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 (42nd), Server Monitoring (19th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (40th), Log Management (44th), Cloud Monitoring Software (30th)

Wireshark

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

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%, down 1.0% compared to last year.
Wireshark, on the other hand, focuses on Network Troubleshooting, holds 12.7% mindshare, down 13.6% since last year.

Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)	1.0%
Zabbix	6.9%
SolarWinds NPM	3.4%
Other	88.7%

Network Monitoring Software

Network Troubleshooting Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Wireshark	12.7%
LinkRunner	10.1%
AirMagnet Survey PRO	8.9%
Other	68.30000000000001%

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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DonniUgalde

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.

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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

"Scalability. I have never had to worry about how to handle really big environments."

"The most valuable feature as of late has been the API integration with ServiceNow."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"We have benefited mainly from the use of the dashboard interface. It makes the network visually interesting for other people who are not in the network. A lot of people are not network techies who understand streams in the network. Based on location, we have streams coming in and out. They can see visually when there is some problem. They don't need to understand all the network technology behind it to be able to understand if everything is working well or if there is a problem."

"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."

"One of the solution's biggest strengths is its capacity management performance, with out-of-the-box reports through NMS, as well as its ability to collect NetFlow-related data from devices. The collection of network performance and flow data is important because we have many critical business applications."

More IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) pros

"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 filter option provided by Wireshark is its most valuable feature...Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

"It helps in analyzing if something looks suspicious, such as a brute force attack or scanning from somewhere."

"The options that are required to get the details for the packet drops are good."

"Wireshark saves a lot of time, especially with network troubleshooting."

"I have found the most valuable feature you can design your sniffer the way you want to."

"Setup is very easy. It's also possible to change source code and compile if you want to change something in the code, because it's free."

"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."

More Wireshark pros

Cons

"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."

"Telemetry is hot these days, and IBM can improve SevOne's support for telemetry correction. Reporting is another feature that could be better. It provides the bare minimum functionality, which is good enough for most engineers, but the management isn't advanced. The new portal provides a much lighter view and better visualization, but the management is not so good."

"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."

"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. That has to do with naming. It's minor."

"I'm not really sure if this was the software's fault or a server issue, but a couple of years back the disks were failing on our SevOne physical server every month and the server would go down. The secondary server took over from the primary until the disk issue was resolved. That was annoying."

"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"

"Their virtualization solution is not compatible with our Kubernetes environment, which is one of the reasons we are ending our relationship with them."

More IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) cons

"The average person would probably find Wireshark hard to use. When I first installed it, I was overwhelmed by all the data it was shooting out. It doesn't make sense until you start doing some research and figure out what everything means. It isn't the most user-friendly tool. It just provides so much information."

"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."

"I would like better control of bandwidth from the service provider."

"Wireshark could be improved with a delay option when getting data automatically."

"The Wireshark search function shows green for a correct search and red for an incorrect search. If there were a way to provide a description about what a search - and the similar ones which are available - can do, while a person is typing it, it would make the product easier to use and simultaneously decrease the learning curve."

"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."

"Whenever we select one of the packets, in terms of the number of bytes, for example, there are three planes, and in the detailed plane, I have to count the number of bytes manually."

"Sometimes I need to use tcpdump when I need to check the packets on CLI."

More Wireshark cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Have a bank of licenses, because it is about the number of objects (RAM, ports, CPU, etc.)."

"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."

"The tool is not expensive. We were able to negotiate with SevOne on pricing."

"The pricing has not evolved with the market, which is one of the reasons we are moving to a new product."

"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."

"There are cheaper solutions available."

"It is inexpensive compared to other monitoring tools."

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

"The solution is open source so is free."

"It's free."

"The tool is free."

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

"It is free to download and install. It runs on multiple platforms, so how can you go wrong?"

"We are using a freeware version of this solution, so there are no licence costs involved."

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

"Wireshark is open source and gives great value and functionality to the network investigation."

More Wireshark pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

Performing Arts

University

10%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Government

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	27

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 do you like most about Wireshark?

The GUI is easy to use.

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.

Dynatrace vs IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)

Comparisons

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

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SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability vs IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)

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Microsoft Network Monitor vs Wireshark

Compared 15% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs Wireshark

Compared 10% of the time

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer vs Wireshark

Compared 9% of the time

Colasoft Capsa vs Wireshark

Compared 8% of the time

AirMagnet Survey PRO vs Wireshark

Compared 7% of the time

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Product Reports

IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)

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IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) report

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Also Known As

SevOne

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Overview

The IBM® SevOne Network Performance Management (IBM SevOne NPM) solution helps you spot, address, and prevent network performance issues early with machine learning-powered analytics from a single source. Boost network performance and improve your user application experience by proactively monitoring your multivendor end-to-end network across enterprise, communication, and managed service provider networks.

Transform raw network performance data into intelligent and actionable insights. The IBM SevOne NPM solution goes beyond detection, combining industry-leading expertise and advanced technology to help your IT team plan and optimize your network and act on what matters: improving network performance to provide an exceptional customer experience.

For further information, please visit www.ibm.com/cloud/sevo...

IBM

Wireshark is the world's foremost network protocol analyzer.

Sample Customers

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

Comversion, ADP, Talbots

Network Monitoring Software