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PRTG Network Monitor vs SolarWinds 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:
 

Mindshare comparison

Network Monitoring Software
Network Monitoring Software
Network Troubleshooting
 

Featured Reviews

Tochukwu Uzomba - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficiently monitor networks across regions with seamless setup and robust feature set
PRTG Network Monitor is easy to set up. Within a few minutes, it is operational. It is an all-in-one monitoring solution without extra costs. For example, we set it up for an insurance company with branches across Africa. We are able to monitor from Lagos without installing anything in the branches, using the agentless feature. We just put in the IP address and the parameter, and we monitor from those ends. Additionally, all the sensors are very useful. Most people are interested in the bandwidth monitoring sensor to see what bandwidth the users are consuming. The pricing is affordable compared to SolarWinds.
MohitKumar - PeerSpot reviewer
High-level, comprehensive, and proactive monitoring in a user-friendly interface
The solution needs to integrate with additional SDN technologies that are part of the hyper market. The solution supports many vendors by default and just included Meraki SDN with the new release, but continued expansion is important. We created a custom method to pair with unsupported vendors but that can produce a lag in performance so future releases should expand SDN support. The solution does a good job of automating features but could expand that even more.
Vijay Duggal - PeerSpot reviewer
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

"We use the remote probes a lot for our branch offices. Instead of deploying the full instance of PRTG, we'll put a remote probe out there. This simplifies the whole deployment for us."
"One of its valuable features is the fact that it handles multiple operating systems... And I like the fact that it tells me when things are about to fall over, which means I can preempt it and not have to wake up at three in the morning to fix it."
"The solution has excellent redundant features."
"The most valuable feature of PRTG Network Monitor is real-time monitoring."
"The up-to-date graphs and the history are very good."
"One of the valuable features is the diversity of metrics available to us to monitor. It's all there, it's all in the box. It's all made very easy, by virtue of it being pre-configured."
"The most valuable feature of PRTG Network Monitor is the dashboards. We can check to see the resources and the uptime."
"PRTG has improved our visibility and response time to issues related to remote sites."
"The alerting and usage tracking notifications on disk space capacity, network and processor utilization."
"The people in technical support are very good."
"I like the tracking feature to track devices and see where they are connected. This is very practical."
"You can monitor performance counters effortlessly."
"It is considerably cheaper compared to other tools."
"It is very extensible with 'SWQL' and APIs to where we are beginning to integrate it with network automation."
"Network performance is the main issue clients are facing. SolarWinds checks if a node is down, and we can set thresholds for performance metrics. For example, we set it up to get an alert automatically if a value is over 80 percent. It has a full dashboard that covers CP, hard disk, and node monitoring."
"SolarWinds NPM provides an overview of network monitoring, extending its capabilities to cover other aspects, such as virtual machines and servers. The platform has features like NetPath, which is particularly beneficial for end-users, offering insights into issues like latency, packet loss, and connectivity problems with routers, switches, or servers."
"It has good basic features."
"The options that are required to get the details for the packet drops are good."
"Packet-capture files can be hard to use due to their size. Wireshark has a tool called tshark that can parse the files with out opening them so that you can take large captures, say 2-10GB, and return only relevant information."
"The filter option provided by Wireshark is its most valuable feature...Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"Wireshark is very user-friendly; even someone with basic IT knowledge can use it."
"Being able to dissect email data and figure out what is inside email messages was the most valuable feature. Such a feature is pretty helpful for an ongoing forensic investigation or when there is a potential insider threat that you are trying to investigate. It allows you to see the network activity of the users you are investigating. It also gives you more visibility into your network. It was very easy to set up. There is a lot of information out there on Google and YouTube about how to use it. There is also community support. If you have any trouble, it is pretty easy to find an answer online. You will have to do some digging only if you have a very specific use case."
"It's easy to troubleshoot issues because there's a large online community."
"The most valuable feature is the traffic gate, which shows which IPs are getting more bandwidth or traffic."
 

