SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer vs Wireshark comparison

"This tool provides insights into top utilization applications or it identifies which circuit or application is consuming the most on the complete one-gig circuit traffic path."

"I can point out the exact root cause 'why.' If there is a slowness, I can point out what was before the issue or before the slowness, what it is, and what is now."

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

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

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

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

"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."

"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 decrypt traffic and the abundance of filters available are both valuable features."

"I find Wireshark a very useful tool. Its best feature is that it allows me to deeply understand what's going on at the packet level, as well as any adverse signatures that I can analyze. When I need to create an IPS rule, I need to check the traffic deeply to get more insights about the actual traffic, what's the name of certain flags, etc., and I'm able to do all that through Wireshark. The tool is also user-friendly."

"It's easy to troubleshoot issues because there's a large online community."

"Wireshark has a lot of features. It's a powerful tool if you're familiar with it. You can see everything on the network with it."

"The transmission and reception issues are valuable."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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 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."

"The solution should improve its automation feature. It's quite limited compared to other products."

"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."

"The product has been using the same GUI for many years."

"There is a disadvantage when it comes to sampling intervals. Additionally, I've heard from a colleague that Wireshark might be less effective in the voice domain."

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

"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 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."

"The system could be improved upon by adding a better and more powerful data processing engine."

"The decryption of encrypted packets could be better."

"The licensing for this solution is based on the number of nodes."

"NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is reasonably priced."

"We have licenses for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer. In terms of pricing, its license is not that expensive versus other tools such as HP."

"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."

"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 pricing is really good."

"The pricing is reasonable."

"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."

"It is free."

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

"Wireshark is open source and gives great value and functionality to the network investigation."

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

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

"It's free."

"We're using the free version of Wireshark."

"It is an open-source solution."