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IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) vs Wireshark comparison

 

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 (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
63
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 Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)1.0%
Zabbix5.0%
SolarWinds NPM3.6%
Other90.4%
Network Monitoring Software
Network Troubleshooting Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Wireshark14.3%
AirMagnet Survey PRO10.3%
LinkRunner8.1%
Other67.3%
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,…
DonniUgalde - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior I.T. Systems Engineer at Pro Techs MSP
Provides visibility into the network, and the GUI is easy to use
I wish the filters were a little bit more prepopulated. It would have been easy to hit a drop-down and select a filter. If I only wanted to look at DCP, UDP, or IP, it would be easy to filter it out. Advanced network knowledge is required to get a lot out of the tool. However, it's very easy to install and deploy. It would be nice if there were some handheld Android devices with a Wireshark-specialized application that would allow us to mirror a Cisco port. Then, we can just plug into the port and click the green start button, and it will start ingesting the packet capture. Then, we won’t be using a laptop. The only downside is that we must have a laptop and connect a network cable. Some new laptops don't have network ports, so we have to get another adapter. Having an all-in-one device, like NetAlly or Fluke, and some of their network devices would be cool.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 most valuable feature as of late has been the API integration with ServiceNow."
"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 out of the box reports and workflows are pretty good and they meet our requirements well."
"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."
"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."
"The comprehensiveness of this solution's collection of network performance and flow data is one of the basics in the field for what it does. It meets all of our needs. So for all those areas, for the most straightforward collection capabilities, right up to NetFlow and even telemetry, it meets all those demands. Not only just basic or fundamental SNMP collection capability, but the product also supports what we need for the future with telemetry streaming. So it's very comprehensive."
"With this tool it is interesting to show the info to the client and explain where the traffic is."
"It helps in analyzing if something looks suspicious, such as a brute force attack or scanning from somewhere."
"The transmission and reception issues are valuable."
"The most valuable feature is the traffic gate, which shows which IPs are getting more bandwidth or 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 filter option provided by Wireshark is its most valuable feature...Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"Wireshark's best feature is that it's adaptive, which means it's the go-to tool for network-related developers."
"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."
"The product is simple to implement."
 

Cons

"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"
"The GUI: both the dashboard/user view and the admin tool."
"We need to be thinking about streaming telemetry protocols. They already have the port for enhanced visualization, which they already have through Data Insight."
"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 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."
"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."
"When I started using it, I tried adding one of the BroadWorks application servers into SevOne... it created thousands and thousands of objects from that one application server and we immediately ran out of license... It would help, when new objects are discovered, if there were a way to categorize those objects and to pick the part of the object you need..."
"You need to plan integrations. That has been the biggest bug with SevOne so far. For the things that SevOne pulls directly, those are easy to understand, modify, and put into the database. For things that need to use the Universal Collector or xStats, you need to plan that stuff well in advance."
"I wish the filters were a little bit more prepopulated."
"The decryption of encrypted packets could be better."
"Wireshark gets stuck when it is a larger file."
"Wireshark could be improved with a delay option when getting data automatically."
"Wireshark is restricted when any sort of encryption is involved, such as XSL encryption or DLX."
"Wireshark could be improved by adding more monitoring features."
"We'd like to be able to extract the output into an Excel table."
"It is difficult to scale this solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are different options available for licensing, with the per-device option being more expensive but more flexible."
"Choose a SevOne partner who can provide SevOne as a service and can deliver professional services and maintenance."
"The pricing has not evolved with the market, which is one of the reasons we are moving to a new product."
"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."
"Have a bank of licenses, because it is about the number of objects (RAM, ports, CPU, etc.)."
"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."
"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."
"Wireshark is free of charge, and there's no license involved."
"It is free."
"It is free to download and install. It runs on multiple platforms, so how can you go wrong?"
"Wireshark is open source and gives great value and functionality to the network investigation."
"This is an open-source product that can be used free of charge."
"Wireshark is free software, so you don't have to pay any licensing fee. Individual people can use it and then donate to Wireshark."
"It's a stand-alone tool. If there is a commercial license for it I am unaware of it."
"Wireshark is open-source and free of charge."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Marketing Services Firm
5%
University
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
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 Enterprise27
 

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?
The speed of the Internet could be improved, especially its performance. Performance can sometimes be a challenge due to numerous factors.
 

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, Auvik, Datadog and others in Network Monitoring Software. Updated: February 2026.
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