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Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Barracuda Web Application F...
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (15th)
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

Barracuda Web Application Firewall and F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Barracuda Web Application Firewall is designed for Web Application Firewall (WAF) and holds a mindshare of 2.0%, down 2.2% 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.
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
 

Featured Reviews

Carlo Bertini - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 8, 2023
Provides strong issue discovery capabilities; enhance the security parameters of web applications and suitable for medium to large enterprises
The Barracuda support depends. Sometimes, they solve the issue promptly, but normally, they are not so fast and are not entirely focused on the problem. For example, sometimes I write many requests on the tickets, asking for one, two, three, or four steps and asking for one to three resolutions. Often, they respond with only one or two. So, I need to push again and again. In other cases, I ask questions and get positive feedback immediately, depending on who the technician is. Barracuda has engineers in the USA, UK, and other countries, so it depends on the technician's location and expertise. So, I am not completely satisfied, but sometimes it is okay, and sometimes it is not okay. So, depending on the region and depending on the person who actually receives these tickets, the technical support could be more knowledgeable. So they may need some training or education for the entire staff to respond immediately without any delays. Often, it happens that they respond because they need to, not because they understand the technology I'm using. So they respond just because it's required by the service level agreement, which specifies a response time within four hours. But this is just a response, not a resolution of the case. Sometimes, the response is within the agreed time, but the solution takes much longer.
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

"There is no one special feature, but the WAF itself is valuable: user-friendly protection against web attacks etc., authentication, reporting, accountability, alerting, and hardened OS."
"The solution offers multiple security features. There are machine learning features and great URL encryption. It also offers multi-protocol support against DDoS attacks."
"Has a good dashboard."
"Barracuda Web Application Firewall provides optimized performance, a user-friendly environment, helpful dashboards, and is simple to use."
"This product gives us visibility into what is going on in two servers, including connections and sessions, real-time alerts, very good reporting, and KPIs. It makes managing security of a critical server very easy, with a friendly GUI."
"One of the strongest points is its robust issue discovery capabilities. Barracuda invests significant efforts in identifying and resolving issues. They have multiple products that work in tandem to perform these checks, which is beneficial because it automates security updates. This is the primary reason I recommend it to my customers."
"The initial setup is easy."
"If an attack is coming continuously, you can ask the device to block it temporarily for two to three minutes. F5 has not provided us with an option to block certain IPs for some time. Barracuda can help you block someone if the source is from a different IP. You can apply the rule to the device and block it for whatsoever time you want. The solution will unblock the IP after the prescribed time as well."
"The feature I find the most valuable is the support infrastructure."
"In terms of stability, it is stable."
"It is the perfect solution when you have high workloads in your IT environment."
"The BIG-IP’s interface is more intuitive than other GUIs. It is well structured, not overloaded, and does not have too many gimmicks."
"Traffic Learning is the most valuable feature."
"Load balancing generally brings high availability and a bigger ability to scale out. In some cases, it brings security, depending on how it is configured."
"Initial setup was straightforward. We were up and running in three hours."
"The capability is at a seven or eight out of ten."
 

Cons

"The incident reporting needs to be improved."
"The policy updates could be improved."
"I have issues with the load balancing of the solution which is slow. The connection pooling in Barracuda also doesn't work. There is an issue when someone needs access to a site quickly. The issue is with HTTPS services. I am not sure if they have changed all these in the solution’s latest version."
"They should improve their features, so they easily compare to the competition."
"An area for improvement in Barracuda Web Application Firewall is attack identification. Other banks identified attacks and tracked logs that the solution wasn't able to identify because of its ready-made rules pre-deployed by the vendor. My organization raised this issue with the technical support team. Another area to improve in Barracuda Web Application Firewall is its service desk. The team resorted to stonewalling because they couldn't accept that a feature was missing in the solution, and it was only after a lot of drilling down that the service desk team accepted that, and would be adding that feature in the future. My organization had to submit a report to the Reserve Bank of India with information on the logs identified and the attacks that happened, and that there was a failure on the part of the Barracuda Web Application Firewall. The Reserve Bank of India conducts a tri-monthly cyber risk audit in all Indian banks. Even smaller banks identified and caught attacks that my organization wasn't able to do, so I was looking into other solutions that competitor banks could be using because Barracuda Web Application Firewall failed to identify some of the attacks."
"There are issues when upgrading firewalls and we experience different issues across customers."
"As most people are aware, the implementation is not easy."
"Sometimes when we put it in action, we have some blogs that appear as false positives. I think that it's improving. Barracuda should minimize false positives."
"Performance: Using the product, applications are jittery.​"
"The solution's hardware quality needs improvement."
"For integration with other AWS environments, we do some tie-ins with some autoscaling groups. This has been challenging for us. We have had issues, where when autoscaling groups scale up, there are some instances which are not showing up in the proper size. Then, those IPs would get registered with F5, but never get released. Therefore, we are ending up with a whole bunch of ghosted IPs."
"The GUI needs improvement."
"I think the logging could be improved."
"Security and Reporting."
"The management interface is unclear, complex, and not concise. I would like a better user interface."
"The user interface could be improved in F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the solution is a little expensive. There is a license for this solution and it can be purchased every one, two, or five years."
"Cost is a bit on the higher side. Big companies can afford it."
"They have competitive pricing."
"While I would have to check on the price of the solution, I feel it to be okay and it matches the market price."
"The solution is based on a licensing model and might be $360 for the hybrid version."
"Our licensing fees are paid annually and the cost is between €600 and €800 (approximately $665.00 to $885.00 USD)."
"The product is inexpensive."
"In my opinion, the product is fairly priced."
"It's not a cheap product, but there are no other replacements for what we do with it."
"F5 is expensive."
"We are on an annual license to use the solution."
"The tool is a bit expensive."
"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."
"I would recommend that the cost be lowered."
"When we purchased additional licenses for our other locations, we received a discount of between 20% and 25%."
"Though functionality is high, its cost can be considered slightly higher than its competitors​."
report
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Educational Organization
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Barracuda Web Application Firewall?
It significantly improved our overall web security posture, addressing intrusions and enhancing control over web URLs in our environment.
What is your primary use case for Barracuda Web Application Firewall?
I use the solution in my company to protect our website.
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

No data available
F5 BIG-IP, BIG-IP LTM, F5 ASM, Viprion, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition , Crescendo Networks Application Delivery Controller, BIG IP
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Oracle, CBS, Pioneer, Hyundai, Publix, Barnes Noble, Calzedonia, Nordstrom, Samsung, Nascar
Riken, TransUnion, Tepco Systems Administration, Daejeon University, G&T Bank, Danamon, CyberAgent Inc.
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs. F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) and other solutions. Updated: September 2020.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.