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F5 BIG-IP vs. F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    F5 BIG-IP

    Score9.2 out of 10
    N/AF5 BIG-IP software from Seattle-based F5 Networks is a load balancing and application protection solution suite available on cloud or via virtual editions, on a subscription or perpetual licensing basis.N/A

    F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

    Score8.9 out of 10
    N/AF5 states that the "brain" of the BIG-IP platform, Local Traffic Manager (LTM) intelligently manages network traffic so applications are always fast, available, and secure.N/A
    Pricing
    F5 BIG-IPF5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    F5 BIG-IPF5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
    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
    Community Pulse
    F5 BIG-IPF5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
    Considered Both Products
    F5
    Chose F5 BIG-IP
    The logic is intelligently used in the F5 dns to build a high availability architecture for services and infinite possibilities for global balancing.
    Incentivized
    Chose F5 BIG-IP
    We are recently not evaluating, but we have started the deployment for WAF and we're using GTM, LTM, you name it. F5, we are using all of them.
    Incentivized
    Chose F5 BIG-IP
    Performance and customization.
    Incentivized
    Chose F5 BIG-IP
    Ease of used. Not that complex. Better support by the principle. A better product than the other load balancer brands
    Incentivized
    Chose F5 BIG-IP
    F5 BIG-IP is the gold standard in load balancing and traffic prioritization.
    Incentivized
    Chose F5 BIG-IP
    F5 BIG-IP Vs Netscaler Traffic Manager by Citrix I would say there is no comparison. Netscaler was difficult to use and no one easily understood the configurations. It led to many times where our engineers would need to reverse engineer the configuration before they could …
    Incentivized
    F5
    Chose F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
    We combine the AWAF and F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager to not only deliver high performance apps but also secure the apps against so many kinds of threats.
    Incentivized
    Chose F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
    We use both products and performed well.
    Incentivized
    Chose F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
    We are using both of them for load balancing and our web apps firewall.
    Incentivized
    Chose F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
    The F5 LTMs integrate great with the F5 DNS appliances and makes on the fly decisions using iquery. We have two HA data centers that the F5 LTMs are used in and integrate great with teh F5 DNS servers.
    Incentivized
    Chose F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
    Its a complete security appliance.
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    99%
    Would buy again
    195 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    31 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    97%
    Delivers good value for the price
    158 Answers
    96%
    Delivers good value for the price
    27 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    98%
    Happy with the feature set
    194 Answers
    94%
    Happy with the feature set
    29 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    96%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    132 Answers
    96%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    22 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    95%
    Implementation went as expected
    148 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    25 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    F5 BIG-IPF5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    No answers on this topic
    Azure Application Gateway
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    No answers on this topic
    NetScaler
    Score8.7 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    F5 BIG-IPF5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.2
    (129 ratings)
    9.0
    (21 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    5.2
    (6 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    F5 BIG-IPF5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    F5
    Definitely in larger environments, more mature organizations that obviously have the budget to spend and want best in class. Where it struggles is those organizations that don't have the funding and money to spend on it and need more basic functionality. So I'd say that's smaller customers we've worked with and kind of mid-market. They tend to get scared when they get the quotes. Also we've had some struggles with account team consistency. So for the sales team, just a lot of turnover and a lot of missteps on customer calls.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    F5
    I mean the only reason we changed away from it was price and it just simply had to do with the licensing that Citrix was offering on the NetScalers. They had basically an all you can eat consumption license that we were easily inside of with all of our VDI usage, whereas with F5 we had to buy the hardware and we had to license the software. Any place you need to actually do traffic balancing at scale, it's a fantastic product. I couldn't recommend it highly enough. There's just some things that hardware SSL offload and hardware load balancing just simply can't be equal that I don't know if there's a better product on the market for that.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    F5
    • I mean from a basic level, it actually satisfies all the use cases we have, which is basically to have multiple web servers for the front end and then you want that to be equally split across. The traffic comes in from all over the world. We use DRA protection and everything, but then we also internally want to make sure all the servers are being utilized and we provide much more availability across all servers. We just make sure BIG-IP sits in between and handles the traffic accordingly. And it's pretty basic and it comes to drawing traffic. It's pretty easy to configure and set it up and then forget.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    F5
