F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) Valuable Features
F5 Big-IP Local Traffic Manager has better modular features especially LTM, which according to the clients, is very beneficial. Most of the users opt for a combination of big IP LTM and WAF which helps them to leverage application load balancing and enhance application security many-fold.
View full review »F5's attack signatures and automation are the most valuable features. The disaster recovery capabilities are also excellent. You don't need to do anything. It has automatic failover from production.
SE
reviewer2129115
Senior Network Engineer at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
The most valuable feature of F5 BIG-IP LTM is brand image and recognition and the application delivery controller.
View full review »Buyer's Guide
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
April 2024
Learn what your peers think about F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2024.
768,246 professionals have used our research since 2012.
RP
reviewer1250289
Sr. Architect at a media company with 10,001+ employees
The feature I find the most valuable is the support infrastructure.
View full review »JO
reviewer1706595
Senior Network Engineer at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
The load balancing function, the monitors that you can create, and iRules programmability are most valuable.
View full review »AC
reviewer1739430
Senior Technical Consultant at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
For load balancing, for related solutioning, it is user-friendly. We have a good knowledge base over the F5 knowledge base.
The stability is good.
The solution is scalable.
Technical support and documentation are excellent.
View full review »OD
Orphé DJEDJERO
Design and Conception Engineer at SFR
I am happy with most of the features made available to us through BIG-IP's software and I enjoy using the interfaces (dashboards, etc.).
View full review »RJ
Rakesh Joshi
General Manager at Seriti Resources
F5 is easy to deploy, though more challenging than Kemp. Configuration takes time, but it's stable. It offers features Kemp doesn't provide. For example, there are predefined templates for handling Office 365. You can download them for automatic configuration.
View full review »We have used it to link two or three servers and make them communicable from outside. It works well as a load balancer.
View full review »The most valuable feature is iRules.
View full review »KS
Kuber Shukla
Senior Security Specialist at Tech Mahindra Limited
There are a lot of good things this solution has, including:
The LTM module helps to load balance the traffic among the internal web server in our case using round robin and least connection method.
The ASM module prevents web attacks and protects our web servers.
The irule feature is used to write these irules to redirect the traffic or sometimes prevent automated attacks such as through BOTs where the distinction between real and fake users becomes increasingly tricky.
Its virtual servers have the option to configure other things to increase the speed of serving requests like the use of a persistence profile.
View full review »KV
reviewer1897710
Principle Architect (retired recently) at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
The F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager features I find the most valuable are the load balancing, the rest of the cell offload capabilities, and some of their security future capabilities.
View full review »MI
Mohamed Intissar
Tax Department at a government with 10,001+ employees
I like that F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is a product that comes with valuable features, but what stands out from all features is load balancing.
View full review »TH
Thomas Hejula
Senior IT Engineer at Lumeris
- iRules
- Simplicity
I was able to simply and quickly set up the WAF rules and security, and also set up easily complex policies and rules which gave me some great features to redirect. So, I had to integrate API Gateway into our WAF, because we're a healthcare company, and we have to maintain security. Therefore, they didn't want to have public endpoints that had not been inspected. The policy features inside the WAF rules were really easy for me to set up. What I thought was going to take me two months, I had done in about two weeks. Between Googling and F5 having great information, so instead of using traditional iRules, I used a policy thing that they recommended. It was much simpler and cleaner, and seemed to execute faster. It was a great feature.
The configuration and implementation of what I thought I was going to have to do was a lot simpler than I expected it to be. That was a plus.
View full review »The solution provides good application delivery and network optimization features. We use all the features provided by the solution. It fulfills our requirements. All our infrastructure is set up with high availability through hardware and virtualization in all flavors and levels based on the customer requirements.
View full review »KO
reviewer1573344
Network Engineer at a media company with 1,001-5,000 employees
We are using almost all of the features. What we like best about this solution is its stability. It is extremely stable.
View full review »EF
Eric Foote
Managing Director at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
- Flexibility
- Capacity
- Reputation in the market.
The most valuable feature of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager is that it allows you to manipulate things. Now, manipulation here is in the sense that you can do whatever you want to do in the solution using something called iRule, which is a programming interface for F5. So, this is something I find to be extremely useful when compared to other vendors.
View full review »The load-balancing features are great. You can do several different types, depending on the application.
The solution offers good automation.
It's stable and reliable.
The solution can scale.
The setup is pretty easy.
