Software Alternatives & Reviews

Ethereal VS Ostinato

Compare Ethereal VS Ostinato and see what are their differences

Ethereal logo Ethereal

Ethereal® is used by network professionals around the world for troubleshooting, analysis...

Ostinato logo Ostinato

Ostinato is a packet crafter and traffic generator for network engineers. Wireshark in Reverse.
  • Ethereal Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-09-27
  • Ostinato Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-28

A very capable alternative to the industry standard traffic generator and network testing tools, at a fraction of the cost.

Functional testing and Performance testing. All common protocols. Create packets from scratch or import, edit and replay PCAP files. Use the friendly GUI for manual testing and the powerful API for test automation and scripting. Emulate multiple devices with ARP and ping support.

Ethereal

Pricing URL
-
$ Details
-
Platforms
-
Release Date
-

Ostinato

$ Details
$49.0 / One-off (1 user)
Platforms
Windows MacOS Linux Docker Virtual Appliance
Release Date
2010 April

Ethereal features and specs

No features have been listed yet.

Ostinato features and specs

  • Flexible Packet Crafting: Yes
  • Line Rate Traffic (Turbo add-on): Yes - 1G/10G/25G/40G
  • Automation Support: Yes - Python API
  • Multicast: Yes - Multicast Data, IGMP and MLD

Ethereal videos

Ethereal Review: Style and Substance

More videos:

  • Review - Wampler Ethereal Delay/Reverb Pedal Review
  • Review - Ethereal Visions Tarot ~ Walkthrough

Ostinato videos

Ostinato device emulation

More videos:

  • Demo - Generate SIP traffic with Ostinato
  • Demo - Ostinato overview and Demo

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Ethereal and Ostinato)
Monitoring Tools
53 53%
47% 47
Log Management
73 73%
27% 27
Security
44 44%
56% 56
Productivity
100 100%
0% 0

Questions and Answers

As answered by people managing Ethereal and Ostinato.

Who are some of the biggest customers of your product?

Ostinato's answer:

From individual network engineers to small companies to Fortune 500 companies

How would you describe your primary audience?

Ostinato's answer:

Ostinato is used by network engineers and developers building, testing or deploying networks and network devices

What's the story behind your product?

Ostinato's answer:

Network engineer and programmer Srivats P created Ostinato as an alternative to pricey commercial traffic generators. You can read the full origin story.

Why should a person choose your product over its competitors?

Ostinato's answer:

Advanced features at a fraction of the cost of commercial traffic generators. Outstanding customer support.

Which are the primary technologies used for building your product?

Ostinato's answer:

C++, Qt5, libpcap, AF_XDP

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Ethereal and Ostinato

Ethereal Reviews

We have no reviews of Ethereal yet.
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Ostinato Reviews

  1. great stuff

    it just does the job! great support from the creator as well.

  2. Best Ethernet Traffic Generator

    As a novice to networking protocol, I was able to understand the protocols much better with the help of Ostinato Traffic generator. With wide options to explore and support to use the same thing with python helped me and my team in understanding & testing of different protocols. Especially response from Srivats for the queries helped me step custom streams for my application.

  3. Best packet generator I've ever used

    I used Ostinato a couple years back at a different company and loved it then. Now, at a new company, purchased a new license for it and am still impressed. Super user friendly and intuitive, the creator reaches out after you buy and offers awesome support/tutorial videos.

    Network engineers, this is the app to test storm control, packet rate limits, and any other feature you need to test. Also replay wireshark packet captures. So awesome.

    👍 Pros:    Replay wireshark packet captures|Packet crafting|Set packets/second rates
    👎 Cons:    None

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Ostinato seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 3 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Ethereal mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Ethereal yet. Tracking of Ethereal recommendations started around Mar 2021.

Ostinato mentions (3)

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Ethereal and Ostinato, you can also consider the following products

tcpdump - tcpdump is a common packet analyzer that runs under the command line.

Wireshark - Wireshark is a network protocol analyzer for Unix and Windows. It lets you capture and interactively browse the traffic running on a computer network.

iperf - A TCP, UDP, and SCTP network bandwidth measurement tool

Ettercap - Ettercap is a suite for man in the middle attacks on LAN.

Scapy - Scapy is a powerful interactive packet manipulation program.

netcat - Netcat is a featured networking utility which reads and writes data across network connections...