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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
6.8
Number of Reviews
159
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (3rd), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (8th)
Wireshark
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Network Troubleshooting (4th)
 

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 4.4%, down 5.4% compared to last year.
Wireshark, on the other hand, focuses on Network Troubleshooting, holds 13.3% mindshare, up 11.9% since last year.
Network Monitoring Software
Network Troubleshooting
 

Featured Reviews

Masud Alam - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers alerting service to trigger alerts and easy to manage
For end-user performance monitoring, we like features such as availability of our all devices and device/interface monitoring. We have also used NCM (Network Configuration Manager) for our network. We use the alerting service to trigger alerts based on specific thresholds, like CPU or memory utilization exceeding a certain percentage. There are AI network initiatives in SolarWinds NPM for some lengthy issues. For example, it shows availability reports. But for bandwidth monitoring, it's not very clear how much bandwidth is being consumed. SolarWinds provide real-time bandwidth monitoring. It is not difficult to manage the network with SolarWinds. We have one customer with a satellite location. If we have a large network with, let's say, 43,000 elements, and our current SolarWinds license supports only 30,000, we would need to create another polling engine to accommodate the additional 13,000 elements. It's limited to the polling engine, so we can only support 30,000 elements per engine. So it's only for 30,000, but we have at least 40,000 elements in our network.
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 feature is the graphical user interface."
"The most valuable features are language support and technical support."
"The most valuable feature is the user-friendly interface and the ease of deployment."
"The most valuable feature is the vital states of the devices as it provides overall CPU and device health information."
"You can monitor performance counters effortlessly."
"SolarWinds NPM provides an overview of network monitoring, extending its capabilities to cover other aspects, such as virtual machines and servers. The platform has features like NetPath, which is particularly beneficial for end-users, offering insights into issues like latency, packet loss, and connectivity problems with routers, switches, or servers."
"Technical support is very helpful with our upgrades."
"It's easy to understand, even if you are not too technical."
"It helps in analyzing if something looks suspicious, such as a brute force attack or scanning from somewhere."
"Wireshark saves a lot of time, especially with network troubleshooting."
"Wireshark is a good tool to start with network analyzing and packet capturing."
"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."
"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."
"It is a stable product. I would rate the stability a ten out of ten."
 

Cons

"Consolidation of platforms would provide a smoother experience."
"The solution is not always good with new features, so it's take a long time."
"The scalability can be better."
"Having more technical and support resources available in Saudi Arabia would be helpful."
"We'd like to see a bit more automation in the future."
"It would be beneficial if NPM offered support for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), as currently, it does not support this and we are migrating our services there."
"The response time of the support team needs to improve"
"The dashboard of the solution is an area with certain shortcomings that need improvement."
"This product needs to improve the UI."
"We'd like to be able to extract the output into an Excel table."
"Wireshark could be improved with a delay option when getting data automatically."
"Wireshark could make the filtering rules easier to apply and offer a drag-and-drop option as opposed to type and text."
"A room for improvement in Wireshark is its ease of use for beginners. It could be better. Another room for improvement in the tool is for it to provide more details about the traffic load. At the moment, Wireshark is adequate for me, so there isn't anything I'd like added to it in its next version."
"Wireshark's UI isn't easy to handle and doesn't have as nice a view as Omnipeek."
"Wireshark gets stuck when it is a larger file."
"With Wireshark, you cannot download and utilize the packet in automation."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licenses depend on the number of devices, but all license levels come with technical support."
"The cost is based on the number of nodes, so it is expensive when you have a lot of them."
"The NPM component of the system costs approximately $1,000 USD per year."
"The pricing needs to be improved. It is too high. One full engine costs around $10 000, which is why we don't have high availability right now."
"The licensing model is such that you can purchase only what you need; and then grow into the next level by paying only the difference in price and the associated maintenance costs."
"Excluding the costs of running VMs and physical blade servers, our licensing costs run around US$200,000/year for over 60 polling engines."
"The cost of the personal perpetual license for SolarWinds NPM is approximately $2,000."
"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."
"I am using the free version of this 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."
"It's a stand-alone tool. If there is a commercial license for it I am unaware of it."
"The tool is free."
"Wireshark is free of charge, and there's no license involved."
"It is free to download and install. It runs on multiple platforms, so how can you go wrong?"
"It is free."
"Wireshark is open-source and free of charge."
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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
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
University
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Educational Organization
7%
 

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
Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, Auvik, SolarWinds and others in Network Monitoring Software. Updated: August 2025.
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