They offer good technical support.
View full review »The performance of the product is great.
We enjoy its overall ease of use.
It's relatively easy to configure. There's a certain level of fine-grain configurations that you can perform.
The solution is very stable.
We've found the product to be quite scalable.
The initial setup is very straightforward.
View full review »The solution's valuable features are flexibility, stability, security, and performance.
View full review »The combination of ADC and WAN is the most valuable feature.
View full review »I like the combination of ADC and WAN in the solution. F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) could be a bit better in regards to the pricing.
View full review »KL
Kok KeongLow
Head of Presales at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
BIG-IP LTM's most valuable feature is that it allows you to seamlessly add more servers without impacting your application's configuration. It's also very flexible because you can use iRules to manipulate the traffic.
View full review »LTM's most valuable features include application security, data collection, and parameter-level rules.
View full review »F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) improves the resilience and quality of the application itself, the speed and the user experience for the application. The data that the users need from the application is actually acquired faster. So, it provides faster data acquisition.
It also provides lower latency.
View full review »The capability is at a seven or eight out of ten.
View full review »OD
Oren Dror
Security IT Manager at IFAT Group
The security on offer from the solution is very good.
The stability is excellent.
View full review »BE
Bachir Elsitt
Network Security Engineer at Data Consult
Protection of published website. When using ASM, we can have a layer 7 protection in order to prevent the website from attacks.
View full review »YA
Yudi Aritonang
Co-Founder and CEO at PT Eugenea Kreasi Utama
The most valuable feature of this solution is IP Intelligence.
It is very powerful and has good performance. It meets our requirements.
The features included are more than enough.
View full review »MA
reviewer1721355
Security Technical Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
The value and impact of using F5 BIG-IP LTM for application delivery control in our organization are significant. It ensures the availability, stability, and reliability of our applications, ultimately contributing to smooth operations and enhanced user experience.
View full review »The most valuable feature of F5 BIG-IP LTM is it helps our delivery team to make policies and rules for application.
View full review »PM
Priyesh MP
Solution Architect at Softcell Technologies Limited
It is a stable product from a stable company. Recently, they have been more focused on security as well.
View full review »SA
Satish Agarwal
Lead Engineer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
As an IT developer, mostly I use load balancing for the traffic. Currently, it's distributing the load perfectly, as per my understanding of our requirements.
It's definitely scalable and is stable as well.
The initial setup is not complex, and the technical support is fine.
View full review »AR
reviewer1552263
Sr. SAP Portfolio Architect at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
One of the greatest things about F5 Load Balancer is that it provides additional capability for handling huge workloads and routing them to an SAP or non-SAP application. It is capable of supporting a large amount of user workload and application connectivity workload. This was the main reason why we chose F5.
View full review »RS
Robert Smith
DevOps Manager at TaxACT
- The detail that you have available when setting up iRules.
- How the traffic routing works in F5.
- Easy administration
- A lot of features
- Scriptable (iRules and REST API)
I have some experience with other load balancing providers. The BIG-IP’s interface is more intuitive than other GUIs. It is well structured, not overloaded, and does not have too many gimmicks.
View full review »LM
reviewer1505658
Sr. Network Engineer at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is very easy to use, from SSL Management to enabling, disabling loads, applications, systems, and monitoring. Overall the solution keeps our application functional from a client's perspective 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We have rules that are set up to detect if any part of the application in one of the nodes is not functioning correctly, having a problem, or is experiencing any sort of error, it will automatically pull it out of the load balance bundle and alerts somebody to go take action and at the address. This means our clients are happy because they are not receiving strange errors because somebody's typed something somewhere incorrectly and we are happy because our uptime is reliable.
View full review »MS
reviewer1433067
Director of Network Strategies and Technologies at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
The solution is very powerful.
The product is quite flexible.
The horizontal scalability that is on offer is very good as well.
View full review »GJ
Guojun Jin
Staff Engineer at UbiNavi
Still not clear why our IT decided to switch to F5 BIG-IP after two years experience. It appears as if there may be some advantage (possibly) related to security concerns (more secure?).
View full review »KO
reviewer1573344
Network Engineer at a media company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Our deployment is not very complicated, from my point of view. The HTTP and HTTPS load balancing mechanisms are the core functionality for me. I have done things like created new virtual servers, changed the load balancing, and looked at statistics, but I have not looked into the security features, API gateways, and other features because that is the responsibility of other departments. As a pure network engineer, I think the box is performing very well.
