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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 (34th), Server Monitoring (17th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (36th), Log Management (36th), Cloud Monitoring Software (26th)
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 18.4% mindshare, up 14.3% since last year.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)1.1%
Zabbix3.9%
SolarWinds NPM3.6%
Other91.4%
Network Monitoring Software
Network Troubleshooting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Wireshark18.4%
AirMagnet Survey PRO9.1%
DX Spectrum7.0%
Other65.5%
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

"We find that the reporting is particularly valuable in terms of not only communicating with our peer teams but also with the executives."
"It is a very efficient and highly recommended solution."
"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."
"It also gives us the closest thing to real-time insight into network performance that we have, with just a 10-second delay. It's very important for us to know the health of the infrastructure very quickly."
"SevOne has improved my organization by taking us to a single pane of glass for alerting on the network reports."
"Scalability. I have never had to worry about how to handle really big environments."
"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 out of the box reports and workflows are pretty good and they meet our requirements well."
"The product is simple to implement."
"The options that are required to get the details for the packet drops are good."
"The most valuable feature is the traffic gate, which shows which IPs are getting more bandwidth or traffic."
"It gives us the ability to pinpoint problems and to communicate network problems with software and hardware vendors."
"You can use Wireshark to see the traffic packet format, the IP layers, the fields, and the enabled flags."
"The ability to decrypt traffic and the abundance of filters available are both valuable features."
"The solution is easy to install and use."
"I can save the traffic and analysis when I want to. Also, it's especially helpful to follow the stream (TCP, UDP, etc.)."
 

Cons

"I think that the upgrade process could be improved, which can be painful at times."
"There is room for improvement in the integration with different vendors and the reporting capabilities."
"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."
"SevOne should work with the graphs legend functionality."
"Customer service is very bad. The support is a kind of blog where you leave your question or problem, then they try to resolve it as soon as possible."
"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 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 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."
"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."
"The decryption of encrypted packets could be better."
"I have not used Wireshark to an advanced point where I could provide a detailed opinion on improvements needed."
"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 system could be improved upon by adding a better and more powerful data processing engine."
"Wireshark is also used for hacking which is a security breach."
"Built-in help system is not robust."
"In the future, it would be nice to see color coding. It is just black and white."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"Prices per license are not huge, but they exist."
"The pricing has been fair."
"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."
"This is an open-source product that can be used free of charge."
"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 free software, so you can download it and use it for free with no licensing fees."
"The tool is free."
"It's a stand-alone tool. If there is a commercial license for it I am unaware of it."
"It is free."
"It is free to download and install. It runs on multiple platforms, so how can you go wrong?"
"Wireshark is an open-source product, so it's free to use."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Construction Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
7%
University
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
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, SolarWinds, Auvik and others in Network Monitoring Software. Updated: May 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.