SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer vs Wireshark comparison

"The most valuable feature is the ability to look for any increases in bandwidth over time so that we can plan before it becomes critical."

"The program is scalable enough for our usage."

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

"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 support is excellent."

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

"I would rate NetFlow Traffic Analyzer's stability ten out of ten."

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

"It's easy to troubleshoot issues because there's a large online community."

"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."

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

"The initial setup is simple."

"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 most valuable feature of Wireshark is the ability to choose a destination of flow that has not been working as expected."

"Wireshark has a lot of features. It's a powerful tool if you're familiar with it. You can see everything on the network with it."

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

"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."

"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."

"Customer Support is quite complex."

"NTA's documentation for the implementation phase needs some enhancement."

"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."

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

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

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

"This product needs to improve the UI."

"Its user interface was a little less friendly. They can make its user interface a little bit more friendly. It is for technical people, and most of the technical people would be able to figure it out, but it would be good to improve its user interface. They can maybe build artificial intelligence into it. Currently, it takes a lot of manpower to analyze and dissect all the data."

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

"There is a disadvantage when it comes to sampling intervals. Additionally, I've heard from a colleague that Wireshark might be less effective in the voice domain."

"It would be better if they offered a hybrid version like My Cloud Control."

"Wireshark's UI isn't easy to handle and doesn't have as nice a view as Omnipeek."

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

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

"The pricing is reasonable."

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

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

"It's free."

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

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

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

"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."