SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer Reviews

This solution allows me to see what we are using in terms of bandwidth on the WAN. I can use that in conjunction with Observium to figure out what endpoint on the network is pulling a lot of data, and what type of data it is.

One of the problems is that I am using two different products with two different dashboards to chase down the same problem. The bandwidth analyzer alerts me to the issue of excessive bandwidth usage, but then I have to look at the second product to figure out where. I have to find out what switch, what port, and potentially what host, so it takes a little bit of investigating to really narrow down what's going on.

This solution gives us a simple way to monitor traffic that is coming in and out. It shows me how much bandwidth is both inbound and outbound, and it is shown clearly on the dashboard.

The most valuable feature is the alarm that is set up to trigger based on bandwidth utilization. When we are alerted then we know that we have to look further into the issue.

This solution does not do a very good job when I am trying to look deeper into my internal network, in particular with respect to individual ports.

I have been using the SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer for between two and three years.

This is a stable solution. It works and I really don't have any issue with it.

There are three of us who use this solution from an administrative point of view. I am the manager of the department, there is a senior engineer, and there is a junior network engineer who uses it as well.

We did not have anything in place before implementing this solution.

The initial setup was straightforward.

One of my internal engineers deployed this solution within the company.

This was a good solution when we began using it a few years ago. However, now as the company is growing, I have more data lines coming in and I have more endpoints, I want to combine products. I'm looking for a single pane of glass dashboard to keep an eye on the entire infrastructure. As it is now, I have three dashboards that I have to keep track of.

Right now, this solution is doing what I need it to do. There is probably more room for improvement but I use the product in a simplistic way so there are things that I have not learned about it. Ideally, I would like a single product that does everything we need.

I would rate this solution a six out of ten.

Our primary use case for this solution is for monitoring.

One thing I have noticed is that it is very slow to pick the dynamics of the network, so that is something that could be improved. There is some sort of lag in the reporting, and I would like to see that being faster. 

I have been using the program for about seven years now.

I think it is quite stable and that's why we stick with it. We often switch to something else. For instance, we recently changed to another antivirus program. But this program is stable so we haven't chosen another solution over this one yet. 

The program is scalable enough for our usage. We currently have 8,000 users so we may have to buy extra modules soon.

It was easy and straightforward to set the program up. The setup is very user-friendly.

We used a vendor team at first and from there on we did everything ourselves. Deployment took about a day. 

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate this solution a seven. Some things that might improve, is that I would like to see it being able to detect mobile gadgets too, like smartphones. 

The solution's most valuable feature is its traffic analysis.

Sometimes the system is confusing; they should simplify it to make it easier in future releases.

There are many applications we cannot monitor with the solution. They need to open it up to make it easier to monitor across multiple apps.

The solution needs to work with Windows 2003 and 2008. 

Technical support needs improvement.

The solution is stable.

Technical support is okay, but it depends on the person who takes up the ticket. Sometimes we don't get the kind of service we should.

The initial setup is straightforward.

I would recommend the solution. I'd rate it eight out of ten.

For the first installation for our customers we use it for traffic analysis to determine which users consume the most internet bandwidth. then to have a visibility on the internal traffic in the network. 

The performance analysis is a valuable feature. With the performance analyzer, we can see the realtime monitoring, the realtime performance, and historical performance on specific components like virtualization storage, CPU, servers and network equipment.

I recognize that SolarWinds has a reporting feature that will give us reports that we can customize. However, it's not clear how I can integrate the existing solution like BI solutions to SolarWinds. The solution seems to lack an API for other integrations.

The price of the solution is a bit high for our clients. They should consider adjusting their price model.

We'd like more application control in future releases. automatic identification of applications in the traffic. this feature is included in the new generation firewall.

The solution is stable.

Technical support is okay. I would rate it three out of five. Their reaction time is not so good. You might have to wait one or two days before they can work on your ticket.

We use the on-premises deployment model.

I would rate the solution seven out of ten.

We have a collection of SolarWinds solutions.

Our primary use for this tool is to monitor our network. We have a LAN and WAN to monitor. We use the product to get an overview of the performance to let us predict potential issues and act preemptively before we have real problems. The product helps us monitor the load on the network and on the different network lines. 

We are planning to expand our use because they offer some good advantages with broader product use. It is used on a daily basis and it is one of the key tools that we use to maintain our network and keep track of our infrastructure.

We are using an on-premises deployment.

We have faced some problems with our Oracle connection line in the past. For example, once we had a remote crash that affected the connection of more than two hundred users. So we've faced this kind of delay on our network. So, when this happens, we would go first to check the load on the connection line (we have a fibre connection) and we would check the traffic speed and the volume of data on the line. With Netflow Traffic Analyzer, it was very helpful to find out when the line was getting more congested.

Recently, there was some problem with one of the applications that we upgraded to. We could see the problem and we took all the necessary action to get things back into normal before the issue had a chance to get worse. SolarWinds helps us to monitor potential issues so we and our users do not experience downtime.

It's a fantastic product overall, so it is difficult to define one feature being the best.

It is fantastic to know the Traffic Analyzer can show us where the potential problems are. You become very familiar with the bandwidth being consumed by different lines and how all the traffic is moving between different departments and different applications.

At times, we faced a lot of issues with users on the internet because of the consumption of the bandwidth. It was very hard to try to find exactly what was going on and what applications affected traffic. With SolarWinds, we are now able to accurately gauge bandwidth consumption.

