SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer vs Wireshark comparison

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

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

"For stability, I would give SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer a rating of ten out of ten."

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

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

"It allows us to pinpoint which protocol is overloading the link."

"The monitoring is perfect, showing you the details for the utilization of resources and network bandwidth."

"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."

"It has a good syntax to put the commands in and get information out of."

"Wireshark's best features are that it lets us see what traffic is in the network and what data should be encrypted."

"It has good basic features."

"Wireshark helps us to understand network traffic."

"What's best about Wireshark is that it doesn't require installation. It supports cards and monitoring permissions and is sufficient for appending and capturing activities. You won't need to install other tools to use Wireshark, so this saves you time. You can capture packets at any time from your laptop through Wireshark."

"You can use Wireshark to see the traffic packet format, the IP layers, the fields, and the enabled flags."

"The solution is easy to install and use."

"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."

"I would like to see more training videos and additional material for learning how to use this solution."

"There are some areas for improvement in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer. There are some challenges with the solution when compared to other monitoring tools such as difficulty in operations and difficulty with backup installation. My team is currently trying out different solutions but would need to see how it goes."

"I would like to see more artificial intelligence capabilities."

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

"An area for improvement in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is application visibility because some applications aren't being recognized correctly. You can see applications such as Facebook and YouTube, but SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer needs to have more visibility into more applications. Currently, SolarWinds fails to detect more powerful applications, such as Zoom and Teams. If SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer can recognize every application and be able to report on each in terms of bandwidth, then that would be good. This is what I'd like to see in the next release of the solution."

"Currently, it shows only the top ten applications or ports in use, while the remaining data appears as 'remaining traffic,' causing confusion."

"As people always complain about the pricing for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer, it's an area for improvement in the solution. People find it expensive. Another area for improvement in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is support, as it could be better."

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

"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 is similar to an OS defense tool, meaning that it runs on an OS such as Ubuntu and Fedora, but I'm unsure if it's compatible with Windows or if it's a straightforward process to run it on Windows. Right now, my team needs to run Wireshark from a dongle to use it, so it's an OS-dependable tool, and that's an area for improvement. I was unable to use Wireshark on Windows, and I couldn't capture it, as I'm unsure how to configure the wireless card into monitoring mode on Windows. The process was straightforward on Linux, but it wasn't the case on Windows OS. It seems Wireshark isn't compatible with all OS. For example, you can analyze the log, and you can analyze it on the Windows server, but you can't do a capture in Windows. Configuring Wireshark for Windows isn't as easy as configuring it for Linux."

"We would like the product to be developed so that it doesn't rely on internet access for installation. We would like to see all of the components required to be integrated into the installer."

"Wireshark could be improved with a delay option when getting data automatically."

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

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

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

"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."

"The pricing is reasonable."

"The price of this solution is exceptional."

"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."

"While the pricing is fair, it could be better."

"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."

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

"NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is reasonably priced."

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

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

"It is an open-source solution."

"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."

"This is an open-source product that can be used free of charge."

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

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

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