product helps to correlate events.  The solution's most valuable features are its integration with Broadcom tools and scalability. DX Spectrum needs better documentation on its complex features.  I have been using the product since 2005.  I rate DX Spectrum's stability an eight point five…
DonniUgalde - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides visibility into the network, and the GUI is easy to use
I wish the filters were a little bit more prepopulated. It would have been easy to hit a drop-down and select a filter. If I only wanted to look at DCP, UDP, or IP, it would be easy to filter it out. Advanced network knowledge is required to get a lot out of the tool. However, it's very easy to install and deploy. It would be nice if there were some handheld Android devices with a Wireshark-specialized application that would allow us to mirror a Cisco port. Then, we can just plug into the port and click the green start button, and it will start ingesting the packet capture. Then, we won’t be using a laptop. The only downside is that we must have a laptop and connect a network cable. Some new laptops don't have network ports, so we have to get another adapter. Having an all-in-one device, like NetAlly or Fluke, and some of their network devices would be cool.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has a high-quality graphical interface."
"The product’s stability and robustness are valuable."
"We were able to standardize the internal processes across all internal departments, resulting in almost an elimination of non-standard process flows through our organization."
"The tool is very mature, and its valuable features are monitoring and configuration management."
"The fault management is perfect."
"Scalable and stable network monitoring tool with a simple setup."
"Allows us to have a single console/notification point, with the alarms of all the tools that we use for monitoring."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to put health checks in place not only for the infrastructure but for some of the services that are on top of the infrastructure."
"You can use Wireshark to see the traffic packet format, the IP layers, the fields, and the enabled flags."
"Wireshark's best features are that it lets us see what traffic is in the network and what data should be encrypted."
"It gives us the ability to pinpoint problems and to communicate network problems with software and hardware vendors."
"I like the filtering feature as we can filter data easily. This feature is also available in tcpdump, but it's a simple piece of software. Wireshark is more advanced and has many features. It allows you to filter a lot of things. The output can be filtered easily. The most important feature is colorization. If I say, "Okay, this particular SMB protocol in red, it will show me red." It's easy to identify that protocol or capture data."
"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's easy to troubleshoot issues because there's a large online community."
"Wireshark has a lot of features. It's a powerful tool if you're familiar with it. You can see everything on the network with it."
"The transmission and reception issues are valuable."
 

Cons

"For my use case, incident coordination was an area of improvement. The internal software engine for coordinating outages could use improvement because sometimes, we used to get false alerts for unrelated devices. They did a really good job of trying to make sure that you got one major alert and any of the subsequent devices downstream were just additions to that, but occasionally, the engine wouldn't properly catch the right things, and we used to get a flood of alerts."
"Make it easier to certify devices."
"Event correlation only works on one server, rather than on all of the servers in the same cluster environment."
"If the integration is simplified or improved, it will be a unique selling point in comparison to the competition on the market."
"DX Spectrum is stable. However, now and then there are some issues, but overall it is good."
"From the users perspective the looks and feel of dashboards of Spectrum would be easier to use and for understanding as APM will be in 10.5 version which we saw in CA World."
"We want to make our own choice for the AIOps solution and do not want to be forced to use the Broadcom OI solution by default."
"Needs better integration with all the other products in the Agile suite of tools; anything they could do to make that less complex, would be great."
"I wish the filters were a little bit more prepopulated."
"You need some basic knowledge to work with Wireshark. Maybe it could be more user-friendly just for new users. Just for the new generation."
"Wireshark could be improved by adding more monitoring features."
"I would like better control of bandwidth from the service provider."
"It is not an easy program. You will need to study to use it to its full capabilities (follow a course)."
"The average person would probably find Wireshark hard to use. When I first installed it, I was overwhelmed by all the data it was shooting out. It doesn't make sense until you start doing some research and figure out what everything means. It isn't the most user-friendly tool. It just provides so much information."
"It would be better if they offered a hybrid version like My Cloud Control."
"The speed of the Internet could be improved, especially its performance."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is expensive compared to other tools in the market."
"It’s a great tool, but an expensive one. Learn how to use it properly."
"The price is good enough to expect an ideal solution. It's expensive."
"The price is very high."
"In general, the license cost will be about 30% of the total TCO for this tool (hardware/support team, OS costs, and OS management)."
"DX Spectrum's pricing is neither expensive nor cheap."
"The cost of some of these products are a little cost prohibitive, which is unfortunate. We have to find lower cost solutions for some of the things that we have to pull in. For the most part, CA has capabilities in pretty much everything that you would need. You just have to figure out where are you going to spend the most money for what you have to actually get done. You can do all these things but, which ones do you have to do? And that's hard to choose sometimes because you want to do them all."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"The tool is free."
"Wireshark is free software, so you can download it and use it for free with no licensing fees."
"We're using the free version of Wireshark."
"It's free."
"It is free."
"The solution is open source so is free."
"Wireshark is an open-source product, so it's free to use."
"Wireshark is open source and gives great value and functionality to the network investigation."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
7%
University
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about DX Spectrum?
The solution's most valuable features are its integration with Broadcom tools and scalability.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for DX Spectrum?
We are a customer of Broadcom, we use a group license that covers various CA products, including DX Spectrum. The company purchases the licenses they need from this group license, and we do not hav...
What needs improvement with DX Spectrum?
DX Spectrum should have an automatic ticketing mechanism with ServiceNow. I need to use other tools for event management. It has a dashboarding mechanism and monitors devices and network switches t...
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 2025.
844,944 professionals have used our research since 2012.