Nagios XI vs Wireshark comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Nagios XI
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
54
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (8th), Server Monitoring (5th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (9th), Cloud Monitoring Software (10th)
Wireshark
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
61
Ranking in other categories
Network Troubleshooting (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2024, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Nagios XI is 4.3%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Wireshark is 0.6%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
Unique Categories:
Network Monitoring Software
4.6%
Server Monitoring
13.9%
Network Troubleshooting
15.2%
 

Featured Reviews

DL
Aug 1, 2022
The product allows me to monitor a phone with address IP on a desk to very big servers of any company
We have installed  Nagios Core and Nagios XI on many customers in Latam successfully. A good use case was one customer with many servers (upper 1000) and many routers and switches (upper 2000), they wanted to monitoring operating systems and switches ports, Nagios worked like to swiss watch With…
VP
Jul 26, 2023
Excels at analyzing and decoding packet capture files and powerful tool for troubleshooting network issues
One thing that I feel is currently missing in Wireshark is the ability to perform deep analytics on traffic streams after they have been decoded. While it may not be the major use case right now, it would be beneficial to have some sort of leveraging of artificial intelligence or machine learning to automatically detect threats or vulnerabilities based on specific types of network traffic. Predictive analysis of this nature is currently absent in Wireshark. So in future releases, it would be great to see more robust analytics for traffic streams in the next version of Wireshark. One improvement I would suggest is having more graphical representations of network topologies in Wireshark. Currently, when we deploy Wireshark to collect streams, we lack visibility into how different entities are connected at that specific time. Having a network topology view of connected devices, showing the source and destination, would be really beneficial. For example, in DNS troubleshooting, visualizing the network path can help recreate certain issues. Unfortunately, this feature is not currently available in Wireshark.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Though I downplayed the administrative NCC GUI, this is by far the strongest aspect of the Nagios XI product."
"The most useful aspect of this solution is the ability to customize it for the client agent."
"Nagios allows us to configure any device so that we can send pager alerts when people don't have access to emails. It also allows us to schedule downtime and maintenance."
"The solution has a lot of plugins and scripts integrated with it."
"I can monitor a software made in-house to software of bigger companies."
"It's a monitoring agent. It's designed to do one thing. Its most valuable feature is its monitoring."
"An excellent solution that is easy and intuitive to implement."
"The ability to set up templates and groups of checks, as well as customize the checks themselves."
"It is a stable product. I would rate the stability a ten out of ten."
"Wireshark's best features are that it lets us see what traffic is in the network and what data should be encrypted."
"Wireshark has a lot of features. It's a powerful tool if you're familiar with it. You can see everything on the network with it."
"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."
"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."
"The strongest feature of this solution, is the ability it gives us to carry out deep-packet inspections on our network, particularly when a function isn't performing as it should."
"The options that are required to get the details for the packet drops are good."
"It has a good syntax to put the commands in and get information out of."
 

Cons

"I would like a much easier GUI so that I can delete events and logs, which will free up a lot of space."
"The pricing has recently risen. I know they've changed what is covered under the license, however, it doesn't change the way we use it and adds nothing to our experience, and yet we now have to pay more."
"Technical support is an area that needs improvement. It is not available 24/7."
"There's room for improvement in the visibility, and in the ability to extract information. Stuff like this should be more simple."
"The reporting structure could be more streamlined."
"It is really difficult to integrate Nagios XI with another system to generate logs and alert our management of failures in security infrastructure."
"I would like to see more customization in the network map because it is a bit tricky to use it."
"The scalability of Nagios XI is scalable. However, it is not easy to do."
"You need good network connectivity to download during the setup, otherwise, it might take a while."
"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."
"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."
"DNS could be improved."
"Its user interface was a little less friendly. They can make its user interface a little bit more friendly. It is for technical people, and most of the technical people would be able to figure it out, but it would be good to improve its user interface. They can maybe build artificial intelligence into it. Currently, it takes a lot of manpower to analyze and dissect all the data."
"The decryption of encrypted packets could be better."
"It is difficult to scale this solution."
"In the future, it would be nice to see color coding. It is just black and white."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing fees for this solution are approximately $3,000 USD per year."
"For our country in North Africa, it's expensive and we could purchase another solution for that price. But it's a reasonable price if we're speaking in international terms."
"You can grow into the higher-priced scale as they learn how to utilize the features for Nagios XI."
"Licensing costs are reasonable."
"Nagios XI is open source."
"It is good to contact experts for advice about what is the best solution for your specific infrastructure and enterprise."
"The pricing is high with separate licensing for the product and support."
"For the cost of the commercial product and support, and taking into account the open source characteristics of it, I believe it is difficult to a better value."
"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 don't have to pay any licensing fee. Individual people can use it and then donate to Wireshark."
"It's free."
"Wireshark is free software, so you can download it and use it for free with no licensing fees."
"This is an open-source product that can be used free of charge."
"The tool is free."
"The solution is open source so 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
51%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Government
5%
Computer Software Company
14%
University
11%
Educational Organization
11%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Nagios XI?
It is an open-source platform with valuable features for performance and stability.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nagios XI?
I don't deal with the licensing aspect of the product.
What needs improvement with Nagios XI?
The product's stability could be even better.
What needs improvement with Wireshark?
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 ou...
 

Comparisons

 

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nagios has over one million users globally, including AOL, DHL, McAfee, MCI, MTV, Yahoo!, Universal, Toshiba, Sony, Siemens, and JPMorgan Chase.
Comversion, ADP, Talbots
Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, Datadog, Auvik and others in IT Infrastructure Monitoring. Updated: May 2024.
787,779 professionals have used our research since 2012.