    • Sure. It does load balancing fantastically. I mean, it's an industry standard product for that. We also use it for TLS offload for applications. Those are the two main use cases for that. We do also use some of the I rules for traffic filtering. We've used that in some of the external facing services. It does a really nice job with that. It's a little bit complicated sometimes and some of the Cipher Suite stuff is interesting.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    F5
    • Recently we have been deploying F5 web application firewall and we have started the deployment. We have already moved applications out there, but we are not yet to the point wherein I could comment any positive feedback or any negative feedback because we are still going through it, right. But as far as I'm concerned, I don't see any drawbacks or any shortcomings on the F5 product lineup.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    F5
    • Some of the stuff you have to dive into the CLI to really use, I'm going to reach back to the previous employer for this. So I had a much greater degree of involvement with it at that point in time for, I was the crypto guy at the company and I had to design all the cipher suites that we actually implemented on our front end banking products. So in order to do that, I had to dive into it, download all the Cipher suites, figure out the actual order of operation for them, how they were selected because I wanted to design the Cipher Suites to actually provide a specific customer experience for the types of connections that our customers were likely to initiate. Getting at that information was a giant PITA. It was poorly documented at the time. I'm not sure if it's documented any better now. Every time the software changed or got upgraded, made your version, I'd have to do it all over again because the upgrades to the stack, which looked like it was based on open SSL, but it was heavily modified with a different syntax. Oh yay. That's fun too. So I had to write giant documents describing all of the ciphers that I was designing for this because it just kept changing all the time. So I didn't care for that aspect of it. Traffic management does a great job for that.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    F5
    So far experience with F5 BIG-IP has been good, but we are only 6 months into the deployment and will depend on how things run over time.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    F5
    F5 has always been one of the best products we have in the data center. We had few issues with the BUG and Code upgrades but the main use cases for F5 was always top notch. From High availability to Globally load balancing applications across multiple data centers and muti cloud environments.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    F5
    It's not difficult to understand the parts of application configurations and features. Setting up new virtual servers with multiple profiles, certificates, and nodes is easy for new users through the web interface, which also translates to programability in scripts, DevOps, or other configuration management use-cases. Users from different backgrounds such as networking and infrastructure can use F5 BIG-IP, while users who are familiar with API calls can easily configure objects without needing to understand the platform at all.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    F5
    F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager is very easy to use. Building each application is straightforward forward and the help function and now with the new AI assistant soon to be available, it is going to be easier than ever to be able to understand and implement each application.
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    F5
    On the occasions when we've had to engage f5 support, they have been great. They have always resolved our issues quickly and been easy to work with and professional. The reason I give them a 10 out of 10, however, is because when we've had issues that have crossed over between the f5 BIG-IP, our Cisco switches, and our Microsoft IIS server the f5 support representatives have been extremely knowledgeable about every product and device involved and have been able to troubleshoot end-to-end without having to engage other vendors.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    F5
    Good after sales support if one purchased direct support from F5.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    In-Person Training
    F5
    Practical cases and hands on , many hours of training with tipical cases
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    F5
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    F5
    implementation is fine
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    F5
    Easy to implement if one had attended F5 Training for Local Traffic Manager (LTM).
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    F5
    That's the one thing that really stood out. It was a lot easier to use from an administrator standpoint, so I think that's the one thing that really made our team decide to go with this product versus another competitor. Just ease of use.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    F5
    F5 is doing its specialized function. There is no other product that can beat them. We are extremely happy with the product. Especially on load balancing, traffic redirecting TLS encryption, and SNI modification. We will continue to explore F5's product, especially on the public cloud side. e.g. NGINX.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    F5
    • F5 BIG-IP has a highly positive impact on the customers. The main impact is on the security of the web applications.
    • F5 BIG-IP provides an easy and safe way to connect employees to assets and applications that reside in an on-premises environment.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    F5
    • The F5 LTMs have had a very positive impact on our business objectives. Are websites are very heavily utilized with users all over the globe.
    • The F5 LTMs have provided a mechanism for making difficult applications work with our current infrastructure like MS teams.
    • The F5 LTMs are very good at customizing irules to deal with everyday issues.
    Incentivized
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    ScreenShots