F5 Advanced WAF vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) comparison

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between F5 Advanced WAF and F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed F5 Advanced WAF vs. F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) Report (Updated: September 2020).
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"It's flexible and powerful, and the users can input their own rules to the system.""The solution uses AI to protect against botnet attacks.""iRules are quite appealing when it comes to F5.""With F5 Advanced WAF, it was protection for online publications and for our customers that caused us to choose the platform.""The most valuable feature of F5 Advanced WAF is its grand unity of the implementation, where you have the freedom to configure based on how it affects your use case or your organization. With the default setting of implicit deny, you can gradually start defining and deploying the tool to align with your environment, whether it is outdated, recent, or futuristic. This allows you to customize the solution to protect you from threat actors. You have the ability to define what the advanced threat act should do - whether it should alert, deny, or both - and it will deliver based on your configuration. Unlike other online solutions, F5 Advanced WAF provides flexibility to deliver to your unique environment the way you want.""The most valuable features of F5 Advanced WAF are the overall capabilities, there is not a comparable solution on the market.""I like them because I like the security solution. They get extra marks compared to other solutions or competitors. There are more features than any other product I can think of. They're always monitoring, and the security features offer more than other, lesser products.""The most valuable features of this solution are the WAF protection, Data Safe, and the seven-layer DDoS."

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"BIG-IP can do anything. It's like a Swiss Army knife.""iRule feature is useful.""The capability is at a seven or eight out of ten.""F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager is a stable and reliable solution.""The solution could improve the ease of use, the management could be simplified. Other solutions are easier to use.""The most valuable features are DNS, APM, and ASM. Additionally, it is easy to use and you have a lot of flexibility to use the solution within a network.""It can determine if the system is going down, then route the traffic somewhere else.""It has made it a single entry point for all users, verging across all the VPCs. It is more of an SSO solution versus multitier user loggin."

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Cons
"It should be a little bit easy to deploy in terms of the overall deployment session. One of our customers is a bit unhappy about the reporting options. Currently, it automatically deletes event logs after some limit if a customer doesn't have any external Syslog server. It is a problem for those customers who want to review event logs after a week or so because they won't get proper reports or event logs. They should increase the duration to at least a month or two for storing the data on the device. F5 is not a leader in Gartner Quadrant, which affects us when we go and pitch this solution. Customers normally go and take a look at such annual reports, and because F5 is currently not there as a leader, the customers ask about it even though we are saying it is good in all things. F5 is not known for something totally different or unique. They were a major player in ADP, and they are just rebranding themselves into security. They should improve or increase their marketing as a security company now. They have already started to do that, but they should do it more so that when it comes to security, customers can easily remember F5. At the moment, if we say F5, load balancing comes to mind. With rebranding and marketing, all customers should get the idea that F5 is now mainly focusing on the security part of it, and it is a security company instead of load balancing. This is the first solution that should come to a customer's mind for a web application firewall.""The BNS module needs improvement.""The Sandbox integration feature could be improved.""There is a gap in report management.""One area for improvement in the product is its SSO integration, which posed challenges and required significant effort to resolve.""The BIG-IQ is supposed to centralize the management for all of the boxes but it's not very effective.""I would like to see the API Protection improved.""F5 Advanced WAF could improve the precision of the scanning. There are many false positives. They should improve their threat database."

