SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer vs Wireshark comparison

"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."

"For managing the traffic, it provides you a response about whether the traffic is down, up, or heavy, which is a very powerful feature. It has a good response time. We have been using this solution for many years, and we don't have any problem with this solution."

"The integration with other SolarWinds products is good."

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

"They have instructional videos and other information available on the site to assist you with learning it."

"The initial setup was straightforward."

"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 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 initial setup is simple."

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

"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."

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

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

"It gives us the ability to pinpoint problems and to communicate network problems with software and hardware vendors."

"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."

"The transmission and reception issues are valuable."

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

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

"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 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."

"Technical support needs improvement."

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

"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."

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

"The speed of the Internet could be improved, especially its performance."

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

"I would like better control of bandwidth from the service provider."

"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."

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

"DNS could be improved."

"Wireshark gets stuck when it is a larger file."

"This product needs to improve the UI."

"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."

"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."

"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 licensing for this solution is based on the number of nodes."

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

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

"The tool is free."

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

"It is free."

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

"The solution is open source so is free."

"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."

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