One of the things that can be improved is the licensing, as it is limited to a number of nodes. They limit it to five hundred nodes before jumping to the next level. When we exceeded that limit, we had to go directly to two thousand nodes. We did not really need that many but I still had to pay for that. The licensing should be more realistic so that we can adjust the number of nodes according to my needs, rather than in fixed increments. For example, one thousand nodes would have been enough. Jumping to four times the volume was too much.

We recently upgraded to a more recent version of this solution and we had an issue with backing up the data. We were unable to make proper use of the databases from the previous version.

This is a stable solution and we are happy with the product.

This is a scalable solution, but it is related to the licensing.

I have not personally contacted technical support for this solution. The feedback that I have received from my team is that the support is good.

We did not use another solution prior to this one.

The feedback I got from the person who performed the initial setup is good. He's happy with the product and is continuing to do the upgrades as we need them.

My understanding is that the deployment took less than two hours.

Our own technical team handled the implementation, and we did not need any help from anybody outside of the company.

We have three people who are taking care of our network. There is the network manager and his two staff.

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

There were members of our team who had experience with other solutions, but we adopted this one after installing and using the evaluation version.

We are planning on upgrading to the SL2000 model.

As of today, I am satisfied with this solution.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

Our primary use case is for analyzing traffic and monitoring performance.

The network performance monitor I have embedded has been able to give me a customized dashboard. The dashboard alerts me when a critical device would go off in the network. I get an SMS alarm. 

One improvement could be the system intelligence. I think another would be to show a kind of session mark that shows you the latency between each hub, but with much more intelligence. I know they do that but to make something that works very well I would want to see more terminals so that I can look where the need is happening. Of course, the network could be much better. 

I need to see something with AI. I know they don't have it, and I need to see straight through to integration and cloud monitoring. The application for monitoring should be enhanced with a better quality experience, in terms with what their customers are going through. Instead of looking at Bit-Coin sites they need to have insights like translating. 

In terms of scalability, so long as you have the licenses the solution is scalable. You can add and add on the devices. 

Customer support is quite complex.

The setup was complex. The part that is complex is that you have to mark the devices, you have to time the parameters, you have to monitor, and you have to set them up. It wasn't a straightforward thing. I'm not sure if there is a simple tool you can use to monitor or not. 
These tools are a bit complex, they need monitoring. Implementation took about five days.

The setup was done by consultants to make sure everything was consistent.

I think the price is fair. I haven't quite done price-to-price on a comparable product but I do think the price is fair. I'm looking at AI too. Artificial Intelligence that will monitor the cloud.

I would give the solution a 5 out of 10, there are opportunities to improve.

We use this solution for everyday network monitoring. This includes the flow analytics, and seeing what's online and what's not online. It is a key part of everyday operations.

Visibility in the network is huge. Using the NetFlow analyzer, along with their NPM and NCM modules, are key for keeping our network up to date and for visibility.

This solution is a huge time saver. Without it, you're making and you're analyzing flow patterns and making changes on a switch by switch, or router by router basis. This gives you that single pane of glass where you can really manage all of that, and push out to all of your devices no matter what the size of your environment is.

The NCM module is by far the most useful feature, as I am able to provision and employ changes to our entire infrastructure with a single tool. 

I like that it is able to monitor multiple devices and it's vendor-agnostic.

This solution would benefit from having more security-based communications between the actual devices and the software itself. After dealing with a bunch of other vendors who are very security-focused, it would be nice to see that included in other products as well. It may be a case where they have not kept up with certain security aspects as technology has changed.

I would like to see visual maps for all of the devices that are interconnected. They do have a feature that exists now, but I think that it can be worked on. There are some competitors out there that are doing a better job at that.

The solution is stable.

This solution is limitless and scales very well. You can use these tools for a single branch network or your entire enterprise and there is no difference in the deployment. 

There was no solution in place before this one. The network really scaled up quickly, and it had not been necessary before adding more branch properties led to more problems. 

The original deployment was completed before I started to work with the system, so I am not sure who deployed it. As we scale, it is us, the engineers, who do it all ourselves. I feel that it speaks to the product because we don't actually need professional services, as it's pretty easy to do it yourself.

This solution makes us more effective, allowing us to save time.

For our environment, we pay approximately $25,000 USD yearly. It is a lot cheaper than a lot of the other vendors.

I know that we evaluated NetBrain. Although they do not necessarily claim to be a network monitoring tool, a lot of the features offered by SolarWinds are also available. My understanding is that the price point was an issue.

My advice to anybody who is researching this type of solution is to know your environment. Regardless of the vendor you choose, know the costs associated with all of your endpoints.

I love using the tools provided in this solution. There is always room for improvement, but ultimately, I have always been happy with this product.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We use this tool for network supervision, and our environment includes Fortigate firewalls and Cisco switches.

This solution gives us important information about the utilization of protocols, particularly in terms of how often they are used.

The most valuable functions are the ability to show the Network Flow and the system of escalation.

I had a problem during the installation of this solution, and I was not able to find a solution in their forum. I would like to have a more efficient and more complete forum for support. I was eventually able to find the solution on another site.

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

Better integration and communication with third-party tools, including other NPMs such as Nagios, is needed.

This is a very stable solution.

In terms of support, I would rate them five or six out of ten. It was difficult to find videos for training. Overall, I am not satisfied with the support.

I have experience with Cisco tools, as well as Microsoft.

I have used many tools and this one is very interesting, but they need to provide better support and better training material.

I would rate this solution an eight and a half out of ten.