Colasoft Capsa vs perfSONAR

Colasoft Capsa is a Windows network analyzer for monitoring, analyzing and troubleshooting wired and wireless networks. The Enterprise edition captures packets in real time from local networks and can save transmitted data. It analyzes more than 1,800 protocols and sub-protocols, including VoIP, and displays packet details in Hex, ASCII and EBCDIC. Capsa can diagnose network problems and suggest solutions, monitor conversations, reconstruct packet streams and generate reports for selected items, the whole network or a particular network group. Its security analysis detects DoS and DDoS attacks, worm activity, ARP attacks, TCP port scans and suspicious conversations in real time. Users can set email or sound alerts and schedule capture once, daily or weekly. Capsa Free monitors up to 10 IP addresses, ends sessions after four hours and lacks WiFi connection monitoring. Professional is listed at $695, paid once for a single-seat perpetual license, one machine and one year of maintenance. Enterprise is $1,295, paid once and has a 30-day trial.

perfSONAR is a free, open-source network measurement toolkit for assessing performance across network paths and finding problems as they occur. It offers a common interface for scheduling measurements, storing results in uniform formats, retrieving data at scale, and generating visualizations. Operators coordinate tests across multiple nodes with a shared JSON mesh configuration; results can remain on each node or go to a central dashboard server. A standard node runs throughput or latency tests on one network interface, although simultaneous testing there may affect accuracy. The documentation covers Docker and Ansible deployment, a central archive with Grafana, and Client and esmond APIs for raw data access. perfSONAR is installed on an operator-controlled local server, so maintaining nodes and test configuration is required. It monitors packet loss and jitter, supports path visualization and synthetic tests, and is licensed under Apache License 2.0. The listed plan costs nothing.