F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) and Cisco Umbrella are widely used in traffic management and security respectively. Cisco Umbrella generally has the upper hand in terms of comprehensive features, but user feedback suggests F5 BIG-IP LTM excels in deployment flexibility and detailed configurations.
Features: F5 BIG-IP LTM is renowned for its detailed traffic management and application delivery capabilities. Cisco Umbrella stands out with robust DNS security and cloud-based threat intelligence. User reviews favor Cisco Umbrella for its advanced threat protection and ease of integration, whereas F5 BIG-IP LTM is praised for its traffic handling.
Room for Improvement: Users indicate that F5 BIG-IP LTM could improve its cloud integration and simplify its complex configurations. Cisco Umbrella, on the other hand, could benefit from enhanced reporting capabilities and more customization options. Both products have distinct areas needing enhancement, but Cisco Umbrella's drawbacks appear less critical.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: F5 BIG-IP LTM is highly flexible but requires significant expertise for deployment, making it time-consuming. Cisco Umbrella is straightforward to deploy with minimal disruption. Customer service reviews are positive for both, but Cisco Umbrella is often highlighted for its proactive support and clear guidance.
Pricing and ROI: F5 BIG-IP LTM typically involves a higher initial setup cost, but users report satisfactory ROI due to its robust capabilities. Cisco Umbrella has a subscription-based model that is considered cost-effective, offering quick ROI through its comprehensive security features. Users feel Cisco Umbrella justifies its pricing through its ease of use and effectiveness.
Cisco Umbrella offers flexible, cloud-delivered security according to users’ requirements Cisco Umbrella includes secure web gateway, firewall, and cloud access security broker (CASB) functionality all delivered from a single cloud security service. Cisco Umbrella’s protection is extended to devices, remote users, and distributed locations anywhere. As company employees work from many locations and devices, Cisco Umbrella is the easiest way to effectively protect users everywhere in minutes.
Cisco Umbrella uses machine learning to search for, identify, and even predict malicious domains. By learning from internet activity patterns, this DNS-layer security solution can automatically identify attacker infrastructure being staged for the next threat. These domains are then proactively blocked, protecting networks from potential compromise. Cisco Umbrella analyzes terabytes of data in real time across all markets, geographies, and protocols.
Cisco Umbrella works with leading IT companies to integrate its security enforcement and intelligence. Built with a bidirectional API, Cisco Umbrella makes it easy to extend protection from on-premises security appliances to cloud controlled devices and sites.
Cisco Umbrella is suitable for small businesses without dedicated security professionals, as well as for multinational enterprises with complex environments.
Why use Cisco Umbrella?
Reviews from Real Users
Cisco Umbrella stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Some of the major ones are its DNS-based protection, ability to protect users no matter where they are located, stability, and high performance.
Daniel B., a network specialist at Syswind Kft, writes, “We primarily use the solution as cloud security for our branches. It protects us from direct internet outbreaks. It makes for good flexibility. The solution is very easy to manage. We found the initial setup, for example, to be quite simple. Efficient protection on the DNS level and even higher. The sandboxing feature analyses and handles the complicated security risks.”
Victor M., SOC & Security Services Director at BEST, notes, “It provides security for the remote workers and it helps to improve enterprise security in a very easy way. We mainly enjoy web software protection capabilities. It prevents the end-users from getting into bad sites or sites that potentially could have malware or could be phishing. It helps end-users avoid the wrong sites. The solution works very smoothly. The user interface is good.”
OpenDNS is a part of Cisco providing a suite of consumer products aimed at making the internet faster, safer, and more reliable.
F5 BIG-IP LTM optimizes the speed and reliability of your apps via both network and application layers. Using real-time protocol and traffic management decisions based on app and server and connection management conditions, and TCP and content offloading, BIG-IP LTM dramatically improves application and infrastructure responsiveness. BIG-IP LTM's architecture includes protocol awareness to control traffic for the most important applications. BIG-IP LTM tracks the dynamic performance levels of servers and delivers SSL performance and visibility for inbound and outbound traffic, to protect the user experience by encrypting everything from the client to the server.
BIG-IP LTM provides enterprise-class Application Delivery Controller (ADC). You get granular layer 7 control, SSL offloading and acceleration capabilities, and advanced scaling technologies that deliver performance and reliability on-demand. The highly optimized TCP/IP stack combines TCP/IP techniques and improvements in the latest RFCs with extensions to minimize the effect of congestion and packet loss and recovery. Independent testing tools and customer experiences show LTM's TCP stack delivers up to a 2x performance gain for users and a 4x increase in bandwidth efficiency.
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