IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) vs Wireshark comparison

IBM SevOne Network Performa...

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Executive Summary

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

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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 (29th), Server Monitoring (16th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (38th), Log Management (35th), Cloud Monitoring Software (29th)

Wireshark

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Troubleshooting (1st)

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 16.7% mindshare, up 13.2% since last year.

Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)	1.1%
NETSCOUT Network & Application Observability	3.8%
Zabbix	3.7%
Other	91.4%

Network Monitoring Software

Network Troubleshooting Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Wireshark	16.7%
DX Spectrum	8.2%
AirMagnet Survey PRO	7.8%
Other	67.30000000000001%

Network Troubleshooting

Featured Reviews

reviewer1543041

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,…

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reviewer2837244

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Given the ease of access to the information in a few clicks, the user base of the product has increased tremendously."

"SevOne is like a Swiss Army Knife."

"The features I find most valuable are-- Availability (provides continuous monitoring without loss of functions), and Performance management (takes data for troubleshooting and reporting network issues)"

"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."

"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."

"Another useful feature is that SevOne gives you real-time insights into your network performance. It polls every five minutes. That is important for our customers because there are some network teams that are always monitoring their networks."

"We've had great feedback from our customers about SevOne support. They're willing to set up a remote session upon request. You have to go through three tiers of support with most vendors, and they ask a lot of screening questions before they will do a remote session. You need to spend a lot of time before an engineer will host a remote session to look at your problematic system."

More IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) pros

"This is a good product for quick and easy troubleshooting."

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

"Wireshark is more advanced and has many features."

"It is free, easy to use, getting better with every release."

"Wireshark's best feature is that it's adaptive, which means it's the go-to tool for network-related developers, as when the new protocol comes up, it's rapidly applied to the system, so I can just look into the packet."

"Being able to dissect email data and figure out what is inside email messages was the most valuable feature. Such a feature is pretty helpful for an ongoing forensic investigation or when there is a potential insider threat that you are trying to investigate. It allows you to see the network activity of the users you are investigating. It also gives you more visibility into your network. It was very easy to set up. There is a lot of information out there on Google and YouTube about how to use it. There is also community support. If you have any trouble, it is pretty easy to find an answer online. You will have to do some digging only if you have a very specific use case."

"Being able to dissect email data and figure out what is inside email messages was the most valuable feature."

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

More Wireshark pros

Cons

"Some similar solutions offer end-to-end visibility."

"The out-of-the-box reports and workflows for automatically helping to understand what is normal and what is abnormal in our network are very poor if you only have NMS and that is the only portion of step one that you own."

"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."

"The only thing that worries me with SevOne is that they were acquired by Turbonomic and now by IBM."

"From the operator’s point of view, it is quite painful to have to remember that every device costs us some cash if added to SevOne (CAPEX and, later, yearly OPEX)."

"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."

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

"I would say that incorporating other technologies, we have great performance data, but if it started doing intelligence and looked at the patterns or correlations, that would be great."

More IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) cons

"A room for improvement in Wireshark is its ease of use for beginners. It could be better. Another room for improvement in the tool is for it to provide more details about the traffic load. At the moment, Wireshark is adequate for me, so there isn't anything I'd like added to it in its next version."

"This product needs to improve the UI."

"Can be difficult for non packet heads to understand"

"Big trace files (more than 1,000,000 packets) can be slow, but then you can use "TraceWrangler" (also free) to help with slicing and dicing the data."

"Running Wireshark through an admin account for multiple exploits is unsecured."

"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."

"The Wireshark search function shows green for a correct search and red for an incorrect search."

"Bigger memory footprint."

More Wireshark cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

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

"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 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."

"The pricing has been fair."

"It is inexpensive compared to other monitoring tools."

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

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

"The solution is open source so is 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."

"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 free of charge, and there's no license involved."

"The tool is free."

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

More Wireshark pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Construction Company

11%

Outsourcing Company

University

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Construction Company

Comms Service Provider

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	29

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 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...

What advice do you have for others considering Wireshark?

I do not want to add more about the needed improvements; that is all that I need and what I see can be improved. On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Wireshark a ten. The reason I give it a ten i...

