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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
6.7
Number of Reviews
118
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (8th), Network Monitoring Software (21st), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (20th), DX NetOps (1st)
Wireshark
Ranking in Network Troubleshooting
2nd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
64
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Network Troubleshooting category, the mindshare of DX Spectrum is 6.6%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Wireshark is 17.1%, up from 13.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Troubleshooting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Wireshark17.1%
DX Spectrum6.6%
Other76.3%
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.
reviewer2837244 - PeerSpot reviewer
It System Engineer at a manufacturing company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Packet analysis has improved real-time troubleshooting and simplifies mapping complex data flows
The best features that Wireshark offers are everything. Every time I look into Wireshark, I find something new. The ability to capture real-time packets and understand how the packet is working and moving through how many hops and to how many points it reaches makes it a wonderful tool. The specific feature I use most is capturing packets of real-time communication and seeing how the packet is working. I rely on all the filters it has to check the protocols and see the communication between one end and another end and what the hops in between are, and if there is a proxy, how it behaves. Everything helps us check out the issue and troubleshoot it. I do not have anything additional to add about the features; everything looks really fine. The graphics are also good, and you can change its graphical features, making it a pretty nice tool. You can also use it with the PCAP file, which is really nice. Wireshark has positively impacted my organization by giving us the ability to capture packets and see into the network how it is working and what we can clarify about the network, specifically how we can remove many hops in the communication channels. A specific example of a measurable outcome is that we have a few switches in our network that, when we use Wireshark analysis, we find should not be needed or can be replaced with automatic switches instead of manual switches, such as switches which do not have any active features and only passive switches. That has saved us a lot of time.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"As the kind of enterprise that straddles the line between telco size and enterprise size, it scales for us, because we're not all the way at telco yet."
"Implemented with Enterprise Customers across region, it is a very strong fault management tool with extraordinary correlation and alarming."
"The event management that the tool provides is extremely powerful, but with that comes a bit of complexity."
"I found Spectrum as being a complete network management solution with a great user friendly GUI."
"The most valuable feature is the auto-discovery, which is nice because you don't have to do anything to add a new component."
"The most valuable feature is that after setup, using it is very straightforward."
"Its scalability is very good, as it can be used in huge environments."
"CA Spectrum allowed our client, a Tier 1 TELCO, to manage their E2E network infrastructure, proactively monitor Enterprise: GMPLS, IPVPN, ISDN, LTE and Leased Line services against set SLAs, and maintain a top quality of service, while the easy integration of topology views to a web portal provided a wow factor by exposing real-time performance and health status of enterprise infrastructure setups to customers."
"Wireshark is a very useful tool."
"Being able to dissect email data and figure out what is inside email messages was the most valuable feature."
"Wireshark does exactly what I want and leaves me with no need to look elsewhere."
"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."
"One of the best products that can provide the details of what is happening with an application and the full life cycle of the response time."
"Wireshark's best feature is that it's adaptive, which means it's the go-to tool for network-related developers, as when the new protocol comes up, it's rapidly applied to the system, so I can just look into the packet."
"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."
"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."
 

Cons

"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."
"Customer Service: It's poor. Technical Support: It's poor."
"There should be better integration with other Broadcom products, like network performance manager. Currently, for every part of a product, you need a separate server environment. You have something for Spectrum, you have something for network performance, and you have something for NetFlow. There are a lot of islands and server farms with different technologies. They should be redeveloped to get one platform for all."
"The report area is very poor and we cannot work properly with additional information and the custom reports."
"Reporting and network bandwidth monitoring features needs to be improved."
"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."
"Sometimes the front-line people need to push it up to the second-level quicker."
"The tool fails to launch sometimes, and this was a frequent occurrence."
"The initial setup depends upon the basics. You need to have a clear understanding of the basics."
"The system could be improved upon by adding a better and more powerful data processing engine."
"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."
"Its user interface was a little less friendly. They can make its user interface a little bit more friendly. It is for technical people, and most of the technical people would be able to figure it out, but it would be good to improve its user interface. They can maybe build artificial intelligence into it. Currently, it takes a lot of manpower to analyze and dissect all the data."
"The product is great but I wish there were more of an emphasis on the command line tools."
"It is easy to get overwhelmed with the amount of data you are looking at."
"The product has been using the same GUI for many years."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Spectrum is expensive."
"The price is very high."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"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."
"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."
"Currently, a perpetual license but some services are moving to a subscription"
"It is very pricey. With the current trend of enterprises moving towards cheaper and more modern looking solutions like ManageEngine, SevOne, ServicePilot, and Paesller."
"Wireshark is open-source and free of charge."
"The tool is free."
"It is free to download and install. It runs on multiple platforms, so how can you go wrong?"
"We are using a freeware version of this solution, so there are no licence costs involved."
"It is free."
"Wireshark is free of charge, and there's no license involved."
"Wireshark is open source and gives great value and functionality to the network investigation."
"The solution is open source so is free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Construction Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
University
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Healthcare Company
8%
Manufacturing 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 Enterprise29
 

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.
What is your primary use case for Wireshark?
We are using Wireshark for inspecting the vertical line to know the data flow in and out of the cables. This is to determine if there is real traffic flow through the physical connections or not. A...
 

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: April 2026.
896,387 professionals have used our research since 2012.