In my experience, Alteon is very dynamic software. They keep integrating new features that sometimes break our production, but we use clustered systems, so we can test those software releases. However, sometimes they take a while to reach us. We have had to work with Radware to remedy issues on their side that they have verified. On the other hand, they have been very proactive in remedying those problems. We have solved some critical issues within a month, but the release verification channel requires some updates. 

The support channel is also an issue. Moving through tiered support can be challenging at times. Even when I go through the authenticated portal where I have registered my devices with their serial numbers and all known details, they ask to verify the specified device. I have already included that in the ticket support system.

I would like to see more educational and training sessions. Other OEMs offer free courses and hands-on labs on new technologies and features, which we find useful. The WAF solution requires more training. 

Additional educational components like videos would be beneficial.

Alteon's user interface could be improved. F5's user interface is more user-friendly than Radware's, but Radware's hardware performs better. 

Alteon's user interface and usability can be improved by providing a more modern and streamlined design and focusing on simplifying workflows in the UI.

Customer support could be better. The resolution time could be faster. 

Multiple software bugs exist. Most of the time, they're issues with Radware's patching. The organization has a vulnerability and penetration team attempting to upgrade the system to version n minus one. If we have deployed the software to the n-minus-one range, the device isn't performing well because it's already in the testing version.

Version compatibility is a critical issue. If a vulnerability team or penetration team suggests you upgrade your device or server to the n-minus-one range once we are deployed, that's an issue. 

We get alerts in two formats: graph and decimal. The graph format is a good one, but it's not so easy to debug and prioritize issues. 

Integration with cloud services could be improved. Every now and then, we need engagement to address challenges with cloud integrations.

There is room for improvement in reducing the number of false positives I receive. We could benefit from more configuration options to avoid these false positives, which can be overwhelming for a security analyst. It can be a bit difficult for a security analyst to go back and understand why a particular service was stopped. The false positives that I received can be a bit complex in nature.

It is a fairly complete service and it is difficult for me to think of what can be improved. A feature that I would like to see included in the next version might be better analysis when working with crypt issues. Right now, it is very manual; you load it into Alteon and it runs. It would be interesting to see a more dynamic process.

The integrated application protection could be better. It works well overall, but the reporting isn't great, and the GUI is somewhat quirky. We had to have Java at first, but now we don't need to have it anymore. It's still a little clunky. I also wish the updates went a little easier. When you upload a new code to it, there are some optional boxes that you need to uncheck. You'll waste an hour doing it, but it does nothing.  

We took a training class because only those who work for Radware know how to do this out of the gate. It's fine once we got the hang of it. There are lots of options, and every technology has its learning curve. 

We don't integrate anything with it because most applications don't integrate with Radware. If it were F5, we could integrate it. We can integrate F5 with practically anything that integrates with a load balancer, but that's not the case with Alteon. 

If you get the D Line, you can use some of the more advanced reporting features that come standard. The reporting on our current version is atrocious. It doesn't have anything unless you buy the license. It has a lot of data, but the reporting could be a little.

There are a few areas of improvement. It can be improved by combining the web application firewall (WAF) facility. 

The sandbox feature should be there. We have previously used an RA Network product for load balancing. They have a feature called Sandbox, but that feature is not there in Radware Alteon. This feature helps us to improve performance and security for application delivery.

Its GUI can be improved. Its GUI is a little old. 

We are based in India, but we get better support in other time zones. If Radware can establish a bigger support center in India so that we get support in Indian time, that would be helpful. In the international time zones, we get perfect support, but during the Indian time zone, we face a little bit of difficulty. There is a lot of waiting time. The turnaround time is also high during the Indian time zone, but during the international time zones, we get immediate support.

The scalability and reliability of the product are very good. Not much improvement is required there, but some security features can be improved.

Radware should work on the vulnerabilities part. There are third-party security solutions that do the security vulnerability assessment (VA). The assessment part needs to be worked on and improved. There should be more solutions. If any issue comes up and if any vulnerability is reported, the Radware team should do an R&D on that and work on that. They should give the solution to the customer.

Everything else is perfect. We are not facing any issues with the product.

I would like the solution to display and help visualize the reference map more easily. I would also like to better understand where queries come from and know which users are consulting the application, along with which app.

I would also like the next version of Alteon to include better traffic monitoring within the Vision feature.

Their support can be better. The Radware management is very proactive. We can connect to anybody in Radware Management in India. We can even connect with the MD of Radware India. However, their lower level staff should be more proactive towards the customers.

In terms of features, we have had issues with SSL in version 5208, and we asked them to improve it on the SSL front. They have improved the new one. Currently, we are using 6024. In this version, SSL integration and the integration layer are a lot more simplified and secure. This was missing in the earlier version, but in the new version, it is simplified and resolved. In the earlier version, firmware upgrades also used to take slightly more time, whereas, in the new version, there are no issues at all.

It really seems to us that Alteon meets expectations. It is not a solution that needs a high level of expertise. Although certain functions can become complex, only a minimum level of knowledge is needed.

Recently, our team was talking about the things you can customize in Alteon and the level of programming that doing so demands. I would like to see more information on how to customize the programming and troubleshoot.

We are in the process of updating our version of the solution, so judging what should be improved is difficult. But in some cases, the visualization takes a while, especially for mapping issues. I don't know if that issue will be corrected in the updated version, but that is an area where it could be improved.

I would like to see future enhancements in security, specifically in threat protection. That would definitely make it a 10 out of 10.

The solution could be more open to additional third-party add-ons being integrated into it.

