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SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer 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

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic ...
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (4th)
Wireshark
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
64
Ranking in other categories
Network Troubleshooting (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Network Management solutions, they serve different purposes. SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is designed for Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) and holds a mindshare of 6.5%, up 5.2% compared to last year.
Wireshark, on the other hand, focuses on Network Troubleshooting, holds 18.4% mindshare, up 14.3% since last year.
Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer6.5%
Darktrace15.7%
Cisco Secure Network Analytics9.0%
Other68.8%
Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)
Network Troubleshooting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Wireshark18.4%
AirMagnet Survey PRO9.1%
DX Spectrum7.0%
Other65.5%
Network Troubleshooting
 

Featured Reviews

Raja Xabi - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Manager at APRAL
Improved bandwidth management and network visibility have resulted in financial benefits and streamlined operations
There is always room for improvement in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer, such as implementing instant reporting based on business intelligence reports and more granular filters in their dashboard to improve the GUI view and reporting. 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. If users are comfortable with SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer, they have to make the hard decision to invest, and it's suggested from a user's perspective that SolarWinds should improve their financial model and licensing to become competitive, especially for small to medium businesses.
reviewer2837244 - PeerSpot reviewer
It System Engineer at a manufacturing company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Packet analysis has improved real-time troubleshooting and simplifies mapping complex data flows
The best features that Wireshark offers are everything. Every time I look into Wireshark, I find something new. The ability to capture real-time packets and understand how the packet is working and moving through how many hops and to how many points it reaches makes it a wonderful tool. The specific feature I use most is capturing packets of real-time communication and seeing how the packet is working. I rely on all the filters it has to check the protocols and see the communication between one end and another end and what the hops in between are, and if there is a proxy, how it behaves. Everything helps us check out the issue and troubleshoot it. I do not have anything additional to add about the features; everything looks really fine. The graphics are also good, and you can change its graphical features, making it a pretty nice tool. You can also use it with the PCAP file, which is really nice. Wireshark has positively impacted my organization by giving us the ability to capture packets and see into the network how it is working and what we can clarify about the network, specifically how we can remove many hops in the communication channels. A specific example of a measurable outcome is that we have a few switches in our network that, when we use Wireshark analysis, we find should not be needed or can be replaced with automatic switches instead of manual switches, such as switches which do not have any active features and only passive switches. That has saved us a lot of time.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The software management tools are very useful for our customers."
"I find this tool very helpful in identifying the top traffic paths from source to destination, and determining which routes are consuming the most resources."
"This solution gives us important information about the utilization of protocols, particularly in terms of how often they are used."
"We conduct network traffic analysis for a couple of key reasons. First, we look for traffic anomalies, such as unexpected increases or decreases in network traffic within specific segments. This helps us determine if the network needs to be re-architected."
"Visibility in the network is huge. Using the NetFlow analyzer, along with their NPM and NCM modules, are key for keeping our network up to date and for visibility."
"What the network team found most valuable in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is that it helps them to troubleshoot or analyze the issue. For example, traffic that comes from our location: India, goes to the US, so for the network team to analyze where the traffic comes from and where it is directed, and whether the packets are being dropped, they use SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer. The network team also likes that through the solution, they can analyze the complete traffic utilization and how they're going to use it. SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is user-friendly. The team finds it comfortable to use."
"Overlooking the pricing and the response times from their technical support, SolarWinds NTA is a good solution and our existing customers are satisfied with the product."
"Overall, for my use cases, this product is very good and I recommend it."
"Wireshark's best features are that it lets us see what traffic is in the network and what data should be encrypted."
"It has a good syntax to put the commands in and get information out of."
"The filter option provided by Wireshark is its most valuable feature...Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"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."
"Wireshark's best features are that it lets us see what traffic is in the network and what data should be encrypted."
"The ability to capture real-time packets and understand how the packet is working and moving through how many hops and to how many points it reaches makes it a wonderful tool."
"It gives us the ability to pinpoint problems and to communicate network problems with software and hardware vendors."
"For example, while debugging through food issues, we can draw the graph of the data captured in the solution and see how the throughput is moving."
 

Cons

"It is very slow to pick the dynamics of the network."
"SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer could improve its flexibility and integration with AI to provide analytics beyond just showing up/down statuses and traffic volumes."
"The licensing should be more realistic so that we can adjust the number of nodes according to my needs, rather than in fixed increments."
"The tool itself is very complicated, so training is required to handle it effectively."
"There is room for improvement when it comes to the traffic generated by the analyzer and the analysis of that traffic."
"Technical support needs improvement."
"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 does not flow. It cannot do our metric performance monitoring. So it is very limited. They can do it but in a very limited fashion. It is only good for SNMP-based alerts."
"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."
"Can be difficult for non packet heads to understand"
"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."
"In the future, it would be nice to see color coding. It is just black and white."
"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."
"Wireshark gets stuck when it is a larger file."
"Wireshark could be improved by adding more monitoring features."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's licensing is high-priced."
"While the pricing is fair, it could be better."
"We have licenses for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer. In terms of pricing, its license is not that expensive versus other tools such as HP."
"The licensing for this solution is based on the number of nodes."
"NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is reasonably priced."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Wireshark is free of charge, and there's no license involved."
"We are using a freeware version of this solution, so there are no licence costs involved."
"We're using the free version of Wireshark."
"It's free."
"The tool is free."
"It's a stand-alone tool. If there is a commercial license for it I am unaware of it."
"This is an open-source product that can be used free of charge."
"Wireshark is open source and gives great value and functionality to the network investigation."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Healthcare Company
7%
Construction Company
6%
University
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Healthcare Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise26
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise29
 

Questions from the Community

What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
I have worked from 1973 with all kind of systems in large enterprises across the world. And have experience with all kind of software in monitoring from infra to end to end, it depends on the funct...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer?
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 i...
What needs improvement with SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer?
Regarding improvement, the application monitoring capabilities are not exceptional. If SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer could improve in that area, it would be helpful. It is less AIOps driven a...
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.
What is your primary use case for Wireshark?
We are using Wireshark for inspecting the vertical line to know the data flow in and out of the cables. This is to determine if there is real traffic flow through the physical connections or not. A...
 

Also Known As

Netflow Traffic Analyzer
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Oceaneering International, Asia Pacific Network Information Centre, 335th Signal Command, Immofori
Comversion, ADP, Talbots
Find out what your peers are saying about Darktrace, Auvik, Cisco and others in Network Traffic Analysis (NTA). Updated: May 2026.
896,563 professionals have used our research since 2012.