SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer vs Wireshark comparison

"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 rate the support in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer as 10 out of 10 because whenever I open a tech ticket, they respond instantly, and their engineer is well-equipped to resolve the issues."

"It is great at telling you if your devices are working and it keeps an eye on your network's overall performance."

"They have instructional videos and other information available on the site to assist you with learning it."

"The monitoring is perfect, showing you the details for the utilization of resources and network bandwidth."

"As it offers enterprise solutions, it has all the essential features for business."

"The integration with other SolarWinds products is good."

"For stability, I would give SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer a rating of ten out of ten."

"What's best about Wireshark is that it doesn't require installation. It supports cards and monitoring permissions and is sufficient for appending and capturing activities. You won't need to install other tools to use Wireshark, so this saves you time. You can capture packets at any time from your laptop through Wireshark."

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

"The most valuable feature is the traffic gate, which shows which IPs are getting more bandwidth or traffic."

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

"Wireshark helps us to understand network traffic."

"The best part about Wireshark, in my opinion, is its ability to analyze packet capture files."

"It helps in analyzing if something looks suspicious, such as a brute force attack or scanning from somewhere."

"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."

"SolarWinds' technical support is ok, but it could be faster and more knowledgeable."

"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."

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

"Technical support could be improved with quicker response times."

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

"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 licensing model of SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is always an issue for users because competitors offer unlimited and perpetual licenses, and SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer's model is quite costly compared to other brands."

"It's scalable, but it could be simplified because it's not completely easy."

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

"We'd like to be able to extract the output into an Excel table."

"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."

"The solution’s user interface could be improved."

"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."

"I would like better control of bandwidth from the service provider."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"The pricing is really good."

"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."

"NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is reasonably priced."

"Licensing for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is paid yearly, and there are no additional costs that you need to pay apart from the standard licensing fees because you don't need to purchase another solution to make SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer work. Pricing for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is more expensive than other solutions."

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

"It is an open-source solution."

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

"It is free to download and install. It runs on multiple platforms, so how can you go wrong?"

"The tool is free."

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

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

"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 solution is open source so is free."