I know they are working on it, however, I would like to see an improved community presence, similar to the one for their main competitor, F5. There are forums with questions and answers from customers, which is currently lacking for Alteon. More materials are difficult to find in the network, so increasing community and documentation would be beneficial.

Maybe there are a couple of things that didn't work very well. You kind of have the same build and different build for load balancers. It can create some issues. We faced issues where we needed to have some kind of the same balance in different environments. That happened with F5. However, in Radware, you can do it when we move to production and we need to change the balance there. Different environments should be able to have some balance to be completely isolated. That's something that they could really improve to make it really, really isolated.

We’d like the solution to include more security features in the standard license.

The interface implementation can be improved. If any features of the current version need to be upgraded, such as those related to net flow, we need to reboot the system properly. We also need to be able to upgrade any Radware updates related to the version.

Radware Alteon could improve the troubleshooting from the command line interface, they could do a better job making it easier.

The reverse proxy piece is a little bit complicated. If the reverse proxy were easier to implement, that would help.

We've developed a lack of trust in the product because it sometimes behaves unexpectedly. Some issues are not resolved even after troubleshooting multiple times and then we have to reboot the device before it can be resolved. The solution could be more robust. The GUI should be improved because it's old and very traditional. One of our concerns is that Radware is not going to provide us with a free trial demo license so that we can install the product in our VM for our engineers to check, troubleshoot and study the product. 

The service could be improved by better customer support. 

They could also introduce much-needed cybersecurity as well as governance and tax reporting features.

I have worked with Big IP F5. It is a veteran solution that is more stable and has more resources. Big IP F5 has a virtual hub in the community with a lot of resources and already-made scripts that can be used for free. Radware Alteon has a community portal, but the community portal does not have a place to find scripts. It would be great if they could be transparent and deploy a community where their users can share the scripts.

Radware LinkProof’s customer support could be improved.

The user interface can be improved.

The solution lacks HA configuration. In comparison, Alteon has a better HA configuration. Plus, the 30.5 version and 30.0 version of Alteon have some differences in relation to the HA configuration.

The HA configuration feature is important as it enables a failover with a cluster of more than LinkProof.

I would like this solution to have an integration tool that will convert configuration from other software, into readable values for this product during implementation. 

I would also like there to be more filtering features added to this product. 

I would like to see the loading documentation improved. 

We recently had a problem with the table's Obsolete ARP which was observed by the support team. It would be good to diagnose and solve this problem with a patch since it is not documented that it will be solved in later updates. The implementation of this service has been expanding to more of our clients, it is rare that we need to contact Radware support and even more rarely a call in real-time but we have found few technicians who give us support in Spanish, we could attend to the problems much faster if language barriers weren't an issue.

I'd like to see some improvement in performance.

I'd like to see something more provided in terms of scalability because there's a limit on the throughput and it would help if scalability could be based on customer requirements.

With a good configuration and a good understanding of the application, you can have very good integration with the web application firewall and Radware application. However, it isn't easy. We need to do a trial and try a bunch of settings. The integration process could be a little bit easier and smoother. They need to improve the processes surrounding it. We need to be able to integrate more effectively with the perimeter firewall due to the fact that, if you have many transactions that try to attack the web application, you might have a drop in transactions in the firewall.

We've tried to do some configurations with WebSocket and have had a lot of issues. 

You need to have pretty good internal knowledge of the solution.

For a migration from F5 to Radware, the conversion of certain features is challenging :

1. From F5 ASM policies to Radware Appwall policies, we had to require support from professional services although the F5 ASM policy was basic.

2. Radware does not seem to support TLS extensions in the client_hello therefore migration of F5 scripts that was handing sessions with TLS extensions is a challenge.

3. overall migration of F5 scripts and specific configuration like profiles is a challenge

With the example above a radware conversion tool that would migrate scripts and configuration or from other vendor to Radware would be a real asset. Support of TLS extension would facilitate deployment with that scenario as well.

I'd like to see more customizations on the dashboard. 

Support is an area that needs improvement. They need to have better response times.

With self-service, we can use a lot of the features on our own but some of the features didn't work and nothing was done about it. We stopped using it because the application failed. We tried to improve some processes but we still got a lot of false positives. We tried to work with the vendor to fix it but it didn't work out.

False positives are a big issue for all of the WAF vendors. No one is 100% okay, it requires a lot of monitoring and fine-tuning. But the reason that I didn't work is because some of the services didn't work as I expected and they didn't fix it. They didn't give me answers to some of the issues that we raised again. So we weren't so happy. So we decided to look at other vendors that would please our stockholders but Coronavirus postponed our plans. 

I have worked in this industry for a long time and I think there are benefits of using a WAF. It requires a lot of understanding of the product.

Load balancing needs improvement. It needs better integration. I heard f5 works as a DNS operator which is not available in this solution. It would be better if that was implemented. 

Support is very important because if we get good support, we'll be able to sell and supply more numbers.

Sophos and Cisco they have very good support, that's why they're able to sell large numbers as compared to Radware.

The GUI needs to be improved. Right now, the solution isn't so user-friendly.

I would like for the load balancing to work with premier and the cloud, a mix of premium and cloud.

The ease of use is a must for improvement, some areas are way too complicated without need, and they are confusing users.

Also, sometimes updates to trending vulnerabilities are a bit late.

Marketing of the product.

• Needs to improve in automation, surge protection, DNS automation.
• There are no options to name basic configurations.
• SMS alerts, reporting alerts require some automation.
• Improvement is needed for live traffic monitoring in dashboard, live traffic tracking.
• It needs automated traffic capture and performance tasks, as per script.

Radware LinkProof's marketing efforts need improvement to raise awareness about its capabilities and compete effectively in the market.