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IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) vs Wireshark comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
54
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (29th), Server Monitoring (15th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (35th), Log Management (35th), Cloud Monitoring Software (28th)
Wireshark
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
64
Ranking in other categories
Network Troubleshooting (2nd)
 

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 1.1%, up 1.0% compared to last year.
Wireshark, on the other hand, focuses on Network Troubleshooting, holds 18.8% mindshare, up 12.9% since last year.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)1.1%
Zabbix3.7%
SolarWinds NPM3.7%
Other91.5%
Network Monitoring Software
Network Troubleshooting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Wireshark18.8%
AirMagnet Survey PRO8.5%
DX Spectrum7.9%
Other64.8%
Network Troubleshooting
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1543041 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network monitoring engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Provides consistent infrastructure monitoring with excellent usability and support
The primary use case of IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) is network monitoring. It helps to maintain the infrastructure's availability and ensure that alerts are generated when needed The most valuable features of IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) are its stability,…
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

"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 bi-directional integration with ServiceNow has saved me a lot of money in man-hours, over the course of the last few years."
"The platform is as flexible as an open source system can be, and it has a very useful end user GUI interface, which means working with the system is very easy and intuitive."
"In summary, for our requirement, SevOne does pretty much what we ask and does it very well."
"Our ROI is excellent."
"It's a great solution for highlighting and discovering useful information regarding our network's elements."
"SevOne has much faster performance than our previous solution."
"Customer Service: Fantastic – responsive."
"Wireshark is a dynamic software that has developed and adapted to the latest technology advancements and network challenges."
"This is the de-facto standard network protocol analysis tool."
"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 analyzes networks, captures traffic and decrypts information passed through the communication channels into a form that is readable and can thus be used to learn how network protocols work."
"You can use Wireshark to see the traffic packet format, the IP layers, the fields, and the enabled flags."
"Wireshark is very good for network engineers; it's free software, you can install it very easily, and there are a lot of features."
"I use this free, open-source solution daily for packet analysis, and the packet details pane is particularly valuable."
 

Cons

"The reporting of NMS is good, but it could be better."
"I think SevOne can improve by providing more details in their release notes regarding enhancements and changes."
"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"
"There is room for improvement in the integration with different vendors and the reporting capabilities."
"Continual UI improvements are needed to reduce number of clicks needed to produce a chart."
"I think that the upgrade process could be improved, which can be painful at times."
"It needs a platform to add portals."
"One area that requires a little bit of improvement is the topology of visualization and being able to map out connections, end-to-end. It's able to do that, but it's not as impressive as we would like it to be. We would like to understand the different interface types and the connection points better, through the visualization. Heatmaps also need further development."
"It is difficult to scale this solution."
"Great scalability, but they are beginning to sacrifice ease of use for complexity."
"Maximum buffer size of captured data should be unlimited and should allow ability to archive all old captures (not save option) in real time, it should support a destination location where old captures can be directed for long term storage."
"Wireshark does not allow you to make any changes relevant to the network; in other words, you can only observe the network."
"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."
"Cannot be used to diagnose any kind of network intrusions and hacking exploits."
"The Wireshark search function shows green for a correct search and red for an incorrect search."
"The system could be improved upon by adding a better and more powerful data processing engine."
 

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."
"Choose a SevOne partner who can provide SevOne as a service and can deliver professional services and maintenance."
"The pricing has been fair."
"The tool is not expensive. We were able to negotiate with SevOne on pricing."
"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."
"Prices per license are not huge, but they exist."
"Have a bank of licenses, because it is about the number of objects (RAM, ports, CPU, etc.)."
"A blocking point is the high upfront cost because it is challenging to get it accepted and the purchase approved."
"It is free."
"Wireshark is an open-source product, so it's free to use."
"It is free to download and install. It runs on multiple platforms, so how can you go wrong?"
"I am using the free version of this solution."
"It's a stand-alone tool. If there is a commercial license for it I am unaware of it."
"It's 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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
9%
University
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise45
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise29
 

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 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?
Wireshark can be improved if it provides the accessibility of capturing packets from one device that is installed in the network without needing the port-mirrored facility. They could provide somet...
What is your primary use case for Wireshark?
Wireshark's main use case is capturing packets and reviewing the data flow over the network. Regarding my main use case for Wireshark, it is a great tool and would be one of the best tools availabl...
 

Also Known As

SevOne
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ATOS, Devereux, Spark New Zealand, Access4, Rogers Communication, Lumen (formerly known as CenturyLink)
Comversion, ADP, Talbots
Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, Datadog, SolarWinds and others in Network Monitoring Software. Updated: October 2026.
917,181 professionals have used our research since 2012.