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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
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (15th)
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

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
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
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is stable and the performance is good."
"The product has fantastic support services."
"I find the solution very stable."
"The volumetric DDoS defense is very good because I had a problem with a lot of volumetric DDoS attacks on my servers. After using Barracuda, those attacks have stopped and all the traffic is going smoothly to my servers and the system is working really well."
"We use Barracuda to protect the application. That's the main feature we use it for."
"The initial setup is easy."
"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 most valuable feature is the rule set."
"We have multiple solutions we can deploy through the F5."
"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."
"Bandwidth optimization and capacity awareness of the bandwidth are valuable features. Its video streaming capabilities are also very useful."
"It is a very good, flexible solution. It helps us to catch up on flaws in our partner solutions on top of its load balancing feature."
"The solution could improve the ease of use, the management could be simplified. Other solutions are easier to use."
"The product is very stable. We put a decent amount of stress on it given our load."
"Currently, it's distributing the load perfectly, as per my understanding of our requirements."
"The most valuable features of the solution are in the area of DDoS and WAF."
 

Cons

"Barracuda Web Application Firewall’s scalability needs improvement."
"The incident reporting needs to be improved."
"The solution needs to leverage some additional features to a broader scale of software-defined networks."
"It is not stable nor mature."
"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."
"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."
"They should improve their features, so they easily compare to the competition."
"If you know nothing about networks, then you can't set it up."
"BIG-IP LTM's sandboxing integration could be improved."
"The user experience for dashboards and reports can be improved. They should make dashboards and the reporting system easier for users. They need to add more reports to the dashboard. Currently, for complicated reports, I have to do the customization. It should have more integration with network firewalls to be able to gather all the information required for traffic management."
"The web interface could be better."
"The analytics should provide insight into latency across various traffic routes and virtual servers."
"It requires a particular skill or training before being able to manage it."
"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."
"I would like to see F-5 implement a regular routing like in other Linux-based devices. When we try and integrate in some complex networks, we have to use some additional routing scenarios from a Layer 3 perspective, then we have some problems. It would be great if this were fixed somehow."
"Needs to provide a visual interface to follow a customer's activity (from client to BIG-IP to SNAT IP to the chosen server, then back). Today, we are still performing packet captures."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is inexpensive."
"For small companies, the price is very expensive because the WAF is an enterprise-level application, not intended for smaller businesses. In my opinion, the price is right for enterprise-level use."
"The product is expensive."
"The price of this solution is okay."
"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."
"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 product pricing was competitive for the value it offers regarding security features."
"This is a high-priced tool. We pay for its license yearly."
"It could be priced a little less, especially on the virtual side. It gets a bit expensive, but you get what you pay."
"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."
"We are on an annual license to use the solution."
"In my view, the cost is somewhat on the higher side. There are discounts available, but I wouldn't say it's overpriced. It's not cheap either, and the value for money is a bit higher from that perspective."
"F5 is expensive."
"The only area that has room for improvement would be pricing, so its competitors do not have a say."
"It's not a cheap product, but there are no other replacements for what we do with it."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
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.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.