I've worked a little bit with iRules and it is amazing. As long as you know what you're doing, it does everything you want it to do.
View full review »The most valuable feature of F5 BIG-IP LTM is the operating system. It is nicely designed and orchestrated. The solution has all the features that are necessary for medium to large-sized enterprises would need to ensure their application are available throughout the globe. The LTM and DTM features combined provide a great service to organizations for presenting around the world which includes load balancing.
If there are any problems with the applications during integration they can be managed well with the solutions' ability to provide visibility.
View full review »ST
reviewer1633455
Director at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
iRules are very valuable. In addition to that, the way profiles are depicted by the LTM is also very good.
View full review »SS
ShivSingh
Sr. Advisor at CVS Health
- Cloud templates
- Declarative onboarding
- API service gateway
- Policy-based security management.
I have Big-IP change and control manager, which give me the roll back option. Therefore, I can view the last things which happened on the device.
View full review »The multi-data center is perfect.
View full review »The most valuable feature of the F5 BIG-IP LTM solution is load balancing.
View full review »It is stable.
View full review »EZ
Network8776
Network Presales Manager at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
F5 BIG-IP is used with good applications and functions as an application firewall with additional features.
I've been building F5 BIG-IP. We will not use any feature or any service unless there is a business case and there is a need for business implementation.
JW
ChiefSecd99d
Chief Security Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
- Central point of entry for our user base.
- User authentication
- PPI
- Integration with our website.
GS
Georges Samaha
Security Consultant at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
iRule: It's a great feature that helped us multiple times have an advantage over competition (during PoCs) performing some traffic control/management functions that are not supported out of the box. Use Case: One client was deploying a new web app, where video/chat Traffic is configured over the SOCKS protocol. We used iRule to disable the WAF Inspection when a SOCKS protocol packet passed through (because it is not supported), and enable the WAF Inspection for all other URLs on the same Web page. (No other vendor in our region was able to provide that.)
Appliance Performance: One of the main advantages we always have over competition is in hardware performance, where the smallest F5 appliances compete with competitors’ medium to high-end appliances, while high-end devices can sit in the datacenter without risking performance degradation.
View full review »The most valuable feature is the F5 LTM (Local Traffic Manager). This is the part of the product most organisations will be using most. It provides the core functionality to be able to load balance services and the means and the intelligence to be able to load balance based on advanced logic, e.g., TCL scripting.
The F5 GTM/BIGIP DNS (Global Traffic Manager) is another valuable feature. This feature allows for DNS load balancing, which means that high availability and load sharing can be done across services locally, as well as across datacenters with advanced capabilities.
View full review »I like the combination of ADC and WAN.
View full review »MO
reviewer1788060
Senior Network and Security Specialist at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
BIG-IP can do anything. It's like a Swiss Army knife.
View full review »SM
reviewer1277325
Specialist in Communication and Network Security at a security firm with 11-50 employees
The iRule feature is very useful for inspecting HTTP. Sometimes, we use it for modifying the headers of the HTTP.
View full review »UP
reviewer1448481
Network Security Specialist at a energy/utilities company with 5,001-10,000 employees
F5 has many capabilities for load balancing and web application firewall features.
PK
Solutiond87c
Solutions Architect at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees
We had a problem where customers were doing transactions in our system, pulling health records, and the system had to be shut down for maintenance. Unfortunately, we wouldn't know that the system was being shut down, and we would lose that information. Then, the customer would get upset.
Using the F5, we were able to build rules to detect that the shutdown was occurring, then begin to route people elsewhere, so we didn't have any outages or downtime. This made customers a lot happier, and it made us a lot happier.
View full review »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.
Another feature that we like is how they integrate nicely with the Oracle PeopleSoft application, and since that's one of my main focuses, I really like that they have the built-in integration.
View full review »LF
ipmplspr538920
Security Governance at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Along with load balancing, we perform a lot of packet inspections, URL rewriting, and SSL interceptions via iRule.
View full review »RM
Rana Mohamed
Product Manager at MCS
Bandwidth optimization and capacity awareness of the bandwidth are valuable features. Its video streaming capabilities are also very useful.
PK
PradeepKumar11
IT Manager at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The most valuable feature is customization.
View full review »I've found Traffic Learning to be the most valuable feature in this solution.
View full review »We are using the Big-IP, LTM, ASM, and GTM modules.
