SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer vs Wireshark comparison

"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."

"So far, it is a very stable product."

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

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

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

"The solution helps manage networks."

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"The product is simple to implement."

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

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

"SolarWinds' technical support is ok, but it could be faster and more knowledgeable."

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

"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."

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

"It is very slow to pick the dynamics of the network."

"Whenever we select one of the packets, in terms of the number of bytes, for example, there are three planes, and in the detailed plane, I have to count the number of bytes manually."

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

"Wireshark could be improved by adding more monitoring features."

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

"Wireshark is restricted when any sort of encryption is involved, such as XSL encryption or DLX."

"This product needs to improve the UI."

"DNS could be improved."

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

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

"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 reasonable."

"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."

"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."

"NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is reasonably priced."

"The pricing is really good."

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

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

"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."

"The tool is free."

"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 is an open-source solution."

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

"It's free."