IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) vs Wireshark comparison

"Flexible architecture: You can extend the system and its capacity by attaching another cluster pair."

"We have benefited mainly from the use of the dashboard interface. It makes the network visually interesting for other people who are not in the network. A lot of people are not network techies who understand streams in the network. Based on location, we have streams coming in and out. They can see visually when there is some problem. They don't need to understand all the network technology behind it to be able to understand if everything is working well or if there is a problem."

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

"The most valuable feature is the NMS because that's the core of the system. Without the NMS, the other tools aren't that usable."

"The SMP and the xStats, which is for flat file integration, are both useful for integrating the various metrics that the device provides to monitor the performance of those systems."

"The automation feature is good because if your CMDB is OK and it is already in sync, then the automation part is good to go."

"SevOne’s data collection functionality is very good. From a collection point of view, we pull SNMP data, which is simple. It is easy to manipulate the pull in the estate. It is really simple compared to some of the other products that we have used. However, for deferred data, i.e., things that we import or don't pull directly, we tend to have a preplanned integration. So, its Universal Collector is really useful."

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

"Wireshark's best features are that it lets us see what traffic is in the network and what data should be encrypted."

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

"I can save the traffic and analysis when I want to. Also, it's especially helpful to follow the stream (TCP, UDP, etc.)."

"It's easy to troubleshoot issues because there's a large online community."

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

"Wireshark helps us to understand network traffic."

"The drill-down available for packet analysis is great. It gives a network security engineer insight into what is going on at the packet level and enables better troubleshooting."

"The strongest feature of this solution, is the ability it gives us to carry out deep-packet inspections on our network, particularly when a function isn't performing as it should."

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

"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."

"The user management features need to be improved. It would be nice if we had more granular control, or layers of control, out of the box."

"Their virtualization solution is not compatible with our Kubernetes environment, which is one of the reasons we are ending our relationship with them."

"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."

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

"The one area with room for improvement is probably administration. They added data insights to make a better user experience, but I'd like to see some improvements in the way the system's administered."

"Software upgrades can be tricky is not easy."

"With Wireshark, you cannot download and utilize the packet in automation."

"Wireshark could be improved with a delay option when getting data automatically."

"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."

"Wireshark is restricted when any sort of encryption is involved, such as XSL encryption or DLX."

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

"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."

"The system could be improved upon by adding a better and more powerful data processing engine."

"The speed of the Internet could be improved, especially its performance."

"There are cheaper solutions available."

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

"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."

"The pricing has been fair."

"It is inexpensive compared to other monitoring tools."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"It is an open-source solution."

"It is free."

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

"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?"