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SolarWinds NPM vs Wireshark comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

SolarWinds NPM
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
158
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (4th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (5th), Cloud Monitoring Software (6th)
Wireshark
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Network Troubleshooting (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Network Management solutions, they serve different purposes. SolarWinds NPM is designed for Network Monitoring Software and holds a mindshare of 4.7%, down 5.9% compared to last year.
Wireshark, on the other hand, focuses on Network Troubleshooting, holds 13.2% mindshare, up 12.2% since last year.
Network Monitoring Software
Network Troubleshooting
 

Featured Reviews

MohitKumar - PeerSpot reviewer
High-level, comprehensive, and proactive monitoring in a user-friendly interface
The solution needs to integrate with additional SDN technologies that are part of the hyper market. The solution supports many vendors by default and just included Meraki SDN with the new release, but continued expansion is important. We created a custom method to pair with unsupported vendors but that can produce a lag in performance so future releases should expand SDN support. The solution does a good job of automating features but could expand that even more.
Vijay Duggal - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides detailed traffic analysis and helps troubleshoot issues
There is a disadvantage when it comes to sampling intervals. While the solution supports sampling as fine as one millisecond, it requires a copy at that interval. My Python script allows me to achieve a granularity of up to ten microseconds, but I can't go beyond that. When dealing with provisioning on both issues, it would be beneficial if I could go down to the microsecond level, if not the nanosecond. Additionally, I've heard from a colleague that Wireshark might be less effective in the voice domain.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable features are language support and technical support."
"The alerting and usage tracking notifications on disk space capacity, network and processor utilization."
"It is very extensible with 'SWQL' and APIs to where we are beginning to integrate it with network automation."
"The most valuable features in SolarWinds NPM are the network search and diagnostic tools."
"The interface is user-friendly, making it easy to use."
"SolarWinds NPM has specific modules for monitoring different network capabilities, which provides rich features for carrying out specific tasks."
"There are a lot of valuable features with SolarWinds NPM. We can receive a lot of detailed data from the monitoring that can use useful for investigations, especially when you are troubleshooting. It is very helpful. Overall it was a very good experience."
"There are a lot of options for customization of the dashboard, alerts, and reports."
"The most valuable feature is the traffic gate, which shows which IPs are getting more bandwidth or traffic."
"The filter option provided by Wireshark is its most valuable feature...Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The solution is easy to install and use."
"Wireshark is a good tool to start with network analyzing and packet capturing."
"Wireshark is very user-friendly; even someone with basic IT knowledge can use it."
"It has good basic features."
"Packet-capture files can be hard to use due to their size. Wireshark has a tool called tshark that can parse the files with out opening them so that you can take large captures, say 2-10GB, and return only relevant information."
"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."
 

Cons

"It is not that stable. As a Windows software, I have seen issues with SolarWinds. The performance is slow."
"Better offline license management. I’ve had to get in touch with customer support several times simply to remove an expired license from our NPM servers."
"I would like to see some enhancement on the reporting side, such as making it a little bit easier to create reports or having a larger assortment of canned reports."
"They need to work on their automation and automatically discover devices. They are not very good at automatically discovering devices."
"SolarWinds needs to be improved such that it is on par with the leading products in the market."
"Sometimes there are issues when upgrading to a new version of the product."
"The integration with video apps could be better."
"The root cause analysis and installation faults are not clear."
"It needs the ability to follow multiple interfaces for specific traffic from different network zones/virtual networks. It would help to understand how any packet is going through the network."
"Wireshark could be improved with a delay option when getting data automatically."
"With Wireshark, you cannot download and utilize the packet in automation."
"Wireshark could be improved by adding more monitoring features."
"Wireshark's UI isn't easy to handle and doesn't have as nice a view as Omnipeek."
"The product has been using the same GUI for many years."
"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."
"I wish the filters were a little bit more prepopulated."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is too expensive."
"We pay approximately $700 per year for renewal of the license."
"Price could be improved on"
"I believe the original setup cost was around $3500 with an annual cost of around $1200-$1500 to renew the support license. This would bring the average day-to-day cost of around $5-$6 over three years."
"The licensing is based on the number of nodes, interfaces, and volumes."
"The NPM component of the system costs approximately $1,000 USD per year."
"There's standard licensing, and then it depends on the size of the customer."
"It's expensive and there are costs in addition to the standard licensing."
"The solution is open source so is free."
"It is free to download and install. It runs on multiple platforms, so how can you go wrong?"
"Wireshark is free of charge, and there's no license involved."
"I am using the free version of this solution."
"Wireshark is free software, so you can download it and use it for free with no licensing fees."
"It is an open-source solution."
"Wireshark is free software, so you don't have to pay any licensing fee. Individual people can use it and then donate to Wireshark."
"The tool is free."
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 31, 2015
Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor
I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
56%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
4%
University
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
It actually depends on the exact purpose or kind of devices (network devices, servers, something else). Some tools are better for only network devices while others are better for a cloud monitoring...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
We are partners with SolarWinds and we sell a lot of Network management to large enterprises also because of scalability, products like Network Performance Monitor & Netflow Traffic Analyzer ar...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Wireshark?
Wireshark is priced at a medium range, not too high, not too low. The pricing could be more flexible, and they might make it more expensive. That said, compared to other products, it is competitive.
What needs improvement with Wireshark?
The speed of the Internet could be improved, especially its performance. Performance can sometimes be a challenge due to numerous factors.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Comversion, ADP, Talbots
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