F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition comparison

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

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Man...

Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

2nd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

122

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition

Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

12th

Average Rating

8.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Featured Reviews

Bonieber Orofeo

IT Manager at Chong Hua Hospital

Identifying compromised traffic and securing data has been a significant advantage

One of the most beneficial features of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is its ability to identify compromised traffic and its capabilities in authentication. Additionally, the security aspect of it provides a significant advantage as it helps us secure our data, which is a major investment and benefit for us. Before using this system, we had difficulties in storing our data and managing the traffic that comes in and out.

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Lilian Blaitt

IT Specialist at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

Virtual deployment boosts efficiency and support is quick

In my company, we use NGINX. I don't work with NGINX. For us, it is better to have the virtual solution because we have more virtual VJPs on fewer machines. This is the reason we are using it today It's easy to use, and they have good support. When we open tickets, they are answered quickly, and…

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The product is quite flexible."

"Our experience has been very good, in terms of performance, and securing our application infrastructure."

"It has helped a lot to protect our organization from external attacks, especially XSS or XSRF types of attacks."

"LTM."

"The most valuable feature I found is iRules."

"The most helpful thing is that it's open-source. It's very easy to program and customize."

"The feature I find the most valuable is the support infrastructure."

"We like the capability to combine the content switching with the intrusion prevention and adding the security roles, so we can expose certain sub-pieces outside without exposing everything."

More F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) pros

"The integration capabilities of the product are easy to use, and there is no complexity involved in it."

"The tool's investment is less than a physical device."

"It has DoS layer 7 protection, which not many vendors have."

"It's easy to use, and they have good support."

"I have a specific issue with the network interface connector, the NIC. We're limited to a maximum of two NICs in a virtualized environment. It's a limitation of the tool."

"The features that I like include LTM and Global Traffic Manager (GTM)."

Cons

"The web interface could be better."

"Technical support could be improved."

"The deployment could be simplified."

"We would like to have integration into encryption and PKI integration with SafeNet. That is probably the key component in using External PKIs, letting people bring their PKIs with them."

"The solution is scalable."

"F5 has another solution to load balance servers on the cloud, which they got after the purchase of NGINX. It is deployed as Kubernetes or something like that, but the problem now is that they have two solutions for two situations. They should make F5 deployable on the cloud."

"The setup is a little bit complex."

"I would like to see improvement in the manageability and easier setup."

More F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) cons

"It's expensive and could be cheaper."

"On-the-go upgrades are an option that the tool currently lacks, making it an area where improvements are required."

"I have a specific issue with the network interface connector, the NIC. We're limited to a maximum of two NICs in a virtualized environment. It's a limitation of the tool."

"BIG-IP could improve in supporting microservices, for example, in Docker and Kubernetes environments."

"F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is a heavy system that needs a lot of CPU, memory, and hard disk."

"The tool has limitations with respect to code and RAM."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This product is costly from a licensing perspective considering its competitors."

"Unless the price difference is large, this is not the primary concern for the product. The performance and product-related issues (secure for VPN, multi-function for network device, etc.) are the keys."

"F5 pricing is too high, compared to Citrix."

"I am a fan of using AWS natively. It is much cheaper."

"The solution is quite expensive if we compare it with the competition."

"We are on an annual license to use the solution."

"It's fair, it's not too expensive. Maybe just a little high."

"It is sort of a commodity product. A load balancer is a load balancer. What will be, at the end of the day, the cheapest option or have the best performance, that is what it will come down to."

More F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) pricing and cost advice

"I would rate the pricing a three out of ten, with ten being expensive."

"F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is an expensive solution, but it's worth the price."

"My company's customers need to make payments for the licensing charges attached to the product. It is an expensive product."

"The pricing is standard."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

14%

Retailer

Energy/Utilities Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with F5 BIG-IP?

The GUI of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) could be improved. It's not something regarding how it processes or blocks, as that's perfect. However, it still feels a bit legacy regarding the GU...

What is your primary use case for F5 BIG-IP?

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is a perfect product for load balancing and WAF, and I would recommend it far more than any other product. The load balancing capabilities of F5 BIG-IP Local T...

What do you like most about F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)?

The solution is robust and reliable.

What do you like most about F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition?

The integration capabilities of the product are easy to use, and there is no complexity involved in it.

What needs improvement with F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition?

I find it too complex to assess the impact of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition's automated deployment and integration with container orchestration platforms, such as Kubernetes and OpenShift, on my applic...

What advice do you have for others considering F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition?

I do not use the load balancing and traffic management features of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition. I use other container orchestration platforms, but they are not relevant to F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition. ...

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Comparisons

Compared 18% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

Compared 8% of the time

VMWare Avi Load Balancer vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

Compared 8% of the time

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

Compared 7% of the time

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

Compared 7% of the time

More F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) Competitors

F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition

Compared 31% of the time

SOCKS5 Proxy Server with Web Panel vs F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition

Compared 29% of the time

Squid Proxy Cache Server vs F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition

Compared 24% of the time

UBIKA WAAP Cloud vs F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition

Compared 17% of the time

More F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition Competitors

Product Reports

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

Download F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) product report

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) report

F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition

Download F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition product report

Also Known As

F5 BIG-IP, BIG-IP LTM, F5 ASM, Viprion, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition , Crescendo Networks Application Delivery Controller, BIG IP

No data available

Overview

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.

When you need to move faster than hardware allows, BIG-IP Virtual Editions (VEs) deliver the application services you need in a more agile and flexible form factor. Get the scalability, security, and automatability BIG-IP products are known for—all in software designed for use in single-, hybrid-, or multi-cloud architectures.

Sample Customers

Riken, TransUnion, Tepco Systems Administration, Daejeon University, G&T Bank, Danamon, CyberAgent Inc.

Information Not Available

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