SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer vs Wireshark comparison

"NTA's most valuable feature is traffic analysis and visibility."

"The solution helps manage networks."

"It is great at telling you if your devices are working and it keeps an eye on your network's overall performance."

"With SolarWinds, we are now able to accurately gauge bandwidth consumption."

"The bandwidth monitoring functionality is one of the most important features for our customers. When the customer notices that their bandwidth usage is too high for some reason, they will use the traffic analysis within SolarWinds NTA to identify which protocols (e.g. HTTPS) or applications are using up the bandwidth."

"For managing the traffic, it provides you a response about whether the traffic is down, up, or heavy, which is a very powerful feature. It has a good response time. We have been using this solution for many years, and we don't have any problem with this solution."

"It helps us know when a branch is down because it has a graphic presentation of all the locations a node represents."

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

"The transmission and reception issues are valuable."

"The solution is easy to install and use."

"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."

"I can save the traffic and analysis when I want to. Also, it's especially helpful to follow the stream (TCP, UDP, etc.)."

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

"The options that are required to get the details for the packet drops are good."

"The initial setup is simple."

"The feature to incorporate Voice over IP (VoIP) incidents into network traffic analysis is valuable. Capturing voice or SIP communication allows for examination of interactions between SIP clients and SIP servers. This helps the team investigate or analyze issues related to call center servers and operators."

"It's scalable, but it could be simplified because it's not completely easy."

"An area for improvement in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is the dashboarding. The user interface also has room for improvement because it's currently clunky."

"SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer could improve its flexibility and integration with AI to provide analytics beyond just showing up/down statuses and traffic volumes."

"Technical support could be improved with quicker response times."

"Customer Support is quite complex."

"It's not a cheap product, so the pricing could be improved."

"The price of the solution is a bit high for our clients. They should consider adjusting their price model."

"Deployment needs improvement. The process is complicated, requiring attention to infrastructure settings and installation of components like the origin application server, platform, close storage, and policy agents."

"The decryption of encrypted packets could be better."

"You need some basic knowledge to work with Wireshark. Maybe it could be more user-friendly just for new users. Just for the new generation."

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

"The solution has a steep learning curve. There are so many filters and features that are frequently being updated, it takes research, experience and familiarity to be able to use them. It could be a lot more user-friendly."

"Sometimes I need to use tcpdump when I need to check the packets on CLI."

"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."

"With Wireshark, you cannot download and utilize the packet in automation."

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

"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."

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

"The pricing is reasonable."

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

"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."

"The price of this solution is exceptional."

"NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is reasonably priced."

"The tool is free."

"Wireshark is open-source and free of charge."

"Wireshark is free software, so you don't have to pay any licensing fee. Individual people can use it and then donate to Wireshark."

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

"Wireshark is free of charge, and there's no license involved."

"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."

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