Colasoft Capsa vs. Wireshark

Capsa is highly recommended to be used in small dense areas of a network where it makes sense to be able to run analytics off of a mirror port to gain insight into traffic trends. It is a costly product to install in branch locations, and requires a decent spec hardware to run appropriately

Incentivized

Wireshark is great for enterprise networks with large amounts of data traversing the network that need a way to filter and inspect specific traffic by specific parameters (i.e. destination / source IP address, host, or type). There are use-cases for smaller environments, but the amount of time needed to learn how to effectively use the tool may not be beneficial for home / small office users.

Incentivized

• Robust Application. Able to handle traffic that most businesses will throw at it.
• Easy to use. Easy to setup captures and filter down to specific traffic types.
• Relatively cheap for what it's able to accomplish.

Incentivized

• Capture Network Traffic - This really is the essential functionality of Wireshark as without consistent data capture there is nothing to analyze
• Filtering - We need to often filter for specific data that we are looking for.
• Live Capture as well as offline analysis - This gives us the flexibility to do what we need to do when we need to do it.

Incentivized

• Needs options to scale to 10Gb/s networks. The cutoff for performance looks to be around 3Gb/sl
• Needs API access to trigger capturesl
• Needs Agents for remote capturesl

Incentivized

• It is beginner-friendly as far as installation, but it could use a tutorial.
• Perhaps there is a way to do this already, but I haven't yet seen it. It would be nice if it could be integrated with a network package that could detect network anomalies, fire up an automated packet analysis, and send a report to an administrator.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Simple and easy setup.

Incentivized

Colasoft performs more like the traditional wireshark as opposed to other solutions that tend to focus on graphs instead of giving you the raw data. I personally prefer the raw data, and then the ability to build graphs upon this (which Capsa can do). This allows for quicker analysis and makes it easier to relate to.

Incentivized

[Wireshark] is just the go-to application. It's the tool that is taught with in school and at trade conferences. We have not had a need to even look at other tools. It's free, it had a ton of functionality, and it just works without complaint.

Incentivized

• While the product doesn't detect malware, it has helped track down malware infected machines by using data from other applications to run filters to look for known traffic destinations for that malware. For me this is a huge ROI since malware can be the great unknown.
• Relatively cheap compared to the feature set.

Incentivized

• If your systems are not working, then of course it is one of the biggest impact on the business
• Imagine you are not able to send an email because of a network issue. This will definitely become a huge hindrance in your business
• Wireshark helps you with these types of problems and lets your business run smoothly