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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

"The most valuable features for us are the huge number of network devices it can monitor."
"SevOne has rich API capabilities, giving us the flexibility to control what we collect and customize the collection, creation, and manipulation of now metrics as necessary."
"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."
"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."
"It is one of the most important systems we have in our environment for monitoring devices."
"SevOne is one of the biggest strategic investments we've made; it just works, it just does what we want with no fuss about it."
"The tool has given a great visibility of what is going on our network and has helped to troubleshoot network-related issues quickly and accurately."
"It's given us the ability to create various real-time network performance reports and distribute them to any colleague who can access these reports immediately."
"It has a good syntax to put the commands in and get information out of."
"Wireshark is more advanced and has many features."
"The filter option provided by Wireshark is its most valuable feature...Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"I like the filtering feature as we can filter data easily. This feature is also available in tcpdump, but it's a simple piece of software. Wireshark is more advanced and has many features. It allows you to filter a lot of things. The output can be filtered easily. The most important feature is colorization. If I say, "Okay, this particular SMB protocol in red, it will show me red." It's easy to identify that protocol or capture data."
"The session-level filtering features are valuable."
"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'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."
"This is the de-facto standard network protocol analysis tool."
 

Cons

"But keep in mind that if you're using the the PLA version of SevOne, the hardware support runs out in five years, so if something were to happen to the hardware after this period, it would not be covered."
"The reports are easy to configure but they are a bit outdated in terms of appearance and visualization."
"Although it is a very good monitoring tool, it can be confusing when you try to add devices and they don’t appear correctly."
"User-friendly, multi-tenancy."
"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."
"There is no service mode setup in this monitoring tool if you want to snooze alerts for any specific amount of time, to account for any activity change or major incident."
"Licensing costs can add up quickly, so know what you need to monitor and what you don’t."
"Cannot be used to diagnose any kind of network intrusions and hacking exploits."
"It is not an easy program. You will need to study to use it to its full capabilities (follow a course)."
"Wireshark gets stuck when it is a larger file."
"I would like better control of bandwidth from the service provider."
"The system could be improved upon by adding a better and more powerful data processing engine."
"A room for improvement in Wireshark is its ease of use for beginners; it could be better."
"It would be better if they offered a hybrid version like My Cloud Control."
"Not always simple to setup and get the filtering right when capturing data."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are different options available for licensing, with the per-device option being more expensive but more flexible."
"The tool is not expensive. We were able to negotiate with SevOne on pricing."
"There are cheaper solutions available."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Choose a SevOne partner who can provide SevOne as a service and can deliver professional services and maintenance."
"The solution is open source so is free."
"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."
"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."
"Wireshark is free of charge, and there's no license involved."
"Wireshark is free software, so you can download it and use it for free with no licensing fees."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Outsourcing Company
9%
University
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Construction Company
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: September 2026.
915,817 professionals have used our research since 2012.