We performed a comparison between PRTG Network Monitor and Wireshark based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, Datadog, Auvik and others in Network Monitoring Software."The single dashboard is a valuable feature."
"We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"The remote probe feature in PRTG Network Monitor helps you monitor remote systems or your network at a lower cost than other solutions."
"PRTG Network Monitor's best features are its flexibility, ease of implementation, user-friendliness, and intuitive interfaces."
"The authentication links into our standard Active Directory authentication, which is very good."
"The sensors and remote probes are phenomenal. We use them for all of our global sites. The problem with our global sites are that they are all VPNs. If the link goes down, you can't monitor other solutions, as it just goes off the grid. Having remote probes allows them to still carry on and get the information that we need when it comes back up, sending the information to us."
"It is nice to have one place where all the information is right there in front of us."
"It is great for service level agreements and can comply fully with internet monitoring or any interface."
"Speed of deployment is one of the most valuable features."
"The installation is not that complex."
"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."
"It has a good syntax to put the commands in and get information out of."
"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 filter option provided by Wireshark is its most valuable feature...Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"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."
"Setup is very easy. It's also possible to change source code and compile if you want to change something in the code, because it's free."
"The initial setup is simple."
"I have found the most valuable feature you can design your sniffer the way you want to."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"The technical support needs improvement."
"Along with more room for automation, more room for advanced configuration can be integrated into the solution."
"Scalability is the only major sticking point for me. There is a recommended number of sensors, which is around 10,000 and we're double that... The only option we have to scale is to buy another core, which would be a separate, stand-alone instance..."
"PRTG access works best from the web GUI. There are dedicated apps on Windows/Android/iOS, but they are slow and don’t work as well as the web GUI."
"The icons on PRTG's network diagram are hard to find. For example, finding the icons for firewalls and servers is difficult, so we're struggling to create the network topology."
"Other monitoring tools that I have used are easier to use."
"The solution has to evolve as an end-to-end monitoring solution. It has to do better at understanding the application at the deepest level."
"It probably has this already, but if it had a mobile app that would be helpful. For example, on a day like today when I'm out, if I could just fire it up and see green, green, green, green, green or red, that would be good."
"I've encountered a challenge in my functions, particularly in adding and printing."
"There is a disadvantage when it comes to sampling intervals. Additionally, I've heard from a colleague that Wireshark might be less effective in the voice domain."
"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."
"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."
"The Wireshark search function shows green for a correct search and red for an incorrect search. If there were a way to provide a description about what a search - and the similar ones which are available - can do, while a person is typing it, it would make the product easier to use and simultaneously decrease the learning curve."
"Sometimes I need to use tcpdump when I need to check the packets on CLI."
"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."
"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."
"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."
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PRTG Network Monitor is ranked 5th in Network Monitoring Software with 96 reviews while Wireshark is ranked 4th in Network Troubleshooting with 61 reviews. PRTG Network Monitor is rated 8.2, while Wireshark is rated 9.0. The top reviewer of PRTG Network Monitor writes "It's an all-in-one solution, and net flow is included in the licensing ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Wireshark writes "User-friendly with an easy setup and a nice interface". PRTG Network Monitor is most compared with Zabbix, Centreon, SolarWinds NPM, Nagios XI and ManageEngine OpManager, whereas Wireshark is most compared with Zabbix, Nagios XI, Colasoft Capsa, SolarWinds NPM and Rapid7 Metasploit.
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