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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 (32nd), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (30th), 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 February 2026, in the Network Troubleshooting category, the mindshare of DX Spectrum is 4.8%, up from 3.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Wireshark is 12.3%, down from 13.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Troubleshooting Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Wireshark12.3%
DX Spectrum4.8%
Other82.9%
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.
DonniUgalde - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior I.T. Systems Engineer at Pro Techs MSP
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

"The integration point."
"The quick notification of issues, quick alerting because timeliness is always valuable, it's very important for us."
"It does correlation so instead of producing 20 alarms if a site goes down, it only creates one."
"I have found the cross analysis feature to be the most valuable."
"Spectrum is very useful for us, because the product lets us monitor and control all the various components of our infrastructure that support our business from an IT perspective."
"Scalability is a highly rated feature of this solution. It is better than some of the other tools that I've used in terms of scalability. We scaled it to tens of thousands of devices."
"Allows us to have a single console/notification point, with the alarms of all the tools that we use for monitoring."
"Spectrum is great for root cause analysis. It has excellent correlation event management. Spectrum's stability and scalability are also amazing."
"The session-level filtering features are valuable."
"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."
"Setup is very easy. It's also possible to change source code and compile if you want to change something in the code, because it's free."
"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."
"Wireshark is very user-friendly; even someone with basic IT knowledge can use it."
"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."
"Wireshark's best feature is that it's adaptive, which means it's the go-to tool for network-related developers."
"I can save the traffic and analysis when I want to. Also, it's especially helpful to follow the stream (TCP, UDP, etc.)."
 

Cons

"Its visualization can be improved. It doesn't have a very advanced GUI. It is very basic and simple, but it does work."
"Support from Broadcom could be better. Sometimes we wait a very long time for a solution to level three problems."
"The solution's stability needs improvement."
"We have a lot of different monitoring tools in the background, so orchestration has been a little bit of a challenge."
"DX Spectrum needs to incorporate faster support."
"The upgrade process could be smoother. More of the steps around upgrading could be automated."
"DX Spectrum should have an automatic ticketing mechanism with ServiceNow. I need to use other tools for event management."
"Integration with some other tools, and integration with some Network Packet Broker, need some improvement."
"We'd like to be able to extract the output into an Excel table."
"The product is great but I wish there were more of an emphasis on the command line tools."
"Wireshark's UI isn't easy to handle and doesn't have as nice a view as Omnipeek."
"Whenever we select one of the packets, in terms of the number of bytes, for example, there are three planes, and in the detailed plane, I have to count the number of bytes manually."
"You need good network connectivity to download during the setup, otherwise, it might take a while."
"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."
"The decryption of encrypted packets could be better."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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)."
"It’s a great tool, but an expensive one. Learn how to use it properly."
"Currently, a perpetual license but some services are moving to a subscription"
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"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."
"It is very pricey. With the current trend of enterprises moving towards cheaper and more modern looking solutions like ManageEngine, SevOne, ServicePilot, and Paesller."
"DX Spectrum's pricing depends on the license number. It is affordable."
"Wireshark is an open-source product, so it's free to use."
"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 is free to download and install. It runs on multiple platforms, so how can you go wrong?"
"It's free."
"Wireshark is open-source and free of charge."
"It is free."
"I am using the free version of this solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Marketing Services Firm
6%
University
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for DX Spectrum?
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.
What needs improvement with DX Spectrum?
I would like to see improvements in making the interface more user-friendly. Many people find it not simple to use. One of the common customer complaints is about the alarm notifications. Currently...
What is your primary use case for DX Spectrum?
I have been involved in implementing DX Spectrum for financial institutions, such as banks, and government services with large networks. My role involves monitoring their infrastructure worldwide 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.
 

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: February 2026.
882,594 professionals have used our research since 2012.