IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) vs Wireshark comparison

"Its ability to monitor practically any type of network device via SNMP is most valuable. This is the main functionality that we're using. If a network device exposes a metric, such as interface utilization, SevOne will monitor it for us."

"SevOne provides support for all universal connectors. They internally work with other data sources to get features implemented. We have an SD-WAN implementation and use other app data to monitor performance. If you pull that data into one centralized location, that is very useful for management."

"One of the most valuable features is the graphs, which you can build instantly. I have used some open-source platforms in the past, but they are not as good. With SevOne, the sampling in the graph can be every few seconds, not just every few minutes, and that's really helpful. It's really fast."

"The feature that I have found most valuable is the scale-up and scale-down. The scale-up is an operation where the CPU boosts-up and then the memory will boost-up. That works awesomely."

"Scalability. I have never had to worry about how to handle really big environments."

"With this tool it is interesting to show the info to the client and explain where the traffic is."

"Data Insight reporting tool is the most valuable feature. They came up with it a couple of years ago. The most pleasing factor is the dark theme. You don't have a white background. It has templates that you can create for all kinds of reports that you can hit on the fly. It's much better printing of the reports. If you want to send PDFs to people, the reports are actually decent. Whereas for years, the old architecture of the PDFs was rubbish and even our customers said, "We have to manipulate your PDFs because they all have bad margin breaks. SevOne fixed that a couple of years ago with the new Data Insight. It's fantastic."

"The modules and the performance management reports that come with data insights are two of the most valuable features. I also find the reports for Wi-Fi, Netflow, LAN, and WAN for monitoring to be very good."

"The best part about Wireshark, in my opinion, is its ability to analyze packet capture files."

"It is a stable product. I would rate the stability a ten out of ten."

"The initial setup is simple."

"I use the filters very often, to determine what type of traffic I am looking for. The use of filter allows traffic to be segmented so that a value can be looked at individually apart from the other traffic."

"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 ability to decrypt traffic and the abundance of filters available are both valuable features."

"You can use Wireshark to see the traffic packet format, the IP layers, the fields, and the enabled flags."

"The transmission and reception issues are valuable."

"Would benefit with the addition of AI modules for proactive data insights."

"Software upgrades can be tricky is not easy."

"SevOne could improve its flexibility because it isn't fully customizable and its out-of-the-box configuration doesn't cover all use cases."

"The customizations are very hard. The person doing it has to be very good at analytics and has to be very good in all languages"

"High-frequency polling is data-intensive because you're pulling more. If SevOne could figure out a way to manage the impact of high-frequency polling on the system, that would be very popular."

"We need to be thinking about streaming telemetry protocols. They already have the port for enhanced visualization, which they already have through Data Insight."

"There is room for improvement in the integration with different vendors and the reporting capabilities."

"SevOne should work with the graphs legend functionality."

"In the future, it would be nice to see color coding. It is just black and white."

"Wireshark's UI isn't easy to handle and doesn't have as nice a view as Omnipeek."

"We'd like to be able to extract the output into an Excel table."

"I would like to see Wireshark improve the ease of application of the command. The command is very powerful, but not easy to apply."

"The initial setup depends upon the basics. You need to have a clear understanding of the basics."

"We would like the product to be developed so that it doesn't rely on internet access for installation. We would like to see all of the components required to be integrated into the installer."

"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."

"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."

"For the value that you get from SevOne, it's worth the price. There are a lot of cheaper alternatives on the market, and even free options. But they require more staff, more resources, and engineers with more advanced knowledge of monitoring. That's what makes SevOne worth the price."

"Choose a SevOne partner who can provide SevOne as a service and can deliver professional services and maintenance."

"The tool is not expensive. We were able to negotiate with SevOne on pricing."

"The pricing has not evolved with the market, which is one of the reasons we are moving to a new product."

"Many tools price things based on the number of KPIs that you're collecting around a device. In many cases, there could be hundreds of metrics that you need to collect. SevOne provides device-level pricing. That gives us the flexibility to turn on, and expand on, the metrics that we're collecting around those devices, without taking a financial hit."

"A blocking point is the high upfront cost because it is challenging to get it accepted and the purchase approved."

"Have a bank of licenses, because it is about the number of objects (RAM, ports, CPU, etc.)."

"Although I don't have exact details in terms of cost, my experience has been that SevOne is willing to make a deal with the customer."

"It is an open-source solution."

"It is free."

"Wireshark is open-source and free of charge."

"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."

"We are using a freeware version of this solution, so there are no licence costs involved."

"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."

"It is free to download and install. It runs on multiple platforms, so how can you go wrong?"