We performed a comparison between DX Spectrum, LinkRunner, and Wireshark based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about NetAlly, Auvik, Wireshark and others in Network Troubleshooting."Allows us to have a single console/notification point, with the alarms of all the tools that we use for monitoring."
"I have found the cross analysis feature to be the most valuable."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to put health checks in place not only for the infrastructure but for some of the services that are on top of the infrastructure."
"Scalability is a highly rated feature of this solution. It is better than some of the other tools that I've used in terms of scalability. We scaled it to tens of thousands of devices."
"Spectrum is great for root cause analysis. It has excellent correlation event management. Spectrum's stability and scalability are also amazing."
"Stability has been good. We really have not had any issues."
"Spectrum does such a great job of discovering our network that we have a high confidence in what our inventory is."
"The product’s stability and robustness are valuable."
"I like that LinkRunner is an all-in-one device with a touchscreen interface. You don't have to pair it with a phone or anything else to get the full functionality. The built-in tests are one of the most significant advantages. It will pull an IP, ping the gateway, ping out to the intra, and report everything on the screen. It will tell you when a test completes or fails and why."
"LinkRunner 10G is very handy for onsite troubleshooting and implementations. We can quickly identify the links in terms of 1G, 2.5G, 5G, and 10G on the copper side, and also from 1G up to 10G on the fiber side. It is very handy for me because we deal with a lot of banks. Especially for the provisioning of new services, we use this tool to identify the link capacity and do the necessary testing to ensure all the circuits are ready before the handover to the next team to operate the technology. This is something that saves a lot of time as compared to the old days."
"The auto-test feature is vital and does 90 percent of what I need on its own. It's fast and I can get there in just a few clicks. It does a good job and tells me everything I need to know. LinkRunner works pretty quickly and always seems to be accurate."
"I've found the VLAN test feature to be most valuable. That's because not many devices do VLAN tests. Normally, I have to send a center technician to check a line and see if it's alive. If it's working, then I have to send a network technician out to log into a switch and see which port it's on and on which VLAN that port is. That's two persons and two separate visits. This device does all of this in a matter of seconds, and that has saved me a lot of time, troubleshooting, and resources."
"It provides a way to test 10Gig connectivity. Previously, we had to hook up a switch. That was our only way. Now, with LinkRunner, we can test on the fly if an SFP is bad or if the switch has the right configuration on it."
"The solution's ability to simplify network validation and configuration of copper and fiber Ethernet networks is very useful to me. Otherwise, I’m guessing. Having a tool that I can trust doesn't solve all problems, but for the problems it solves, I can trust that it has told me “yes” or “no.” I would rate it highly for that."
"The most valuable feature is the end-to-end testing with the "dart," as they call it, where you can test for faults in the cable or if they've been terminated properly."
"In terms of network validation, and copper and fiber Ethernet configuration, I can't imagine life without LinkRunner devices. The minute I got the 10G, everybody was fighting over it. They had never used such a device before and it was just breathtaking for them to very quickly see the validation you can gain from these devices."
"Wireshark's best features are that it lets us see what traffic is in the network and what data should be encrypted."
"The ability to decrypt traffic and the abundance of filters available are both valuable features."
"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."
"The product is simple to implement."
"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 GUI is easy to use."
"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."
"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 upgrade process could be smoother. More of the steps around upgrading could be automated."
"The solution's stability needs improvement."
"DX Spectrum needs better documentation on its complex features."
"DX Spectrum is stable. However, now and then there are some issues, but overall it is good."
"The solution could improve by allowing the ability to monitor the network shortly after installing the software and adding an auto-discovery function."
"Our consultant was four months on-site doing Spectrum setup and working through issues."
"Huawei devices are not properly supported, and there are incompatibility issues related to certain protocols."
"The GIS map feature needs to be enhanced and synced with topology views of containers and global collections."
"A feature that I would like to see is the ability to send a tone down the cable. That would be great. I have to use a separate tool for that. If I'm trying to troubleshoot a cable that is not plugged into a network switch, I need the ability to tone."
"It is very stable. That being said, there is one feature that is not quite as stable as the rest of the product. You can leave it plugged into a location where you're doing some work and connect to it remotely by a program called VNC... sometimes that function breaks down, if you've been running for a couple of days... if you're remotely controlling it, you're probably not right next to it. That can be modestly annoying."
"It is a great tool, but in the long-term, they can make its processor more powerful to do more functions. They can upgrade the hardware to make it run faster and more efficiently from the process point of view. That'll be beneficial because the technology is evolving and the network traffic is going higher and higher. We have to leverage better spec products to handle the traffic load."
"They should allow firmware updates even if you don't have an AllyCare contract. I'm in a situation right now where they've released firmware for bug fixes, but we cannot access those, which makes the device almost useless. You almost want to just throw it out the window because they're not supporting their product unless you have an AllyCare contract."
"Unlike using an application like Wireshark, this device gives us no way to see network packets specifically to look at what's going on. It doesn't have the capability."
"It runs tests quickly, but it takes a while to boot up. It's somewhat disappointing that LinkRunner takes some time to turn on. When I arrive in the space, I usually spend the first two minutes waiting."
"It doesn't turn off automatically, but the toning function goes to sleep. It seems to stop toning after five or six minutes if you don't find the cable. It could be up to ten minutes, but if you don't find the cable that you're trying to tone quick enough, you'll have to go back and restart the tone. So, it doesn't turn itself off, but while toning, it turns itself off."
"One of the things I'd like to see in future versions of LinkRunner is a wireless dongle embedded into the product so that I don't need to have a separate wireless dongle. It should be built into that."
"We'd like to be able to extract the output into an Excel table."
"The product is great but I wish there were more of an emphasis on the command line tools."
"It would be better if they offered a hybrid version like My Cloud Control."
"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."
"The only thing that I don't like is sometimes there is an update, and something that I was using is either no longer there or it has changed."
"The solution has a steep learning curve. There are so many filters and features that are frequently being updated, it takes research, experience and familiarity to be able to use them. It could be a lot more user-friendly."
"Whenever we select one of the packets, in terms of the number of bytes, for example, there are three planes, and in the detailed plane, I have to count the number of bytes manually."
"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."
