SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer vs Wireshark comparison

"The software management tools are very useful for our customers."

"The bandwidth monitoring functionality is one of the most important features for our customers. When the customer notices that their bandwidth usage is too high for some reason, they will use the traffic analysis within SolarWinds NTA to identify which protocols (e.g. HTTPS) or applications are using up the bandwidth."

"SolarWinds has improved our organization because whenever a device is down, we get an alert."

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

"What I like about SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is that it's useful for analyzing traffic. It also has an application visibility feature that lets you control applications."

"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."

"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."

"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 product is simple to implement."

"It is a stable product. I would rate the stability a ten out of ten."

"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 GUI is easy to use."

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

"I can save the traffic and analysis when I want to. Also, it's especially helpful to follow the stream (TCP, UDP, etc.)."

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

"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."

"SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer could improve its flexibility and integration with AI to provide analytics beyond just showing up/down statuses and traffic volumes."

"This solution would benefit from having more security-based communications between the actual devices and the software itself."

"The plotting of the device on the map is not appropriate."

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

"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."

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

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

"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 could make the filtering rules easier to apply and offer a drag-and-drop option as opposed to type and text."

"It is difficult to scale this solution."

"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."

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

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

"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."

"This product needs to improve the UI."

"DNS could be improved."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"The price of this solution is exceptional."

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

"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 solution's licensing is high-priced."

"The pricing is really good."

"It's free."

"The solution is open source so is free."

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

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

"It is free."

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

"The tool is free."

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