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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 (37th), Server Monitoring (17th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (43rd), Log Management (40th), Cloud Monitoring Software (29th)
Wireshark
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
63
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 17.1% mindshare, up 13.9% since last year.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)1.1%
Zabbix4.1%
SolarWinds NPM3.7%
Other91.1%
Network Monitoring Software
Network Troubleshooting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Wireshark17.1%
AirMagnet Survey PRO9.4%
DX Spectrum6.6%
Other66.9%
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,…
Vijay Duggal - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Fantastic – for money laid out vs. what you’re getting back, it's been great."
"It is a very good product, easy to stand up, and a good tool for network engineers."
"I like the tool’s scalability and real-time reports. Earlier, we struggled to give real-time reports to clients. I also like the tool’s deployment model where we can deploy it either on-premises or in-house. We don’t have to carry the data all over the globe. Also, I am impressed with the tool's flow reporting and Wi-Fi."
"It's a great solution for highlighting and discovering useful information regarding our network's elements."
"The out of the box reports and workflows are pretty good and they meet our requirements well."
"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."
"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 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."
"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."
"Wireshark is very good for network engineers; it's free software, you can install it very easily, and there are a lot of features."
"Wireshark is incredibly powerful, user-friendly, and a free tool, which is capable of live capture and offline analysis of traffic on any size network."
"For example, while debugging through food issues, we can draw the graph of the data captured in the solution and see how the throughput is moving."
"It gives us the ability to pinpoint problems and to communicate network problems with software and hardware vendors."
"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."
"The solution is open-source and free to use, and there is a paid tier with more features if a company needs a bit more."
"Wireshark's best features are that it lets us see what traffic is in the network and what data should be encrypted."
 

Cons

"The UI is a little dated, but it doesn’t cause any features to fall short of what they need to do."
"Licensing costs can add up quickly, so know what you need to monitor and what you don’t."
"The reporting of NMS is good, but it could be better."
"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..."
"Their virtualization solution is not compatible with our Kubernetes environment, which is one of the reasons we are ending our relationship with them."
"I think SevOne can improve by providing more details in their release notes regarding enhancements and changes."
"SevOne should work with the graphs legend functionality."
"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."
"In the future, it would be nice to see color coding. It is just black and white."
"Wireshark is restricted when any sort of encryption is involved, such as XSL encryption or DLX."
"Wireshark's UI isn't easy to handle and doesn't have as nice a view as Omnipeek."
"Its user interface was a little less friendly. They can make its user interface a little bit more friendly. It is for technical people, and most of the technical people would be able to figure it out, but it would be good to improve its user interface. They can maybe build artificial intelligence into it. Currently, it takes a lot of manpower to analyze and dissect all the data."
"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."
"The Wireshark search function shows green for a correct search and red for an incorrect search."
"One con is that this software is only an observer, not an interactive component of the network, meaning you cant change anything with it."
"DNS could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Choose a SevOne partner who can provide SevOne as a service and can deliver professional services and maintenance."
"Have a bank of licenses, because it is about the number of objects (RAM, ports, CPU, etc.)."
"Prices per license are not huge, but they exist."
"There are cheaper solutions available."
"A blocking point is the high upfront cost because it is challenging to get it accepted and the purchase approved."
"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."
"It is inexpensive compared to other monitoring tools."
"The pricing has been fair."
"It's free."
"It is free to download and install. It runs on multiple platforms, so how can you go wrong?"
"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."
"Wireshark is open-source and free of charge."
"The tool is free."
"We are using a freeware version of this solution, so there are no licence costs involved."
"Wireshark is free software, so you don't have to pay any licensing fee. Individual people can use it and then donate to Wireshark."
"I am using the free version of this solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Construction Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
University
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

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 Enterprise28
 

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.
What is your primary use case for Wireshark?
We are using Wireshark for inspecting the vertical line to know the data flow in and out of the cables. This is to determine if there is real traffic flow through the physical connections or not. A...
 

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, SolarWinds and others in Network Monitoring Software. Updated: April 2026.
894,807 professionals have used our research since 2012.