F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) is a high-performance, full-proxy network security solution designed to protect networks and data centers against incoming threats that enter the network. Built on F5’s industry-leading BIG-IP hardware and software platforms, BIG-IP AFM provides a scalable platform that delivers the flexible performance and control needed to mitigate aggressive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) and protocol attacks before they overwhelm and degrade applications and infrastructure availability.
| Type | Title | Date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Category | Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection | Mar 27, 2025 | Download |
| Product | Reviews, tips, and advice from real users | Mar 27, 2025 | Download |
| Comparison | F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) vs Cloudflare | Mar 27, 2025 | Download |
| Comparison | F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) vs Radware DDoS Protection Service | Mar 27, 2025 | Download |
| Comparison | F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) vs Arbor DDoS | Mar 27, 2025 | Download |
| Title | Rating | Mindshare | Recommending | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare | 4.2 | 18.9% | 95% | 74 interviewsAdd to research |
| Cloudflare One | 4.4 | 4.2% | 100% | 20 interviewsAdd to research |
For service providers, BIG-IP AFM IPS does even more, protecting the network edge and performing traffic inspection and protocol adherence for prevalent service provider protocols such as SS7, Diameter, HTTP/2, GTP, SCTP and SIP traffic coming into the network over UDP, TCP, and SCTP.
F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) was previously known as F5 AFM, F5 Advanced Firewall Manager.
City Bank, Ricacorp Properties, Miele, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office
We primarily use the solution to protect and to divide cells. We are not using AFM as a standalone product. We are using AFM with the LTM module, as a module. The main purpose of F5 is to use it as an ADC application to deal with the console.
The DDoS is the solution's most valuable feature.
The support that the product offers is good.
When you buy an F5 as an appliance, you are buying licenses as well. If you buy both LTM and AFM licenses, you can protect your servers in a one-off solution. You don't have to buy another firewall to protect your servers. It makes security really easy.
The decryption is great.
We aren't using the most recent version. The most recent version is 15. Therefore, there may have been improvements on the solution we're not aware of.
The should add, if they aren't already going to, some features surrounding location awareness, station awareness and segregation of users. I'm not sure of which version supports these items and which port version doesn't. However, I hope they will continue to develop out the product to ensure they are included.
In order to overcome some of the problems in the industry, I would like to see the solution offer a hardware device with strong ASICs, and a stand-alone AFM tool to prevent attacks.
I've been using the solution for two years or so now.
The solution is pretty stable. If you do happen to find a bug, they will provide you with a patch to solve the issue. You can also go to their website where they will list all of the bugs that are associated with each version. They make it quite transparent.
The solution is scalable because it doesn't depend on hardware. If you run this product on a Viprion, it will be scalable, but not too much. If you run the same product with the same version in a standalone device or on a virtual system, you will use the power and scale of the associated device. It's scalable because you are able to use the same product in different hardware. If you buy a powerful server, and you can scale your F5 as a virtual system easily.
I don't really reach out to technical support, so I wouldn't be able to assess it.
The initial setup is very straightforward. It's not complex. It just takes a few steps and you are finished.
Deployment times vary according to the customer. It needs to be heavily configured. You need to look and you need to observe the behavior of the traffic before you can start configuring everything. It can take time.
In terms of deployment, a powerful deployment actually needs a minimum of two people and one of them needs to speak with the developers because the developers are protecting the source. They will help you to understand the requirements. After the assessment of the requirements, the users can deploy and test the solution.
Maintenence also varies by customer, however, once it is configured, unless you are adding extra servers or adjusting things, there doesn't need to be any maintenance. You can just leave it alone for the most part, so you will only need one person to check on it.
I help my clients deploy the product to their systems.
While some companies have now started to move these devices from on-premises to the cloud, most companies prefer not to do this due to security reasons.
I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. It's a good product, but it may not be the absolute best on the market. Companies should examine NGINX or Palo Alto or others and compare them to see what would work best for their organization.
I would recommend the solution.
It's great for protecting servers from attacks. With controllers plus the firewall, you will only need one device to protect everything.
