IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) vs Wireshark comparison

IBM SevOne Network Performa...

Read 63 Wireshark reviews

3,127 Views
1,407 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) and Wireshark based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, Auvik, Datadog and others in Network Monitoring Software.

To learn more, read our detailed Network Monitoring Software Report (Updated: March 2026).

Network Monitoring Software

March 2026

Download the complete report

Helped 885,264 peers since 2012

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

IBM SevOne Network Performa...

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (40th), Server Monitoring (18th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (41st), Log Management (43rd), Cloud Monitoring Software (29th)

Wireshark

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Troubleshooting (4th)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Network Management solutions, they serve different purposes. IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) is designed for Network Monitoring Software and holds a mindshare of 1.0%, up 1.0% compared to last year.
Wireshark, on the other hand, focuses on Network Troubleshooting, holds 14.3% mindshare, up 12.9% since last year.

Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)	1.0%
Zabbix	5.0%
SolarWinds NPM	3.6%
Other	90.4%

Network Monitoring Software

Network Troubleshooting Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Wireshark	14.3%
AirMagnet Survey PRO	10.3%
LinkRunner	8.1%
Other	67.3%

Network Troubleshooting

Featured Reviews

Grzegorz Nowak

Solution Architect at Wingu

Improves infrastructure planning by helping us analyze network traffic

We use SevOne to collect and report on network flows SevOne improves infrastructure planning by helping us analyze network traffic. We can look at bandwidth for specific endpoints on the customer's network and analyze traffic to identify issues. For example, maybe some connectors are unavailable.…

Read full review

Vijay Duggal

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"SevOne is excellent for transforming raw network performance data into actionable insights."

"Customer Service: Excellent, customer service is 10/10."

"Fantastic – for money laid out vs. what you’re getting back, it's been great."

"It provides accurate data, which is critical, and I also like the very quick real-time reporting with one-minute polling, as I can pull up graphs and charts very quickly."

"It's a great solution for highlighting and discovering useful information regarding our network's elements."

"It has been a godsend and has brought us 11 months of stability, the likes of which I'd never seen before in 15 years with the company."

"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 reporting capabilities provided important metrics and data that helped in the oversight of our system, network, and overall IT infrastructure, both in terms of applications and hardware."

More IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) pros

"Wireshark is very good for network engineers; it's free software, you can install it very easily, and there are a lot of features."

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

"What's best about Wireshark is that it doesn't require installation, supports cards and monitoring permissions, and is sufficient for appending and capturing activities, so you won't need to install other tools and can capture packets at any time from your laptop through Wireshark."

"If you're dealing with troubleshooting network, voice issues, or network operations, having a tool like Wireshark to dive into packet details is important. The initial setup is straightforward. Anyone starting out or looking to deploy it on your personal PC or machine can do it easily."

"Packet-capture files can be hard to use due to their size. Wireshark has a tool called tshark that can parse the files with out opening them so that you can take large captures, say 2-10GB, and return only relevant information."

"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."

"I have found the most valuable feature you can design your sniffer the way you want to."

"This is the de-facto standard network protocol analysis tool."

More Wireshark pros

Cons

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

"The GUI: both the dashboard/user view and the admin tool."

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

"The method of searching for SIP and the way to create the groups."

"The support is excellent, but the features are average."

"With the administrative management of the appliance, if some object appears from SevOne because something changed in the network or whatever, then as an administrator you will not be aware."

"There are some tweaks and enhancements that I've already requested. One is to be able to make changes per device rather than as a global setting. That has to do with naming. It's minor."

"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."

More IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) cons

"Wireshark could make the filtering rules easier to apply and offer a drag-and-drop option as opposed to type and text."

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

"It is easy to get overwhelmed with the amount of data you are looking at."

"Wireshark gets stuck when it is a larger file."

"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 product is great but I wish there were more of an emphasis on the command line tools."

"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."

"It is not an easy program. You will need to study to use it to its full capabilities (follow a course)."

More Wireshark cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"Prices per license are not huge, but they exist."

"It is inexpensive compared to other monitoring tools."

"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."

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

"The pricing has been fair."

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

"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."

More IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) pricing and cost advice

"Wireshark is open source and gives great value and functionality to the network investigation."

"Wireshark is free software, so you don't have to pay any licensing fee. Individual people can use it and then donate to Wireshark."

"Wireshark is an open-source product, so it's free to use."

"The tool is free."

"It's a stand-alone tool. If there is a commercial license for it I am unaware of it."

"Wireshark is free software, so you can download it and use it for free with no licensing fees."

"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."

"This is an open-source product that can be used free of charge."

More Wireshark pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Network Monitoring Software solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

885,264 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

Construction Company

University

11%

Financial Services Firm

Healthcare Company

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	45

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	31
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	27

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with SevOne Network Data Platform?

There is room for improvement in the integration with different vendors and the reporting capabilities. It would be beneficial to have out-of-the-box integration with third-party vendors and improv...

What is your primary use case for SevOne Network Data Platform?

The primary use case of IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) ( /products/ibm-sevone-network-performance-management-npm-reviews ) is network monitoring. It helps to maintain the infrastru...

What advice do you have for others considering SevOne Network Data Platform?

To compete with custom-built tools, IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) should accommodate the desired features and be timely in the delivery of feature updates. I would rate the overal...

What do you like most about Wireshark?

The GUI is easy to use.

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.

Dynatrace vs IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)

Comparisons

Compared 3% of the time

SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability vs IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)

Compared 3% of the time

Zabbix vs IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)

Compared 3% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)

Compared 3% of the time

Avada Software Infrared360 vs IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)

Compared 3% of the time

More IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) Competitors

Microsoft Network Monitor vs Wireshark

Compared 9% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs Wireshark

Compared 8% of the time

AirMagnet Survey PRO vs Wireshark

Compared 7% of the time

Colasoft Capsa vs Wireshark

Compared 7% of the time

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer vs Wireshark

Compared 7% of the time

More Wireshark Competitors

Product Reports

IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)

March 2026

IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) report

Download IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) product report

Download Wireshark product report

February 2026

Also Known As

SevOne

No data available

Overview

The IBM® SevOne Network Performance Management (IBM SevOne NPM) solution helps you spot, address, and prevent network performance issues early with machine learning-powered analytics from a single source. Boost network performance and improve your user application experience by proactively monitoring your multivendor end-to-end network across enterprise, communication, and managed service provider networks.

Transform raw network performance data into intelligent and actionable insights. The IBM SevOne NPM solution goes beyond detection, combining industry-leading expertise and advanced technology to help your IT team plan and optimize your network and act on what matters: improving network performance to provide an exceptional customer experience.

For further information, please visit www.ibm.com/cloud/sevo...

IBM

Wireshark is the world's foremost network protocol analyzer.

Sample Customers

ATOS, Devereux, Spark New Zealand, Access4, Rogers Communication, Lumen (formerly known as CenturyLink)

Comversion, ADP, Talbots