- The Local Traffic Manager (LTM) provides a simple low balance and SSL decryption, in addition to some TCP parameters, for incoming and outgoing traffic to redirect appropriate traffic patterns to appropriate servers.
- We are using Application Security Manager (ASM) as a web application firewall, where there is a security signature to avoid a web level breach.
- We are using global traffic manager (GTM). Its main use cases is for application firewall modules, therefore we are not using it yet, but we are going to implement it for DDoS protection on some of our web services.
MK
reviewer1465533
Channel Development Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
For BIG-IP, I think the most requested functionality is its NetFlow balancing and traffic balancing, as well as its secure access and its optimization of access to applications. The solution is the most requested by our customers, so it's an important direction for our business.
View full review »TA
Thameem Ansari
Senior solution architect at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
The most valuable feature is the iRule.
View full review »JC
Joshua Cruz
Associate Systems Engineer at Frontline Education
The most valuable feature is being able to manipulate the iRules, so you can send traffic to different avenues.
View full review »The most valuable feature is the proxy. It is set up as a reverse proxy in front of the server. This feature allows me to do anything with the traffic, such as inspecting it. Most other solutions don't provide you with this capability.
This solution allows you to write scripts that can run on F5 devices. These scripts can be used to monitor traffic and look for keywords, and then perform a corresponding action such as blocking or allowing the request, or giving the user an error.
Big IP supports load balancing from network layer four up to layer seven.
View full review »The application firewall is a very good feature.
View full review »CS
reviewer1352181
Associate CSA at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Its user interface is very easy to use on a day-to-day basis. It is very user-friendly.
View full review »JU
Jonathan Urrea
Security Professional Services at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
The anti-bot protection is very good. They are able to see bots from their system quite well. It has helped our customers to filter real traffic from fake and allows the real traffic to access the application. With the profile provided, you can block many new scans and scripts that are constantly generating traffic to their web service.
View full review »I found the most valuable feature to be the SSL VPN.
View full review »GV
Girish Vyas
Architect - Cloud Serviced at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
I have been working on the LTM and GTM lines. Both of the products are awesome. I would consider the Wide IP and ZoneRunner features of GTM extremely useful.
For the overall product, I would say provisioning is a good feature. There are other modules, which are good and people might want to try, such as APM and ASM. They are used for firewall and SSL VPN.
View full review »
LTM: Load balancing, SSL offloading, iRules, iApp,
View full review »
KN
reviewer1483797
Service Delivery Engineer - Network Security Lead at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
The web application firewall feature is the most valuable and useful feature. It is a leading industry product when it comes to load balancing.
Its user interface is very simple. There isn't a steep learning curve. When we initiate someone to F5, they start using it quickly.
View full review »NH
reviewer1480176
CTO at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
The main reason that we suggest this product to our clients is the great integration with other security tools, such as IBM Guardium.
This product is very user-friendly, which is good for customers who have an implementation done by a partner but want to handle administration in-house.
All of the functionality can be achieved from one console.
Even on Hyper-V or a VMware appliance, the performance is very good when you use it as a proxy or a web application.
The documentation is very good.
View full review »RG
technica696483
Technical Product Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
It has so many features. First of all, it has a full proxy architecture, it has multiple modules. The best feature is the WAF, the web application firewall module. It also has cashing type capabilities. It has all kinds of load-balancing algorithms based on your IT requirements.
So the WAF and load balancing. Both are core features of BIG-IP.
In every environment, you have a Web application firewall, you have internet firewalls. Then, traffic comes into your datacenter so that you have datacenter firewalls. F5 has everything.
It provides first-tier firewalling, for you application. And it provides server load-balancing, it provides optimization, and it provides a proxy feature, where your users cannot directly access your server. It acts as a fully proxy architecture. It has client-side and server-side connections, both, and they're separate.
It also has an AVR feature: application, visibility, and recording. It's good for customers looking for what is actually happening in their network and where the latency is. If I'm using iDirect, the bank branch is connecting to my core banking application, but if the clients are finding that the application is slow, it has TCP LAN and WAN optimization features. It has has caching.
View full review »TB
reviewer1429230
Solutions Architect - Telecom & Network Infrastructure at a non-tech company with 501-1,000 employees
The load balancing aspect is valuable to us.
View full review »The most helpful thing is that it's open-source. It's very easy to program and customize.
