SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer vs Wireshark comparison

"It doesn't cost too much."

"It provides proactive monitoring, rather than waiting for applications to go down due to heavy bandwidth or latency."

"The most valuable features are the bandwidth analyzer, the monitoring, the network analyzer, it has overall good performance, and an easy deployment."

"This solution gives us important information about the utilization of protocols, particularly in terms of how often they are used."

"The most helpful feature of SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is bandwidth analysis, which lets you see who's hogging your network."

"The bandwidth indicates the utilization of the devices; if any issue occurs, it triggers an alert for me."

"The solution's most valuable feature is its traffic analysis."

"The dashboard alerts me when a critical device goes off the network."

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

"The solution is easy to install and use."

"The best network analyzer tool out there in the market."

"Wireshark is the world's most powerful network protocol analyzer tool."

"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."

"Wireshark is a good tool to start with network analyzing and packet capturing."

"Wireshark has a tool called tshark that can parse the files without opening them so that you can take large captures, say 2-10GB, and return only relevant information."

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

"They should work on the configuration of the Log Analyzer feature."

"What needs improvement in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is performance because sometimes, my team struggles too much for the solution to perform correctly for a specific deployment in my organization. Having a more detailed view in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is another area for improvement, but that's more part of the protocol than the actual solution."

"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."

"It is a scalable solution, but it is costly to scale. Therefore, I would rate scalability at eight out of ten."

"Technical support needs improvement."

"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."

"It can be complex to set up and configure."

"The problem is that SolarWinds is trying to bolt in too much and that can leave bugs, which you have to then sort out, leaving the product unstable. SolarWinds needs to try and slow down and improve the stability of the product, as opposed to bringing out more and more features."

"We'd like to be able to extract the output into an Excel table."

"The solution’s user interface could be improved."

"Maximum buffer size of captured data should be unlimited and should allow ability to archive all old captures (not save option) in real time, it should support a destination location where old captures can be directed for long term storage."

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

"It is not an easy program. You will need to study to use it to its full capabilities (follow a course)."

"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."

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

"The initial setup depends upon the basics. You need to have a clear understanding of the basics."

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

"SolarWinds' pricing structure is the primary reason why some customers opt for another solution such as ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer. In NTA, you are charged per port, meaning that if you have a 24-port switch you will be charged for 24 individual nodes. ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer, on the other hand, charges per switch, such that if you add a switch, the entire switch will count as one single node."

"The pricing is reasonable."

"NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is reasonably priced."

"We pay yearly, and we are happy with its price."

"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."

"Pricing for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is very high. I have a customer that needs the solution but doesn't have the budget for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer because the problem is that you can't use the solution only. You have to buy requirements such as the SolarWinds NPM first, and some companies don't have the budget for all the required components and modules. SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer can cost up to $10,000, and some customers don't have that budget. Another product has all the modules that SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer has, with a very low price, that can be a replacement, which is ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer. PRTG is another solution that can replace SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer."

"The pricing is really good."

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

"It's a stand-alone tool. If there is a commercial license for it I am unaware of it."

"It's free."

"I am using the free version of this solution."

"It is an open-source solution."

"Wireshark is open-source and 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."