SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer vs Wireshark comparison

"The most helpful feature of SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is bandwidth analysis, which lets you see who's hogging your network."

"This tool provides insights into top utilization applications or it identifies which circuit or application is consuming the most on the complete one-gig circuit traffic path."

"This solution gives us important information about the utilization of protocols, particularly in terms of how often they are used."

"The most valuable features are the bandwidth analyzer, the monitoring, the network analyzer, it has overall good performance, and an easy deployment."

"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."

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

"The program is scalable enough for our usage."

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

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

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

"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."

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

"Wireshark's best features are that it lets us see what traffic is in the network and what data should be encrypted."

"I have found the most valuable feature you can design your sniffer the way you want to."

"It has a good syntax to put the commands in and get information out of."

"The initial setup is simple."

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

"The solution should improve its automation feature. It's quite limited compared to other products."

"It is very slow to pick the dynamics of the network."

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

"One area that we struggle with is the price. Because the price of this solution is so high, we are largely unable to introduce it into the local market, and only the banking sector has the means to afford it."

"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."

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

"There is room for improvement when it comes to the traffic generated by the analyzer and the analysis of that traffic."

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

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

"The average person would probably find Wireshark hard to use. When I first installed it, I was overwhelmed by all the data it was shooting out. It doesn't make sense until you start doing some research and figure out what everything means. It isn't the most user-friendly tool. It just provides so much information."

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

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

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

"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."

"The Wireshark search function shows green for a correct search and red for an incorrect search. If there were a way to provide a description about what a search - and the similar ones which are available - can do, while a person is typing it, it would make the product easier to use and simultaneously decrease the learning curve."

"We pay yearly, and we are happy with its price."

"The pricing is reasonable."

"The price of this solution is exceptional."

"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."

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

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

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

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

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

"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."

"It is free."

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

"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."

"The tool is free."