SolarWinds NPM vs IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)

Comparisons

Compared 5% of the time

Zabbix vs IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)

Compared 4% of the time

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

Compared 3% of the time

NETSCOUT Network & Application Observability vs IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)

Compared 2% of the time

IBM Security QRadar vs IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)

Compared 2% of the time

More IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) Competitors

Colasoft Capsa vs Wireshark

Compared 7% of the time

Broadcom Network Flow Analysis vs Wireshark

Compared 7% of the time

DX Spectrum vs Wireshark

Compared 7% of the time

AirMagnet Survey PRO vs Wireshark

Compared 7% of the time

Observer GigaStor vs Wireshark

Compared 6% of the time

More Wireshark Competitors

Product Reports

IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)

Download IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) product report

IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) report

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Also Known As

SevOne

No data available

Overview

IBM SevOne Network Performance Management offers real-time insights, customization, and integration capabilities to efficiently monitor network performance across diverse infrastructures, enhancing operational efficiency.

IBM SevOne NPM is recognized for its ability to provide scalable network monitoring across multi-vendor environments. It delivers real-time data insights essential for maintaining network health and performance. With features like SNMP monitoring, NetFlow data collection, and comprehensive dashboards, it supports proactive tracking and analysis. While challenges in upgrade processes and third-party integration exist, its ability to monitor network availability, capacity, and performance in complex environments makes it valuable for organizations managing data centers and virtual machines.

What are the key features of IBM SevOne NPM?

Real-time Data Insights: Provides immediate visibility into network performance.
Scalability: Supports growing infrastructure and diverse environments.
Customization: Adaptable to specific infrastructure needs.
Extensive Device Support: Monitors a wide range of network devices.
Comprehensive Dashboards: Offers detailed performance assessments.

What benefits and ROI should users expect from IBM SevOne NPM?

Improved Efficiency: Enhances operational processes through ITSM integration.
Proactive Monitoring: Facilitates early detection of network issues.
Flexible Infrastructure Support: Efficient in multi-vendor environments.
Insightful Reporting: Provides baseline comparisons and anomaly detection.

In industries such as IT service providers and large enterprises, IBM SevOne NPM is implemented for its ability to monitor extensive network environments, including data centers and virtual machines. Its proactive monitoring and reporting capabilities are instrumental in maintaining network health and ensuring seamless performance across multiple regions and platforms.

IBM

Wireshark offers robust packet analysis through comprehensive filtering and color-coding features, adaptable across platforms due to its open-source nature. It supports real-time and offline packet captures, multiple protocols, and easy installation, making it a favored tool for network experts.

Renowned for its traffic decryption capabilities and detailed traffic insights, Wireshark provides deep packet inspection and a simple GUI. Ideal for network troubleshooting, it allows users to view VoIP traffic and perform advanced customizations. While Wireshark's interface can be complex and challenging for newcomers, its powerful features make it invaluable in identifying network issues, inspecting protocols, and understanding data flow across wired and wireless environments. Users seek more intuitive filters, better Windows and non-laptop support, as well as features like real-time evolution and graphical analysis tools to enhance usability. Wireshark's wide application includes security research, protocol analysis, and application performance baselining, supporting both on-premises and cloud-based operations.

What are Wireshark's standout features?

Filtering and Color-Coding: Enables detailed packet analysis.
Real-Time and Offline Captures: Supports both capture modes for comprehensive network monitoring.
Traffic Decryption: Provides detailed insights into encrypted traffic.
Deep Packet Inspection: Delivers granular network data examination.
GUI Simplicity: Ensures ease of use despite complex capabilities.

What benefits and ROI should users evaluate?

Network Troubleshooting: Streamlines identification and resolution of network issues.
Protocol Inspection: Facilitates in-depth examination of network communication protocols.
Traffic Monitoring: Ensures effective monitoring of network traffic in real time.
Security Research: Assists in uncovering malicious traffic and vulnerabilities.
Application Performance: Aids in baselining and optimizing app performance.

Wireshark is implemented across industries to manage and troubleshoot networks, analyze traffic flow, and ensure secure, efficient communication. It supports research and security operations, providing insights into protocol usage and application performance across physical and virtual environments. Its deployment spans education, telecommunications, finance, and healthcare, underpinning connectivity and data integrity.

Sample Customers

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

Comversion, ADP, Talbots

Network Monitoring Software