SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer vs Wireshark comparison

"I find this tool very helpful in identifying the top traffic paths from source to destination, and determining which routes are consuming the most resources."

"The integration with other SolarWinds products is good."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

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

"Wireshark helps us to understand network traffic."

"Setup is very easy. It's also possible to change source code and compile if you want to change something in the code, because it's free."

"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."

"Being able to dissect email data and figure out what is inside email messages was the most valuable feature. Such a feature is pretty helpful for an ongoing forensic investigation or when there is a potential insider threat that you are trying to investigate. It allows you to see the network activity of the users you are investigating. It also gives you more visibility into your network. It was very easy to set up. There is a lot of information out there on Google and YouTube about how to use it. There is also community support. If you have any trouble, it is pretty easy to find an answer online. You will have to do some digging only if you have a very specific use case."

"Wireshark is very user-friendly; even someone with basic IT knowledge can use it."

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

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

"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."

"I'm expecting to see a little bit more artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms. They need a bit more sophistication in that."

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

"This solution does not do a very good job when I am trying to look deeper into my internal network, in particular with respect to individual ports."

"The pricing is expensive."

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

"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."

"The initial setup depends upon the basics. You need to have a clear understanding of the basics."

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

"The product is great but I wish there were more of an emphasis on the command line tools."

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

"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."

"It is difficult to scale this solution."

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

"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."

"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."

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

"The price of this solution is exceptional."

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

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

"NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is reasonably priced."

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

"The pricing is reasonable."

"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 open-source and free of charge."

"The solution is open source so is free."

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

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

"It's free."

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

"It is an open-source solution."