SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer vs Wireshark comparison

"We have already seen a return on our investment by going with ThousandEyes."

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

"Overall, for my use cases, this product is very good and I recommend it."

"The performance analysis is a valuable feature, and 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."

"It is used on a daily basis and it is one of the key tools that we use to maintain our network and keep track of our infrastructure."

"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 alarm that is set up to trigger based on bandwidth utilization."

"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 drill-down available for packet analysis is great, as it gives a network security engineer insight into what is going on at the packet level and enables better troubleshooting."

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

"Wireshark saves a lot of time, especially with network troubleshooting."

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

"The GUI is easy to use."

"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 feature to incorporate Voice over IP (VoIP) incidents into network traffic analysis is valuable. Capturing voice or SIP communication allows for examination of interactions between SIP clients and SIP servers. This helps the team investigate or analyze issues related to call center servers and operators."

"Wireshark has a tool called tshark that can parse the files without opening them so that you can take large captures, say 2-10GB, and return only relevant information."

"One thing I have noticed is that it is very slow to pick the dynamics of the network, so that is something that could be improved."

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

"Technical support needs improvement."

"It is scalable, but it could be simplified because it is not completely easy. The price could be reduced to make this product more competitive."

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

"Customer Support is quite complex."

"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."

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

"One con is that this software is only an observer, not an interactive component of the network, meaning you cant change anything with it."

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

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

"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."

"Not always simple to setup and get the filtering right when capturing data."

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

"Wireshark could be improved by adding more monitoring features."

"It is easy to get overwhelmed with the amount of data you are looking at."

"The pricing is really good."

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

"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."

"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."

"The pricing is reasonable."

"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's licensing is high-priced."

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

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

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

"The tool is free."

"It's a stand-alone tool. If there is a commercial license for it I am unaware of it."

"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 software, so you don't have to pay any licensing fee. Individual people can use it and then donate to Wireshark."

"Wireshark is open-source and free of charge."

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