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DX Spectrum vs Wireshark comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 11, 2024

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

DX Spectrum
Ranking in Network Troubleshooting
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
117
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (7th), Network Monitoring Software (21st), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (20th), DX NetOps (1st)
Wireshark
Ranking in Network Troubleshooting
4th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Network Troubleshooting category, the mindshare of DX Spectrum is 4.9%, up from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Wireshark is 12.7%, down from 13.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Troubleshooting Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Wireshark12.7%
DX Spectrum4.9%
Other82.4%
Network Troubleshooting
 

Featured Reviews

Balabrahmam_Chakka - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Program Manager at Tata Consultancy Services
Comprehensive device monitoring enhances operational efficiency
DX Spectrum should have an automatic ticketing mechanism with ServiceNow. I need to use other tools for event management. It has a dashboarding mechanism and monitors devices and network switches through SNMP without an agent, which is good, but it should also have event management. Its LDAP authentication is fine. However, event management is not available, which is a concern. Not much else. If they can add event management, it would help. The event management should have more deduplication and alert correlation and check the bidirectional communication with ServiceNow. If a previous ticket is open and the same alert is generated, there's no need to create another ticket; updating the work notes would suffice. It should help reduce noise in alerting.
DonniUgalde - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior I.T. Systems Engineer at Pro Techs MSP
Provides visibility into the network, and the GUI is easy to use
I wish the filters were a little bit more prepopulated. It would have been easy to hit a drop-down and select a filter. If I only wanted to look at DCP, UDP, or IP, it would be easy to filter it out. Advanced network knowledge is required to get a lot out of the tool. However, it's very easy to install and deploy. It would be nice if there were some handheld Android devices with a Wireshark-specialized application that would allow us to mirror a Cisco port. Then, we can just plug into the port and click the green start button, and it will start ingesting the packet capture. Then, we won’t be using a laptop. The only downside is that we must have a laptop and connect a network cable. Some new laptops don't have network ports, so we have to get another adapter. Having an all-in-one device, like NetAlly or Fluke, and some of their network devices would be cool.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The capability of handling and monitoring with SNMP and working with the SNMP traps is much better than other products."
"It is easy to understand and determine when and/or where the network is failing."
"The containerization of different objects was very helpful in building an org structure. Being able to separately manage your MSP clients with separate visibility was also helpful."
"Spectrum does such a great job of discovering our network that we have a high confidence in what our inventory is."
"It's a good tool. It's simple to do the configuration."
"I have found the cross analysis feature to be the most valuable."
"What I like best is the configuration management functionality."
"The Spectrum tool improved our network assurance levels for our business units."
"It is a stable product. I would rate the stability a ten out of ten."
"I find Wireshark a very useful tool. Its best feature is that it allows me to deeply understand what's going on at the packet level, as well as any adverse signatures that I can analyze. When I need to create an IPS rule, I need to check the traffic deeply to get more insights about the actual traffic, what's the name of certain flags, etc., and I'm able to do all that through Wireshark. The tool is also user-friendly."
"Wireshark's best features are that it lets us see what traffic is in the network and what data should be encrypted."
"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 drill-down available for packet analysis is great. It gives a network security engineer insight into what is going on at the packet level and enables better troubleshooting."
"The filter option provided by Wireshark is its most valuable feature...Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"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."
"You can use Wireshark to see the traffic packet format, the IP layers, the fields, and the enabled flags."
 

Cons

"There should be better integration with other Broadcom products, like network performance manager. Currently, for every part of a product, you need a separate server environment. You have something for Spectrum, you have something for network performance, and you have something for NetFlow. There are a lot of islands and server farms with different technologies. They should be redeveloped to get one platform for all."
"DX Spectrum needs better documentation on its complex features."
"The GIS map feature needs to be enhanced and synced with topology views of containers and global collections."
"A better integration with the UIM, as far as being able to do root cause analysis and that type of analytics."
"DX Spectrum should have an automatic ticketing mechanism with ServiceNow. I need to use other tools for event management."
"I would recommend AI capability built-in so it becomes more predictable and we jump ahead of the curve. This is the one really important feature I would really like to see in any product that provides alarms."
"The price of DX Spectrum is not competitive when compared to other solutions, such as SolarWinds. The high price has caused us to lose many deals."
"Event correlation only works on one server, rather than on all of the servers in the same cluster environment."
"Wireshark's UI isn't easy to handle and doesn't have as nice a view as Omnipeek."
"The solution has a steep learning curve. There are so many filters and features that are frequently being updated, it takes research, experience and familiarity to be able to use them. It could be a lot more user-friendly."
"Wireshark is similar to an OS defense tool, meaning that it runs on an OS such as Ubuntu and Fedora, but I'm unsure if it's compatible with Windows or if it's a straightforward process to run it on Windows. Right now, my team needs to run Wireshark from a dongle to use it, so it's an OS-dependable tool, and that's an area for improvement. I was unable to use Wireshark on Windows, and I couldn't capture it, as I'm unsure how to configure the wireless card into monitoring mode on Windows. The process was straightforward on Linux, but it wasn't the case on Windows OS. It seems Wireshark isn't compatible with all OS. For example, you can analyze the log, and you can analyze it on the Windows server, but you can't do a capture in Windows. Configuring Wireshark for Windows isn't as easy as configuring it for Linux."
"Whenever we select one of the packets, in terms of the number of bytes, for example, there are three planes, and in the detailed plane, I have to count the number of bytes manually."
"I have not used Wireshark to an advanced point where I could provide a detailed opinion on improvements needed."
"Wireshark could be improved with a delay option when getting data automatically."
"I would like to see Wireshark improve the ease of application of the command. The command is very powerful, but not easy to apply."
"It is difficult to scale this solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It’s a great tool, but an expensive one. Learn how to use it properly."
"Since the acquisition by Broadcom, we have not had such a good experience with licensing and pricing. Since they were bought by Broadcom, every sales contract is getting complicated. It's very complicated, and it's much more expensive than before. It's not a good pricing strategy from Broadcom."
"The price is good enough to expect an ideal solution. It's expensive."
"DX Spectrum's pricing depends on the license number. It is affordable."
"In general, the license cost will be about 30% of the total TCO for this tool (hardware/support team, OS costs, and OS management)."
"It is expensive compared to other tools in the market."
"Currently, a perpetual license but some services are moving to a subscription"
"The price is very high."
"The solution is open source so is free."
"It is an open-source solution."
"Wireshark is open-source and free of charge."
"We're using the free version of Wireshark."
"We are using a freeware version of this solution, so there are no licence costs involved."
"It's a stand-alone tool. If there is a commercial license for it I am unaware of it."
"Wireshark is open source and gives great value and functionality to the network investigation."
"It is free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Energy/Utilities Company
5%
University
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise89
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise27
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about DX Spectrum?
The solution's most valuable features are its integration with Broadcom tools and scalability.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for DX Spectrum?
The price of DX Spectrum is not competitive when compared to other solutions, such as SolarWinds. The high price has caused us to lose many deals.
What needs improvement with DX Spectrum?
I would like to see improvements in making the interface more user-friendly. Many people find it not simple to use. One of the common customer complaints is about the alarm notifications. Currently...
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

CA Spectrum
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

National Informatics Centre India, Banese, Olympus, AlphaServe Technologies, Sicredi
Comversion, ADP, Talbots
Find out what your peers are saying about DX Spectrum vs. Wireshark and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.