SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer vs Wireshark comparison

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

"What my organization likes best about SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is its easy deployment. It's also well-integrated in terms of monitoring because my organization also uses a SolarWinds solution for monitoring. You can connect SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer directly to that monitoring tool to get information. My organization also finds the default graphs that appear before the configuration in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer very useful."

"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 doesn't cost too much."

"SolarWinds has improved our organization because whenever a device is down, we get an alert."

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

"The program is scalable enough for our usage."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Packet-capture files can be hard to use due to their size. Wireshark has a tool called tshark that can parse the files with out opening them so that you can take large captures, say 2-10GB, and return only relevant information."

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

"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."

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

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

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

"I would like to see more training videos and additional material for learning how to use this solution."

"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."

"The solution needs better log management and log coordination with tools."

"What needs improvement in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is performance because sometimes, my team struggles too much for the solution to perform correctly for a specific deployment in my organization. Having a more detailed view in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is another area for improvement, but that's more part of the protocol than the actual solution."

"They should work on the configuration of the Log Analyzer feature."

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

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

"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."

"Sometimes I need to use tcpdump when I need to check the packets on CLI."

"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."

"You need good network connectivity to download during the setup, otherwise, it might take a while."

"You need some basic knowledge to work with Wireshark. Maybe it could be more user-friendly just for new users. Just for the new generation."

"This product needs to improve the UI."

"I wish the filters were a little bit more prepopulated."

"We have licenses for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer. In terms of pricing, its license is not that expensive versus other tools such as HP."

"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."

"NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is reasonably priced."

"The price of this solution is exceptional."

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

"The pricing is reasonable."

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

"It's a stand-alone tool. If there is a commercial license for it I am unaware of it."

"We're using the free version of Wireshark."

"Wireshark is free of charge, and there's no license involved."

"The tool is free."

"Wireshark is free software, so you don't have to pay any licensing fee. Individual people can use it and then donate to Wireshark."

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

"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."