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 solution helps manage networks."

"It helps us know when a branch is down because it has a graphic presentation of all the locations a node represents."

"With SolarWinds, we are now able to accurately gauge bandwidth consumption."

"What I like the most is the bandwidth assessment."

"What I like about SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is that it's useful for analyzing traffic. It also has an application visibility feature that lets you control applications."

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

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

"Wireshark is a good tool to start with network analyzing and packet capturing."

"Wireshark helps us to understand network traffic."

"The session-level filtering features are valuable."

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

"You can use Wireshark to see the traffic packet format, the IP layers, the fields, and the enabled flags."

"The initial setup is simple."

"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."

"An area for improvement in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is the dashboarding. The user interface also has room for improvement because it's currently clunky."

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

"The Atlas module that is used for building the network map is very bad."

"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."

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

"I would like to see more artificial intelligence capabilities."

"The tool itself is very complicated, so training is required to handle it effectively."

"As people always complain about the pricing for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer, it's an area for improvement in the solution. People find it expensive. Another area for improvement in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is support, as it could be better."

"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."

"Wireshark is restricted when any sort of encryption is involved, such as XSL encryption or DLX."

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

"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."

"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."

"Big trace files (more than 1,000,000 packets) can be slow, but then you can use "TraceWrangler" (also free) to help with slicing and dicing the data."

"Pricing for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is very high. I have a customer that needs the solution but doesn't have the budget for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer because the problem is that you can't use the solution only. You have to buy requirements such as the SolarWinds NPM first, and some companies don't have the budget for all the required components and modules. SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer can cost up to $10,000, and some customers don't have that budget. Another product has all the modules that SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer has, with a very low price, that can be a replacement, which is ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer. PRTG is another solution that can replace SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer."

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

"The price of this solution is exceptional."

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

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

"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 pricing is reasonable."

"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."

"It is free."

"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."

"It is an open-source solution."

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

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

"It's 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."