Cons

"The automation should be improved."
"A room for improvement in PRTG Network Monitor is its sensors. Its application technology sensor, such as the IAS, .NET, etc., needs some improvement because it doesn't work as expected. For example, the IAS sensor doesn't give immediate information, and the information you get from it isn't of good value. The web GUI of PRTG Network Monitor also needs improvement because errors keep popping up if it's not been updated to the latest version. What I'd like to see in the next release of the tool is end-to-end topology mapping for the business model, and that should be required. There has to be a technical map. Technical mapping and topological creation are missing in PRTG Network Monitor, so I would like to see those in the future."
"PRTG would be improved if it required less memory to run."
"There's always room for improvement. The high availability feature is good, but it's an area that PRTG could marginally improve. For example, in PRTG, both servers have a different IP, but it would make things a lot easier if they were bound by a single IP."
"In terms of sensors and probes, it would be really cool if PRTG had a purely Azure-based solution. We had to install a probe on one of our cloud servers and then let that probe out from there. It would be really cool if it just monitored Azure without having to install something on the device."
"I would like to see them take their graphing tools and convert them into a collector so that we can point telemetry to them"
"This solution is a good product so far, but I haven't been using it long enough to know how it could be improved."
"Once you start going above 5000 sensors, things do start to get a bit shaky. There are some best practice out there that you will need to adopt and be aware of."
"The interface could be made more user-friendly."
"This solution would benefit from expanding on the capabilities within the API."
"I think Solar Winds NPM needs to create a profile with documentation responsibility."
"There should be a little bit more integration in some of the other tooling and utilizing the APIs of devices or tools could be a little bit better."
"SolarWinds NPM can be very slow at times. The database optimization can be done to improve the product performance."
"SolarWinds needs to be improved such that it is on par with the leading products in the market."
"The integration needs to be improved."
"There isn't support available to us as they don't offer support in our country."
"Sometimes I need to use tcpdump when I need to check the packets on CLI."
"The decryption of encrypted packets could be better."
"You need good network connectivity to download during the setup, otherwise, it might take a while."
"In the future, it would be nice to see color coding. It is just black and white."
"The product has been using the same GUI for many years."
"It needs the ability to follow multiple interfaces for specific traffic from different network zones/virtual networks. It would help to understand how any packet is going through the network."
"Wireshark could make the filtering rules easier to apply and offer a drag-and-drop option as opposed to type and text."
"It is difficult to scale this solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the price of PRTG Network Monitor an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is a high price, and ten is a low price."
"Cost was a factor when selecting this solution, but it just did everything we wanted it to do."
"The pricing is very low compared to other solutions."
"PRTG Network Monitor is not that expensive, so I like it cost-wise. There's no additional cost apart from the standard licensing fees. On a scale of one to five, with one being the cheapest and five being the most expensive, I would rate the cost of PRTG Network Monitor a two."
"At the moment I'm only using 500 sensors. I pay yearly, so it's a cost that's easily swallowed."
"I rate the licensing for PRTG Network Monitor an eight out of ten."
"On a yearly basis, I believe it's between £1,200 and £1,500."
"PRTG Network Monitor's price is a little high."
"I think that the cost has risen, but the functionality and versatility is way above other products."
"We pay approximately $4,000 annually for SolarWinds NPM. There are no additional fees required other than the standard fees."
"There can be fees in addition to the licensing fees if you add on."
"The solution can become very expensive and commercially not viable in countries, such as India."
"The solution's pricing is low compared to a lot of other tools in the market."
"The licensing is based on the number of nodes, interfaces, and volumes."
"It is too expensive."
"USD $15,000 annually for maintenance."
"It is an open-source solution."
"Wireshark is open source and gives great value and functionality to the network investigation."
"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."
"I am using the free version of this solution."
"We're using the free version of Wireshark."
"It's free."
"Wireshark is free of charge, and there's no license involved."
"The tool is free."
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 31, 2015
Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor
I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
49%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
5%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Educational Organization
56%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
4%
University
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
PRTG network monitor is one of the best tool i have ever used for the monitoring. It have auto discovery option. it a...
What do you like most about PRTG Network Monitor?
The tool is integrated with our email for the alerts.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PRTG Network Monitor?
The prices are very high for PRTG Network Monitor. That's why I'm using the free100 sensor license.
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
It actually depends on the exact purpose or kind of devices (network devices, servers, something else). Some tools ar...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
We are partners with SolarWinds and we sell a lot of Network management to large enterprises also because of scalabil...
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 ...
What needs improvement with Wireshark?
The speed of the Internet could be improved, especially its performance. Performance can sometimes be a challenge due...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Jameson Bank, Sidnix, RungeICT, MedicalAnimal, Truck-lite, GamingGrids, The Covell Group, Forsythn County Schools, NetMass, Musgrove Park Hospital, Lanes Health, Columbia Southern University, Vodafone, Intrust Bank
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Comversion, ADP, Talbots
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