F5 BIG-IP [Private Offer Only] Reviews

I work with F5 and my primary focus at the moment is F5 BIG-IP [Private Offer Only]. I have been a customer of F5 many times, have been a partner, and have even been part of F5 Professional Services consultancy, not directly, but through a contractor company.

The features I find most valuable in F5 BIG-IP [Private Offer Only] are the iRules, which are very powerful, and the flexibility to be able to script capabilities. The WAF is good, even though they have to add some AI to it. The WAF and iRules are very good.

The new features are ones that I find very useful, such as the AS3 automation, which is the declarative API. They are even making a new one in version 21 that has new features including control plane multi-threading, where you have the control plane on many CPUs, something F5 finally had to do after so many years.

TMOS is the operating system for F5 BIG-IP [Private Offer Only] and is very complex, to be honest. However, if you use automation such as the declarative API, it becomes much easier. If you use AS3 automation, which is the declarative API for automating virtual server creation and so on, it becomes very friendly for automation, so you do not have to log in to F5 BIG-IP [Private Offer Only]; you do everything through automation.

HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 support is something that definitely could be improved in F5 BIG-IP [Private Offer Only].

I mean HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 protocol support, as well as security for them too. For F5 BIG-IP [Private Offer Only] to have better support for them would include load balancing, but also better WAF (Web Application Firewall) support for these two protocols.

Improving the mentioned HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 support and the GUI would be beneficial. If they improve those things and add machine learning and AI, I want it to have some kind of AI on the box because everyone is going to AI, and they have to add some AI security to be able to check the traffic using AI models.

HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 protocol support, AI, the GUI to be changed, and inline AI where the device downloads pre-built AI models from a SaaS cloud to check the traffic for security is something I think is very needed because using AI models as a replacement for signatures will be better. I think WAF signatures are a thing of the past.

I would also like to see HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 in the future as additional features, and anything else I would improve would definitely include HTTP/2 and HTTP/3.

I have been working with F5 BIG-IP [Private Offer Only] for almost ten years, around eight to nine years.

I face some complex bugs that need a lot of time to be solved, especially with their new hardware such as F5OS-A, R series, and Velos. They have new hardware platforms and they have had a lot of bugs that needed a lot of time to resolve.

Every load balancer has SSL/TLS, but it is good that F5 BIG-IP [Private Offer Only] in the newer version supports TLS 1.3 with new cryptographic algorithms to protect from quantum computing. That is a new and useful feature that perhaps other vendors do not have support for. Being able to have TLS 1.3 with quantum cryptographic algorithms should protect you from quantum computing if someone tries to decrypt your traffic using quantum computers, which is definitely a useful feature.

F5 BIG-IP [Private Offer Only] is the market leader, and I would generally recommend it. I have worked with others such as Citrix NetScaler, which is not a bad product, but the support is awful. F5 support is very good compared to Citrix. Citrix support is very awful. F5 support is better; if you are a big company, you want to call someone and have that person react, the support to react in one or two days maximum, because if you are a big company paying big money, you cannot wait.

From one to ten, I would rate the technical support by F5 at an eight and a half. It was even a nine before, but now they have been having some issues.

The initial setup of F5 BIG-IP [Private Offer Only] is of medium complexity; I would say it is a medium level.

I have been working with F5 BIG-IP [Private Offer Only] for almost ten years, around eight to nine years.

F5 BIG-IP [Private Offer Only] is the market leader, and I would generally recommend it. I have worked with others such as Citrix NetScaler, which is not a bad product, but the support is awful. F5 support is very good compared to Citrix. Citrix support is very awful. F5 support is better; if you are a big company, you want to call someone and have that person react, the support to react in one or two days maximum, because if you are a big company paying big money, you cannot wait.

F5 BIG-IP [Private Offer Only] is expensive; it is very expensive, but they are the leader, so everyone buys F5 BIG-IP [Private Offer Only]. The pricing is not a problem; they just have to improve the platform. The pricing is very expensive.

I have worked with other vendors such as FortiADC and A10; A10 is at the same level, but FortiADC for example was weaker. F5 BIG-IP [Private Offer Only] data plane is very powerful; traffic is processed very quickly. There may be some weakness in HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 support, but I think all vendors at the moment are not very good with HTTP/2 and HTTP/3, to be honest.

F5 BIG-IP [Private Offer Only] is the market leader, and I would generally recommend it. I have worked with others such as Citrix NetScaler, which is not a bad product, but the support is awful. F5 support is very good compared to Citrix. Citrix support is very awful. F5 support is better; if you are a big company, you want to call someone and have that person react, the support to react in one or two days maximum, because if you are a big company paying big money, you cannot wait.

From one to ten, I would rate the technical support by F5 at an eight and a half. It was even a nine before, but now they have been having some issues.

I would rate this review an eight overall.

We use F5 BIG-IP [Private Offer Only] quite a bit. We are migrating from F5 BIG-IP [Private Offer Only] to the R-Series.

We terminate client connections on F5 BIG-IP [Private Offer Only]. We use the SSL profiles on the VIPs for client connections to terminate the client connections.

F5 BIG-IP [Private Offer Only] is an application delivery controller that does what it says on the tin. We don't only use it for our application delivery. We use it as a firewall, we use it as routing, it does a WAF, and it functions beyond just a load balancer. We use a full set of its capabilities.

We use the Application Security Manager, the Advanced WAF as it is called now. We use this for north-south application threats. There is another team that deals with internal threats, but from the outside we use it to secure our websites. It is quite effective.

There is always room for improvement. I am uncertain about integration with any other security. We use F5 BIG-IP [Private Offer Only] as a firewall in the perimeter device as well. I am not sure whether putting all eggs in one basket is a good thing. We are trying to integrate it with the FortiGates as the perimeter firewalls with F5 BIG-IP [Private Offer Only], and then the VXLAN integration.

Automation is the big thing. How do you patch your security at the rate of AI? AI is massively involved in exposing security vulnerabilities and attacks as fast as patches are sent out. We are working on a four-weekly or monthly cadence when it used to be three months, four months, or even six months before a patch might affect us. Keeping up is the hard part.

We have been using this solution for ten years.

Our support for F5 BIG-IP [Private Offer Only] is very good. We have a very good relationship with the team that supports us.

I haven't got much to compare it against. The old technology of the Cisco CSS, Cisco ACE was all command-line driven and quite clunky. F5 BIG-IP [Private Offer Only] is definitely an improvement. I may be biased because I haven't really got anything to compare.

We do use iRules. We work in operations, so it is normally dictated by engineering and the requirements. iRules manipulate the traffic and steer it the right way, and we definitely use them.

We have to have a secure website, so I am not sure about enhanced, but we haven't had a problem with it.

My overall review rating for this solution is nine out of ten.