View full review »JC
JackChen3
Works at FiSC
Valuable features include Link Controller and Server Load Balancer with cloud support and application enhancement security.
View full review »I really like the ease of use of it in general. If I were to choose one in particular, perhaps it would be the iRule feature. It’s a really versatile tool.
View full review »MM
reviewer1527075
Lead Network Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
F5 BIG IP is a rock-solid solution. It's a very good solution.
I am very satisfied with the quality of this product.
There is a lot of documentation available.
I'm not very familiar with the services pattern. I am still exploring the features of this solution.
I am just working with a single application, which we need to publish. I don't know how many services they are using, and what kind of services they operate.
View full review »SR
Sanja Rakic
Security Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
I am very satisfied with the product overall.
There is never a big number of false positives or false negatives. That's the most valuable aspect of the product.
The solution is very easy to use and easy to understand. It's quite an intuitive system.
The user interface and GUI are very good.
I find the product to be very stable. I've supported customers for two years and haven't really had an issue with the solution.
View full review »SP
SaurabhPal
Technical Specialist - Network & Security at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
The load balancing is very good.
The tech support is helpful and knowledgeable.
Everything is okay within the solution. It works well.
The product offers pretty good security.
The solution is easy to install. It's a straightforward process.
The interface is excellent.
We've found the product overall to be simple and easy to use.
View full review »- Great load balancing
- Solid OS
- Great support
iRules are so helpful in meeting our complex application’s architecture in case of routing. The requests have to be routed according to the cookies and headers of the host name itself. And also we can log the details, which helps us a lot in troubleshooting.
Using the “repeat” option when creating multiple virtual servers, we are able to create as many virtual IPs as we can as we go. This reduces a lot of configuration time.
View full review »SG
Reviewer702843
Director Technology Solutions with 11-50 employees
It is very intuitive, easy to deploy, and manage.
The solution's capabilities has been most instrumental in supporting our customers. I find it reliable. Once it is configured, and up and running, then there usually is no downtime.
In terms of performance, we have seen a drastic difference without F5, then with it. If you run the same application from users to the server when there wasn't F5, there were delays. With F5, users can see a remarkable performance difference from a qualitative sense.
View full review »YU
reviewer1010148
Security Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
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.
View full review »SS
Sathiya Shunmugasundaram
Site Reliability Engineer at Apple
- Routing
- Load balancing
JC
Director1e9d
Director Public Sector at Smart Tronix Inc
We have found the consistency of the application always being the way it is supposed to be as its most valuable feature.
View full review »LTM.
View full review »JK
reviewer839310
ACT Solutions Architect at a venture capital & private equity firm with 51-200 employees
Beyond the basic balancing function, other modules are important to us. In particular, a web application firewall, application security module, and a remote access module for customer applications.
View full review »- Application security
- Automation
- Orchestration
- It is a fast and available solution.
- The automatic inspection of, e.g., SSL (TLS) traffic.
- It is an easy way to build application policies (graphical).
DDOS protection.
View full review »AF
Technicab017
Technical Team Leader at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
- The web application firewall.
- The configuration and integration into the AWS environment was pretty easy.
LTM is a full-reverse proxy, handling connections from clients. The F5 LTM uses Virtual Services (VSs) and Virtual IPs (VIPs) to configure a load balancing setup for a service. We have used this feature in many applications, especially for HTTP and HTTPS.
View full review »
I've checked out the market and I think Big-IP/Viprion is the best ADC your money can buy at the moment. It has the features and innovations that demanding organizations like us desire in an ADC especially for diverse and complex application environments. F5 has a solid offering with its iRules, iControl and iApps and we use its DevCentral portal. We take advantage of the integration with both Eclipse and .NET/Visual Basic which is a nice plus.
View full review »
SB
reviewer1418577
Senior IT Architect at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
The most valuable features are the WAF and the big IP.
View full review »SN
Develope0fe0
Developer at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
- Load balancing
- Being able to adjust headers.
- Request response headers.
- Patching issues in the load balancer that we don't want in the application layer.
JM
reviewer1360833
Technology Analyst at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
One of the best features of the solution is the operating system. Additionally, it is easy to use and has plenty of features.
View full review »- LTM for balancing
- ASM for WAF
Most important is that it stops very common attacks which can be performed by a simple hacker, and up to the advanced level.
View full review »Buyer's Guide
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
April 2024
Learn what your peers think about F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2024.
768,246 professionals have used our research since 2012.