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"Its GUI could be a bit better. Other than that, it's already pretty good. We don't use it in a high-performance environment. So, we don't really care so much about too many features.""They could improve the product's ease of use. There is some confusion how to operate it.""F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager could improve by having an FNI feature for a single source to multi-domain load balancing.""The user interface of F5 BIG-IP LTM is old and could improve.""The product is expensive.""The pricing of the product is a bit too high.""F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager is sometimes a bit cumbersome to deal with some builds, although that's gotten significantly better over the years.""The solution's hardware quality needs improvement."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "The pricing is too high."
  • "I think the price is very high."
  • "After buying the program, you just pay for the support every year."
  • "Licensing fees for this solution are paid on a yearly basis."
  • "It's more expensive than other solutions and depending on the modules, there can be additional fees."
  • "F5 bundles up services and the bundle is what you pay for rather than individual components."
  • "Its price is fair. We have done a couple of deals where they were able to give some kind of discount to the customers. The price was initially high for the customers, but after a couple of negotiations, it came within their budget. They were happy with that."
  • "There are various plans available for Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF as a Service, including a trial version."
  • More F5 Advanced WAF Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Though functionality is high, its cost can be considered slightly higher than its competitors​."
  • "The licensing pricing seems relatively easy enough to get your head around. I would advise anyone to ensure that you have a conversation with an F5 consultant before purchasing, as you would with most products."
  • "Take a look at the modules that you are going to use. Look into the best bundles for them."
  • "The only area that has room for improvement would be pricing, so its competitors do not have a say."
  • "If your IT budget is good, go for it."
  • "This product is costly from a licensing perspective considering its competitors."
  • "Check other vendors like Cisco, Citrix or A10 Networks. There are plenty in the market with which you can achieve same thing."
  • "Great product for the money. But they can get really expensive, so get what meets your needs."
  • More F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:F5's user-friendly interface and seamless integration stand out as the most valuable features for us.
    Top Answer:The customer service could be improved.
    Top Answer:The support from F5 BIG-IP LTM is good.
    Top Answer:There are a few licensing options available for F5 BIG-IP LTM. You can have a perpetual license which is a lifetime license. You then only need to renew the support, if you choose to open a ticket… more »
    Top Answer:The pricing must be more flexible. We get billed for firewalls based on the usage. It will be helpful if the solution provides such flexibility.
    Ranking
    Views
    12,449
    Comparisons
    9,913
    Reviews
    21
    Average Words per Review
    413
    Rating
    8.7
    Views
    10,717
    Comparisons
    8,912
    Reviews
    30
    Average Words per Review
    483
    Rating
    8.3
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    F5 BIG-IP, BIG-IP LTM, F5 ASM, Viprion, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition , Crescendo Networks Application Delivery Controller, BIG IP
    Learn More
    Overview

    F5 Advanced WAF is a web application security solution for financial and government sectors, e-commerce, and public-facing websites. It offers protection against various attacks, including botnets, web scraping, and foreign entities. The solution can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud and is often used with other security tools. Its most valuable features include DDoS and DNS attack protection, SSL uploading, anomaly detection, and the ability to input custom rules. 

    F5 Advanced WAF has helped organizations to expose more services to the public while providing an extra layer of protection, preventing revenue loss, and securing connectivity.

    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.

    Sample Customers
    MAXIMUS, Vivo, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office, City Bank
    Riken, TransUnion, Tepco Systems Administration, Daejeon University, G&T Bank, Danamon, CyberAgent Inc.
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm33%
    Computer Software Company27%
    Non Tech Company7%
    Media Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company15%
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Comms Service Provider7%
    Government7%
    REVIEWERS
    Comms Service Provider20%
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Computer Software Company15%
    Media Company6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm17%
    Computer Software Company15%
    Government9%
    Comms Service Provider6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business31%
    Midsize Enterprise25%
    Large Enterprise44%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business20%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise64%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business33%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise50%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise68%
    Buyer's Guide
    F5 Advanced WAF vs. F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
    September 2020
    Find out what your peers are saying about F5 Advanced WAF vs. F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) and other solutions. Updated: September 2020.
    765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    F5 Advanced WAF is ranked 3rd in Web Application Firewall (WAF) with 53 reviews while F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is ranked 1st in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) with 116 reviews. F5 Advanced WAF is rated 8.6, while F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of F5 Advanced WAF writes "Flexible configuration, reliable, and highly professional support". On the other hand, the top reviewer of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) writes "Helps deliver applications to users in a reliable, secure, and optimized way". F5 Advanced WAF is most compared with Fortinet FortiWeb, Microsoft Azure Application Gateway, Imperva Web Application Firewall, AWS WAF and Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, whereas F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is most compared with Citrix NetScaler, Fortinet FortiADC, Microsoft Azure Application Gateway, NGINX Plus and Avi Networks Software Load Balancer. See our F5 Advanced WAF vs. F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) report.

    We monitor all Web Application Firewall (WAF) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.