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F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) vs. NETSCOUT Arbor DDoS Protection

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)

    Score8.4 out of 10
    N/AF5 Networks offers the F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager, a firewall software combining a number of features including DDoS, DNS security, and other protections.N/A

    NETSCOUT Arbor DDoS Protection

    Score10 out of 10
    N/ANETSCOUT Arbor DDoS Protection security software offers protection across multiple layers of the OSI model. It provides security measures for Layer 2 (Data Link layer) through Layer 7 (Application layer), ensuring complete protection for network infrastructure.N/A
    Pricing
    F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)NETSCOUT Arbor DDoS Protection
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)NETSCOUT Arbor DDoS Protection
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details
    More Pricing Information
    Features
    F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)NETSCOUT Arbor DDoS Protection
    Firewall
    Comparison of Firewall features of F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) and NETSCOUT Arbor DDoS Protection
    Feature
    F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)
    8.6
    2 Ratings
    0% below category average
    NETSCOUT Arbor DDoS Protection
    -
    Ratings
    Identification Technologies8.02 Ratings00 Ratings
    Visualization Tools7.02 Ratings00 Ratings
    Content Inspection9.02 Ratings00 Ratings
    Policy-based Controls8.02 Ratings00 Ratings
    Active Directory and LDAP10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Firewall Management Console7.02 Ratings00 Ratings
    Reporting and Logging8.02 Ratings00 Ratings
    VPN10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    High Availability9.02 Ratings00 Ratings
    Stateful Inspection9.02 Ratings00 Ratings
    Proxy Server10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)NETSCOUT Arbor DDoS Protection
    Small Businesses
    SonicWall NSA Series
    Score8.5 out of 10
    Cloudflare
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Barracuda CloudGen Firewall
    Score9.4 out of 10
    Cloudflare
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software
    Score9 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)NETSCOUT Arbor DDoS Protection
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.3
    (5 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)NETSCOUT Arbor DDoS Protection
    Likelihood to Recommend
    F5
    We were able to eliminate a firewall from our network architecture by integrating the module into our existing F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM). This allowed us to save on tech refresh costs, since the F5 was able to handle the module without much additional strain on the device. However, if a firewall had features that the AFM lacked, then using that firewall in tandem with an F5 would be preferable.
    Incentivized
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    NETSCOUT
    Arbor has the propensity to deal with even the larger firms. I have been using it for a year span and I don’t have any such complaint which is affecting us in a bad way. I can recommend this to all the companies who want to have a good network behavior analysis and to monitor the problems if there is any chance of it to occur and which has the potential to affect the whole working environment of the company.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    F5
    • Load balancing using pools
    • SSL offloading
    • iRules for threat handling
    Incentivized
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    NETSCOUT
    • Arbor's layer 7 countermeasures are very good out of the box, but it is very easy to reconfigure values and see the impact in real-time.
    • Peakflow SP provides fairly detailed traffic analysis and breakdown for top-N data such as top talkers, top ASNs, top ports and so on. They offer "SP Insight" as a product to build in more powerful reporting on the already-collected metrics with an interface very similar to Kibana or one of its many forks. We are not licensed for that so I can't speak to its capabilities.
    • Arbor allows for a good amount of automation. Fast flood detection ensures that if pre-determined thresholds are quickly exceeded, preconfigured mitigations can be started or in the event of an extremely large volumetric attack you can trigger an Arbor Cloud (sold separately) mitigation or a remotely-triggered blackhole announcement to drop traffic to the attacked destination IP address(es) upstream.
    • ATAC (Arbor support) is very helpful. The level of support our organization maintains covers ATAC performing all update functions to all Arbor appliances - SP and TMS.
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    F5
    • If unsure, can be overly cautious.
    • There are few changes the end user can make.
    Incentivized
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    NETSCOUT
    • Arbor is a highly expensive company. this was the major reason behind not going for the Arbor sightline in the first place. Although its features are good but the cost is unjustifiable.
    • The implementation and the understanding of this tool are full of complexity and perplexity.
    • I am looking forward to having a new update on it. They used to update their versions quite frequently but it's been a long time they haven’t updated or maybe it is not in their priority lists right now.
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    F5
    F5 Advanced Firewall Manager has been a solid, strong solution to both keep our systems safe and being seamless for our end users. Most of the time, the end-user is not impacted and does not even know F5 Advanced Firewall Manager is running which is exactly what we are looking for.
    Incentivized
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    NETSCOUT
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    F5
    Both F5 [BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager] and Radware require training as they are not easy to use. But Radware uses some configuration that needs deep learning and proper labs. From an admin's perspective, Configuration and management for F5 [BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager are] less. Also, the cost of implementing F5 [BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager] is lesser than that of Radware Alteon.
    Incentivized
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    NETSCOUT
    We evaluated Corero and a number of external scrubbing services. In the POC, we found Corero's mitigation capabilities to extremely limited beyond blocking common traffic types at preconfigured rates. It's not impossible to configure custom mitigation methods and countermeasures, but it requires a deep understanding of BPF and bytecode, where Arbor is checkboxes, radio buttons, and dialog buttons that all sit next to a graph showing traffic dropped and permitted by the current settings. I'm not going to enumerate each of the cloud services evaluated because the decision came down to the same reasoning. The amount of traffic we receive is enough that it would be prohibitively expensive for our use case.
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    F5
    • When we had to decide on whether to buy different hardware our team were all in support of renewal for F5 [BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager]
    • F5 [BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager] requires proper training on tools and clear concepts of packets, headers, and content to create WAF policies
    • Overall, we are satisfied by the ROI provided by our F5 AFM and GTMs
    Incentivized
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    NETSCOUT
    • Arbor is good in empower us to monitor the issues in the network.
    • We can get better traffic analytics and reports are quite detailed.
    • The price is quite high which makes it a little hard choice for us.
    Incentivized
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