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Nagios XI 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

Nagios XI
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (25th), Server Monitoring (14th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (28th), Cloud Monitoring Software (26th)
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. Nagios XI is designed for IT Infrastructure Monitoring and holds a mindshare of 3.2%, down 3.7% compared to last year.
Wireshark, on the other hand, focuses on Network Troubleshooting, holds 13.5% mindshare, up 13.0% since last year.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Nagios XI3.2%
Zabbix11.1%
Datadog4.8%
Other80.9%
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
Network Troubleshooting Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Wireshark13.5%
LinkRunner12.0%
NetAlly EtherScope nXG9.0%
Other65.5%
Network Troubleshooting
 

Featured Reviews

Amir  Said - PeerSpot reviewer
Effective alerting enhances network monitoring experience with an easy setup
We love Nagios XI due to the fact that JPS Web is very useful. JPS monitors the modem and performs switching, monitoring the computer, and performing switching. We implement some applications and traffic monitoring. The alerting system is very effective. For instance, if we have an alarm on some RAM storage if the traffic is cut or dropped.
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

"I can monitor a software made in-house to software of bigger companies."
"The most valuable features of Nagios XI are you can customize it based on your use case and requirements. It is flexible and easy to integrate with our systems. You can customize the solution by adding additional features using code."
"The most valuable feature of Nagios XI is customization. We can customize based on our requirements. We can do modifications and implement a lot of scripts. Additionally, it is easy to use."
"The most valuable feature is the monitoring of processes."
"We love Nagios XI due to the fact that JPS Web is very useful."
"An excellent solution that is easy and intuitive to implement."
"Since this is an open source technology, if we are capable of writing the plugins in any scripting language, this product allows us to monitor anything we want."
"The features I've found the most useful are the plug-ins, the fact that you can connect almost everything to it. That's very useful."
"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 session-level filtering features are valuable."
"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."
"It has a good syntax to put the commands in and get information out of."
"It's easy to troubleshoot issues because there's a large online community."
"The feature to incorporate Voice over IP (VoIP) incidents into network traffic analysis is valuable. Capturing voice or SIP communication allows for examination of interactions between SIP clients and SIP servers. This helps the team investigate or analyze issues related to call center servers and operators."
"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."
"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."
 

Cons

"The PNP4Nagios plugin not working easily with XI is an issue for me, because some open source monitoring plugins do not work out of the box. But in the end, you learn to live with it."
"It can be quite difficult to know which drivers and agents to use when setting up."
"The product's stability could be even better."
"The way Nagios displays information isn't easy for a new user to understand. It's not intuitive enough. You need to read some tutorials or be trained to understand what it's displaying. Also, I think it needs more features to improve network visibility because there are some things you can't detect."
"We often need to develop custom plugins to get Nagios to work the way we want it to work because the features we need are not always available in Nagios."
"There's room for improvement in the visibility, and in the ability to extract information. Stuff like this should be more simple."
"From an alerting point of view, some graphics and metrics don't work properly with Nagios XI as they do with Checkmk."
"I would like to see support for notification via SMS."
"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."
"This product needs to improve the UI."
"The product has been using the same GUI for many years."
"Wireshark could be improved with a delay option when getting data automatically."
"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."
"In the future, it would be nice to see color coding. It is just black and white."
"You need good network connectivity to download during the setup, otherwise, it might take a while."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This solution is very expensive, at approximately $5,000 USD when I purchased it, which is why I haven't upgraded my version in several years."
"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."
"Nagios XI is open source."
"The pricing is high with separate licensing for the product and support."
"You can grow into the higher-priced scale as they learn how to utilize the features for Nagios XI."
"We are using the free version of this solution."
"Nagios XI is an expensive solution."
"It is good to contact experts for advice about what is the best solution for your specific infrastructure and enterprise."
"Wireshark is free of charge, and there's no license involved."
"It's free."
"Wireshark is open source and gives great value and functionality to the network investigation."
"This is an open-source product that can be used free of charge."
"It is free to download and install. It runs on multiple platforms, so how can you go wrong?"
"It is free."
"Wireshark is free software, so you can download it and use it for free with no licensing fees."
"I am using the free version of this solution."
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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
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
University
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Hospitality Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise21
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise27
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nagios XI?
The pricing for the Nagios XI product is good and better than other solutions. I would give it a four or five.
What needs improvement with Nagios XI?
The user interface needs improvement. Many tools have poor user interfaces, making them hard to manage and navigate.
What is your primary use case for Nagios XI?
I normally use Nagios XI for our servers. It's not particularly used for network equipment, however, I use it for monitoring our server performance, including CPU, memory, data, and services runnin...
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

 

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
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