SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer vs Wireshark comparison

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

"In terms of the implementation, we've actually used SAM, the server and application monitoring tools. The network configuration tools are very useful in terms of bulk upgrading switches and infrastructure. Also, the Network Traffic Analyzer was extremely useful to track down errant users soaking up bandwidth."

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

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

"The most helpful feature of SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is bandwidth analysis, which lets you see who's hogging your network."

"The initial setup was straightforward."

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

"What my organization likes best about SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is its easy deployment. It's also well-integrated in terms of monitoring because my organization also uses a SolarWinds solution for monitoring. You can connect SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer directly to that monitoring tool to get information. My organization also finds the default graphs that appear before the configuration in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer very useful."

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

"If you're dealing with troubleshooting network, voice issues, or network operations, having a tool like Wireshark to dive into packet details is important. The initial setup is straightforward. Anyone starting out or looking to deploy it on your personal PC or machine can do it easily."

"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."

"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."

"It has good basic features."

"Wireshark is a good tool to start with network analyzing and packet capturing."

"The solution is easy to install and use."

"It helps in analyzing if something looks suspicious, such as a brute force attack or scanning from somewhere."

"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."

"Deployment needs improvement. The process is complicated, requiring attention to infrastructure settings and installation of components like the origin application server, platform, close storage, and policy agents."

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

"The pricing is expensive."

"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."

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

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

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

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

"The solution has a steep learning curve. There are so many filters and features that are frequently being updated, it takes research, experience and familiarity to be able to use them. It could be a lot more user-friendly."

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

"DNS could be improved."

"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."

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

"NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is reasonably priced."

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

"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."

"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 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?"

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

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

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

"It is free."

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

"It is an open-source solution."

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