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A10 Networks Thunder SSLi vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

A10 Networks Thunder SSLi
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
SSL/TLS Decryption (3rd)
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Man...
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
118
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

A10 Networks Thunder SSLi and F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. A10 Networks Thunder SSLi is designed for SSL/TLS Decryption and holds a mindshare of 30.0%, down 32.4% compared to last year.
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM), on the other hand, focuses on Application Delivery Controllers (ADC), holds 15.0% mindshare, down 16.1% since last year.
SSL/TLS Decryption
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
 

Featured Reviews

KM
Jan 16, 2020
Enables our content filter to do its job without any noticeable delay
Its most valuable feature is its ability to do its job accurately, effectively, and very quickly. The amount of traffic that we have going through our system is astounding. We have 6,900 students and about 1,100 staff members. Most of our teachers and staff are connecting through our system. You add to that all the cell phones, the iPads, and all the computers, and then each individual website's connection, that's a lot of traffic in a period of one second. The delay with the SSL decryption turned on is almost unnoticeable. That is great because most SSL decryption solutions — a couple of competitors we did try — their devices crashed as soon as we turned decryption on.
Richard Polyak - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 21, 2022
Reduces maintenance downtime and has a strong user community
Our primary use cases for F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager are high availability for applications and SSL offload certificates F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager helps reduce our downtime for maintenance purposes. It also offers us ease of use for the deployment of certificates onto a central…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Its most valuable feature is its ability to do its job accurately, effectively, and very quickly. The amount of traffic that we have going through our system is astounding... The delay with the SSL decryption turned on is almost unnoticeable."
"With the Thunder SSLi, we're better protected. We can stop use of VPN and proxies. We are better protected against dirty traffic coming back to our schools. Having a secure decrypt zone with the equipment lowers the chances that our security infrastructure could possibly miss an attack."
"We have several proxies in our environment, so we localized internet traffic between these proxies. Instead of getting a really huge proxy box, according to our size, we can use three boxes and share the traffic with A10's load-balancer feature."
"Secure and scalable traffic management solution for applications. Good for bigger environments."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"I have found F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) to be stable."
"It has helped a lot to protect our organization from external attacks, especially XSS or XSRF types of attacks."
"Our experience has been very good, in terms of performance, and securing our application infrastructure."
"Valuable features include Link Controller and Server Load Balancer."
"The v11 clustering is a new technology they have brought in that does not require improvement. They are the leader in it."
"The setup is pretty easy."
 

Cons

"It would be great if it supported SSL operations according to Active Directory users. For example, if we want to bypass one of the servers or a client's internet access for SSL interception, we have to do it according to the IP address. It would be better if we could do it according to the Active Directory username. A10 says they kind of support that but we haven't tested it."
"There is one thing I would like to see changed. In their features for setting things up, there is a templating system that would normally assist clients. However, we had a better time setting up the device either through the command line or through the interface and not using the templates that were pre-installed. So there is room for improvement to the templates for initial installation."
"I would like them to have a better UI (better universal design)."
"I think the logging could be improved."
"The one gap I saw was that pure LBN integration is a little tricky. The insertion of F5 in LBN is a little tricky. They need to work on something, on products by which they can insert F5 in any sort of cloud environment."
"The initial setup can take a long time."
"It would be good to have better traffic and better data. It would be nice to have more granularity to see packets in terms of the header details, the analytics, etc. It would be nice if that was also part of it and to have analytics added to the traffic."
"My only point of contention would be that it is a little pricey."
"Performance: Using the product, applications are jittery.​"
"It reaches a point where scaling is no longer possible."
"The SharePoint SSO part has some room for improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"When you purchase the equipment, you purchase the licensing and warranty. It's all fairly standard. We haven't been caught with anything surprising."
"We always pay for support. Any organization of our size who doesn't is asking for problems."
"Our licensing costs, yearly, are just under $15,000. Your initial cost of acquisition is obviously going to be more than $15,000..."
"The price of F5 BIG-IP LTM could improve."
"It is cheaper than the average on the market."
"I am not aware of the exact cost of the product. However, it is expensive."
"LTM is a good product, but it's expensive. They should make it more competitive because cloud providers offer free load balancing. Cloud providers can't cover all the security aspects of F5, but you get a decent amount of security. Cloud environments are becoming the norm across the IT industry. Many of the larger companies that previously used on-prem infrastructure are switching to the cloud, so companies like Fortinet and Palo Alto are reducing their prices. Otherwise, they can't compete in the cloud."
"This product is costly from a licensing perspective considering its competitors."
"If your IT budget is good, go for it."
"I found F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) an expensive product. The costs would depend on the appliance and infrastructure size. However, my company didn't have to pay extra to use additional features."
"The licensing model of F5 BIG-IP LTM is highly complex. The operation cost of the solution is high. The overall cost is high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Government
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What needs improvement with F5 BIG-IP?
Price is an area of the tool where improvements are required. I want to see CDN capabilities in the product.
 

Also Known As

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

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Klein Independent School District
Riken, TransUnion, Tepco Systems Administration, Daejeon University, G&T Bank, Danamon, CyberAgent Inc.
Find out what your peers are saying about Broadcom, Fidelis Security, A10 Networks and others in SSL/TLS Decryption. Updated: October 2024.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.