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

The compared A10 Networks and F5 solutions aren't in the same category. A10 Networks is ranked #3 in STD , and holds a 30.0% mindshare in the category. F5 is ranked #2 in ADC , with an average rating of 8.4, and holds a 15.0% mindshare. Additionally, 75% of A10 Networks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 83% of F5 users who would recommend it.

A10 Networks Thunder SSLi

Read 3 A10 Networks Thunder SSLi reviews

229 Views
102 Comparison Views

75% willing to recommend

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Man...

Read 120 F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) reviews

8,171 Views
6,832 Comparison Views

83% willing to recommend

A10 Networks Thunder SSLi

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Man...

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between A10 Networks Thunder SSLi and F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Broadcom, Fidelis Security, A10 Networks and others in SSL/TLS Decryption.

To learn more, read our detailed SSL/TLS Decryption Report (Updated: October 2024).

Buyer's Guide

SSL/TLS Decryption

October 2024

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Helped 816,406 peers since 2012

Categories and Ranking

A10 Networks Thunder SSLi

Average Rating

9.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

SSL/TLS Decryption (3rd)

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Man...

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

120

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

Kenneth Murray

Data Center Network Engineer at BRIDGETON PUBLIC SCHOOLS

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.

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Richard Polyak

Sr. Architect at NBC Universal

Reduces maintenance downtime and has a strong user community

The advice I would give to others who are looking to implement F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager is this: look at their user knowledge base first to see if the solution truly fits what you need. On a scale of one to 10, I would give F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager a nine.

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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."

"It is the perfect solution when you have high workloads in your IT environment."

"We plan to create packages of services from which it will be possible to build comprehensive tailor-made solutions."

"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 supports APIs and virtual additions for cloud and VMware."

"Where we are finding the AWS version helpful is when we are trying to scale up new environments. AWS Marketplace helps here a lot."

"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."

"It is very intuitive, easy to deploy, and manage."

"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."

More F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) pros

Cons

"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."

"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."

"I would like them to have a better UI (better universal design)."

"The pricing of the product is a bit too high."

"Cloud native integration should be provided."

"The user interface of F5 BIG-IP LTM is old and could improve."

"I think the logging could be improved."

"I would like to see improvement in the manageability and easier setup."

"The logging features are too limited and do not give us a solid understanding of what's happening."

"Logging is a bit of a problem. Logging and monitoring are only in plain text. You have to search and you have to know what you are searching for to find anything. So of course, monitoring and getting alerts for abnormal situations is hard. There are no tools for monitoring and alerts"

"The SharePoint SSO part has some room for improvement."

More F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our licensing costs, yearly, are just under $15,000. Your initial cost of acquisition is obviously going to be more than $15,000..."

"We always pay for support. Any organization of our size who doesn't is asking for problems."

"When you purchase the equipment, you purchase the licensing and warranty. It's all fairly standard. We haven't been caught with anything surprising."

"The price of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is too high."

"It is a bit expensive product. Kemp Loadmaster is much cheaper than F5. Its licensing is on a yearly basis. It can be for one year or three years."

"F5 is expensive."

"Compared to using open-source products, the prices are not cheap."

"It is sort of a commodity product. A load balancer is a load balancer. What will be, at the end of the day, the cheapest option or have the best performance, that is what it will come down to."

"The price of F5 BIG-IP LTM could improve."

"This is a high-priced tool. We pay for its license yearly."

"Security should be involved in any base license. When you bring on F5, you only have default license. Then, the ASM product license has to be purchased. It would be great if F5 could include the ASM in the base license."

More F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

19%

Government

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

14%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

Ask a question

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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.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for F5 BIG-IP?

I use the solution for load balancing.

See all answers

What do you like most about F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)?

The solution is robust and reliable.

See all answers

Comparisons

Symantec SSL Visibility Appliance vs A10 Networks Thunder SSLi

Compared 58% of the time

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Fortinet FortiADC vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

Compared 18% of the time

NetScaler vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

Compared 13% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

Compared 8% of the time

HAProxy vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

Compared 7% of the time

VMWare Avi Load Balancer vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

Compared 7% of the time

More F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

A10 Networks Thunder SSLi

November 2024

Download A10 Networks Thunder SSLi product report

Buyer's Guide

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

November 2024

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) report

Download F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) product report

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

A10 Networks

Overview

SSL encrypted traffic is growing, rendering most security devices ineffective.
Gain visibility into encrypted traffic with SSL Insight and stop potential threats.

F5 BIG-IP LTM optimizes the speed and reliability of your apps via both network and application layers. Using real-time protocol and traffic management decisions based on app and server and connection management conditions, and TCP and content offloading, BIG-IP LTM dramatically improves application and infrastructure responsiveness. BIG-IP LTM's architecture includes protocol awareness to control traffic for the most important applications. BIG-IP LTM tracks the dynamic performance levels of servers and delivers SSL performance and visibility for inbound and outbound traffic, to protect the user experience by encrypting everything from the client to the server.

BIG-IP LTM provides enterprise-class Application Delivery Controller (ADC). You get granular layer 7 control, SSL offloading and acceleration capabilities, and advanced scaling technologies that deliver performance and reliability on-demand. The highly optimized TCP/IP stack combines TCP/IP techniques and improvements in the latest RFCs with extensions to minimize the effect of congestion and packet loss and recovery. Independent testing tools and customer experiences show LTM's TCP stack delivers up to a 2x performance gain for users and a 4x increase in bandwidth efficiency.

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.

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We monitor all SSL/TLS Decryption reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.