SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer vs Wireshark comparison

"What I like the most is the bandwidth assessment."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to look for any increases in bandwidth over time so that we can plan before it becomes critical."

"The performance analysis is a valuable feature. With the performance analyzer, we can see the realtime monitoring, the realtime performance, and historical performance on specific components like virtualization storage, CPU, servers and network equipment."

"The initial setup was straightforward."

"The monitoring is perfect, showing you the details for the utilization of resources and network bandwidth."

"The solution helps manage networks."

"They have instructional videos and other information available on the site to assist you with learning it."

"What I like about SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is that it's useful for analyzing traffic. It also has an application visibility feature that lets you control applications."

"Wireshark is very user-friendly; even someone with basic IT knowledge can use it."

"The most valuable feature is the traffic gate, which shows which IPs are getting more bandwidth or traffic."

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

"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."

"Wireshark helps us to understand network traffic."

"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."

"What's best about Wireshark is that it doesn't require installation. It supports cards and monitoring permissions and is sufficient for appending and capturing activities. You won't need to install other tools to use Wireshark, so this saves you time. You can capture packets at any time from your laptop through Wireshark."

"The most valuable feature of Wireshark is the ability to choose a destination of flow that has not been working as expected."

"There is room for improvement when it comes to the traffic generated by the analyzer and the analysis of that traffic."

"I would like to see more training videos and additional material for learning how to use this solution."

"The licensing model of SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is always an issue for users because competitors offer unlimited and perpetual licenses, and SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer's model is quite costly compared to other brands."

"Technical support needs improvement."

"There is a lack of documentation ......as well as a lack of dashboards."

"If your network is on SolarWinds, and you notice that the traffic is bad because it says "user downloading a heavy file," it doesn't indicate which endpoint is downloading those heavy files. SolarWinds doesn't have the tools to be able to handle this kind of situation. You can just notice through your network device that the traffic is becoming overwhelming or heavy, but you cannot go inside and get more details related to the endpoint where it is happening. We would like SolarWinds to be able to handle this kind of situation and even manage the traffic inside a network from the endpoint to the network device. These would be good enhancements. It is mostly stable. The problem comes only when we want to add another SolarWinds model. SolarWinds has so many models, and sometimes when we want to add other models on the platforms that are reserved for our firm, it freezes. When this happens, we have to create a new VM for that model."

"An area for improvement in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is application visibility because some applications aren't being recognized correctly. You can see applications such as Facebook and YouTube, but SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer needs to have more visibility into more applications. Currently, SolarWinds fails to detect more powerful applications, such as Zoom and Teams. If SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer can recognize every application and be able to report on each in terms of bandwidth, then that would be good. This is what I'd like to see in the next release of the solution."

"One area that we struggle with is the price. Because the price of this solution is so high, we are largely unable to introduce it into the local market, and only the banking sector has the means to afford it."

"I wish the filters were a little bit more prepopulated."

"You need good network connectivity to download during the setup, otherwise, it might take a while."

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

"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."

"I would like to see Wireshark improve the ease of application of the command. The command is very powerful, but not easy to apply."

"Wireshark could make the filtering rules easier to apply and offer a drag-and-drop option as opposed to type and text."

"It would be better if they offered a hybrid version like My Cloud Control."

"A room for improvement in Wireshark is its ease of use for beginners. It could be better. Another room for improvement in the tool is for it to provide more details about the traffic load. At the moment, Wireshark is adequate for me, so there isn't anything I'd like added to it in its next version."

"I don't have information on the licensing cost for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer because it's bundled with another SolarWinds solution. My organization has seven different models and pays for the license yearly. My organization also had to deploy additional pollers, but the cost wasn't very expensive, though I can't give the exact numbers."

"The price of this solution is exceptional."

"The pricing is really good."

"Licensing for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is paid yearly, and there are no additional costs that you need to pay apart from the standard licensing fees because you don't need to purchase another solution to make SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer work. Pricing for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is more expensive than other solutions."

"While the pricing is fair, it could be better."

"The pricing is reasonable."

"For our environment, we pay approximately $25,000 USD yearly."

"The solution's licensing is high-priced."

"This is an open-source product that can be used free of charge."

"Wireshark is an open-source product, so it's free to use."

"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."

"It is free."

"The solution is open source so is free."

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

"It is an open-source solution."