SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer vs Wireshark comparison

"The solution helps manage networks."

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

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

"The most valuable feature is the alarm that is set up to trigger based on bandwidth utilization."

"The program is scalable enough for our usage."

"I like that it is able to monitor multiple devices and it's vendor-agnostic."

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

"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."

"The solution is easy to install and use."

"The session-level filtering features are valuable."

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

"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."

"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 like the filtering feature as we can filter data easily. This feature is also available in tcpdump, but it's a simple piece of software. Wireshark is more advanced and has many features. It allows you to filter a lot of things. The output can be filtered easily. The most important feature is colorization. If I say, "Okay, this particular SMB protocol in red, it will show me red." It's easy to identify that protocol or capture data."

"The GUI is easy to use."

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

"Customer Support is quite complex."

"Technical support needs improvement."

"The solution needs better log management and log coordination with tools."

"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."

"I'm expecting to see a little bit more artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms. They need a bit more sophistication in that."

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

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

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

"It is not an easy program. You will need to study to use it to its full capabilities (follow a course)."

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

"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 decryption of encrypted packets could be better."

"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."

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

"In the future, it would be nice to see color coding. It is just black and white."

"The price of this solution is exceptional."

"The pricing is reasonable."

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

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

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

"The pricing is really good."

"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."

"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."

"The solution is open source so is free."

"Wireshark is free software, so you can download it and use it for free with no licensing fees."

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

"It's free."

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

"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."

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

"It is an open-source solution."