It is best suited for managing and monitoring homogenous networks where the design is similar across the board. The most obvious use case is to make sure the correct network quality of service is being maintained to ensure voice call quality in a converged networked. It would be less suited/necessary if the voice and data networks were segmented from each other.
I don't know of any other tool that works as well as Wireshark for packet capture an inspection. It's extremely easy to get up and running, and even with little to no knowledge of how to use the tool, you can be looking at all the traffic coming off a network interface.
The impact on SolarWinds performance itself of configuring a large number of IPSLA operations for monitoring can be difficult to predict. It would be beneficial to have some tools that could warn or predict the results of doing so.
Additional background information on the use case for each SLA operation type would be helpful to the user who may not be an expert in the field. The Server and Application Monitor product provides this benefit for application component monitoring.
The tool should be engineered to allow repeated SLA node discovery for any and all nodes in the Orion Platform database.
A more user-friendly interface would be nice, but then again it is not really designed for those who are not quite comfortable with this type of software.
Changes to functionality on updates - this can sometimes happen unexpectedly and can be an annoyance.
It's very simple and easy to use, although individuals not used to managing and administering networks would take some time to get familiar with it. Once they have mastered use of the application, it's easy to stay knowledgeable about it, iteration after iteration. It is well supported online through an open-source community network of professionals who are helpful in imparting knowledge and in providing assistance.
I don't believe Wireshark has "true" support as the software is open source. However, there is an active & friendly community around Wireshark that are more than happy to help answer questions. From a comprehensive Wiki and FAQ section on the site to the Ask a Question forum and bug tracker section, there's plenty of support options to make sure your questions and issues are addressed.
Our VOIP system is from Cisco, so they suggested their Packet Tracer to help with managing our quality of service. We found it to be an extremely technical tool much better aligned with diagnosing a detailed issue rather than helping monitor and manage the VOIP traffic as Solarwinds does.
Wireshark is a free tool that came highly recommended by one of our former network security consultants. Using the tool he was able to resolve all of our higher tier network tickets, so we observed first hand why we needed to add Wireshark into our toolset. We received in-depth instruction and training scenarios that demonstrated the effectiveness and power of the product, so we didn't spend any time reviewing competing products.
VNQM has enabled our network engineers to see network quality issues from the end user perspective and thus be more proactive.
The call records searching capability is very user friendly and has made it easy for VoIP engineers to troubleshoot call issues from a single pane of glass.
We were able to implement SLA monitoring by leveraging an existing feature of our Cisco routers. No additional investment was required.
