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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 (40th), Server Monitoring (19th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (40th), Log Management (44th), Cloud Monitoring Software (29th)
Wireshark
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
63
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%, up 1.0% compared to last year.
Wireshark, on the other hand, focuses on Network Troubleshooting, holds 12.3% mindshare, down 13.1% since last year.
Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)1.0%
Zabbix5.7%
SolarWinds NPM3.4%
Other89.9%
Network Monitoring Software
Network Troubleshooting Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Wireshark12.3%
AirMagnet Survey PRO10.0%
LinkRunner9.4%
Other68.3%
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,…
DonniUgalde - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The network data collection has been very flexible for us. It's been thorough in areas that were lacking. They have a team that I've worked with to add other pieces to it. So if it's missing something out of the box, they work with me to add it. I was able to collect that data. It's not perfect, but it's pretty thorough."
"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."
"The automation feature is good because if your CMDB is OK and it is already in sync, then the automation part is good to go."
"It's a great solution for highlighting and discovering useful information regarding our network's elements."
"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."
"SevOne provides support for all universal connectors. They internally work with other data sources to get features implemented. We have an SD-WAN implementation and use other app data to monitor performance. If you pull that data into one centralized location, that is very useful for management."
"In 90% of the cases, new devices are plug-and-play, so when a new version comes out then SevOne has support for it out of the box."
"The most valuable feature as of late has been the API integration with ServiceNow."
"I find Wireshark a very useful tool. Its best feature is that it allows me to deeply understand what's going on at the packet level, as well as any adverse signatures that I can analyze. When I need to create an IPS rule, I need to check the traffic deeply to get more insights about the actual traffic, what's the name of certain flags, etc., and I'm able to do all that through Wireshark. The tool is also user-friendly."
"It is a stable product. I would rate the stability a ten out of ten."
"It's easy to troubleshoot issues because there's a large online community."
"Wireshark's best feature is that it's adaptive, which means it's the go-to tool for network-related developers."
"The drill-down available for packet analysis is great. It gives a network security engineer insight into what is going on at the packet level and enables better troubleshooting."
"The product is simple to implement."
"The session-level filtering features are valuable."
"It has a good syntax to put the commands in and get information out of."
 

Cons

"The method of searching for SIP and the way to create the groups."
"There is room for improvement in the integration with different vendors and the reporting capabilities."
"With the administrative management of the appliance, if some object appears from SevOne because something changed in the network or whatever, then as an administrator you will not be aware. If you are using this object in a report, this object will disappear from the report and you will not be aware of it. So, if you have 1,000 reports, you cannot always check these reports everyday to see if objects are missing or information has disappeared. We don't have any information on alerts, saying that something is happening there and maybe we need to take action. If an object was replaced by another one, or if a link was replaced by another one, then the graph needs to be changed because it doesn't exist in the graph anymore. However, we don't have this information."
"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."
"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."
"There are a lot of pain points. My main problem is that we don't have a high availability system. There are 20 peers. We're going to lose the end-of-life appliances that are old. If we lose a peer and it doesn't come back, we lose all that data. The reason we don't have high availability is because it's double the charge."
"SevOne should work with the graphs legend functionality."
"We need to be thinking about streaming telemetry protocols. They already have the port for enhanced visualization, which they already have through Data Insight."
"Wireshark could be improved with a delay option when getting data automatically."
"It is difficult to scale this solution."
"We would like the product to be developed so that it doesn't rely on internet access for installation. We would like to see all of the components required to be integrated into the installer."
"We'd like to be able to extract the output into an Excel table."
"The system could be improved upon by adding a better and more powerful data processing engine."
"The product has been using the same GUI for many years."
"There is a disadvantage when it comes to sampling intervals. Additionally, I've heard from a colleague that Wireshark might be less effective in the voice domain."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Have a bank of licenses, because it is about the number of objects (RAM, ports, CPU, etc.)."
"It is inexpensive compared to other monitoring tools."
"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 tool is not expensive. We were able to negotiate with SevOne on pricing."
"There are different options available for licensing, with the per-device option being more expensive but more flexible."
"Choose a SevOne partner who can provide SevOne as a service and can deliver professional services and maintenance."
"There are cheaper solutions available."
"The pricing has been fair."
"Wireshark is open-source and 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 of charge, and there's no license involved."
"I am using the free version of this solution."
"This is an open-source product that can be used free of charge."
"The tool is free."
"Wireshark is free software, so you can download it and use it for free with no licensing fees."
"It is free to download and install. It runs on multiple platforms, so how can you go wrong?"
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Marketing Services Firm
5%
University
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
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 Enterprise27
 

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.
 

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, Datadog and others in Network Monitoring Software. Updated: February 2026.
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