SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer vs Wireshark comparison

"What people found most valuable in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is its report customization feature."

"The solution helps manage networks."

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

"I rate the support in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer as 10 out of 10 because whenever I open a tech ticket, they respond instantly, and their engineer is well-equipped to resolve the issues."

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

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

"As it offers enterprise solutions, it has all the essential features for business."

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

"The product is simple to implement."

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

"Setup is very easy. It's also possible to change source code and compile if you want to change something in the code, because it's free."

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

"The initial setup is simple."

"It has good basic features."

"The most valuable feature is the traffic gate, which shows which IPs are getting more bandwidth or traffic."

"The solution is easy to install and use."

"The licensing should be more realistic so that we can adjust the number of nodes according to my needs, rather than in fixed increments."

"Customer Support is quite complex."

"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."

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

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

"The analysis can utilize algorithms like K-means clustering or associative neural networks for predictions rather than relying on generative AI, which is more suited for text."

"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."

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

"The only thing that I don't like is sometimes there is an update, and something that I was using is either no longer there or it has changed."

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

"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."

"The solution’s user interface could be improved."

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

"The product is great but I wish there were more of an emphasis on the command line tools."

"This product needs to improve the UI."

"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."

"The pricing is really good."

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"The tool is free."

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

"The solution is open source so is free."

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

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

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

"It's free."

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