Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

F5 Advanced WAF vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

F5 Advanced WAF
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
60
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (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

F5 Advanced WAF and F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. F5 Advanced WAF is designed for Web Application Firewall (WAF) and holds a mindshare of 12.0%, up 10.4% 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.
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
 

Featured Reviews

YUSUF  TAIWO - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 26, 2023
Ensures a robust and unified security approach for our clients
My clients often seek a comprehensive security solution for their hybrid environments, with both cloud and on-premise web applications. To address this, I recommend combining F5 Advanced WAF for web application security with Fortinet solutions, including FortiGate, FortiSign, and FortiAnalyzer, for…
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

"The solution is stable."
"It protects and mitigates damage in the network."
"F5 Advanced WAF secures our connectivity and combines both the main functions of WAF (balancing and web application security)."
"Provides good protection from attacks."
"With F5 Advanced WAF, it was protection for online publications and for our customers that caused us to choose the platform."
"The initial setup was was easy to install."
"Web attack signatures are very important for detecting web attacks."
"I like all of the features, but the main one is the attack signatures."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is IP Intelligence."
"F5 has many capabilities for load balancing and web application firewall features."
"ASM for WAF."
"It is a scalable solution."
"One of the greatest things about F5 Load Balancer is that it provides additional capability for handling huge workloads and routing them to an SAP or non-SAP application. It is capable of supporting a large amount of user workload and application connectivity workload. This was the main reason why we chose F5."
"I like that F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is a product that comes with valuable features, but what stands out from all features is load balancing."
"It is stable."
"BIG-IP LTM is completely stable, and its performance is good."
 

Cons

"There is a learning curve that extends the time of implementation."
"It should be a little bit easy to deploy in terms of the overall deployment session. One of our customers is a bit unhappy about the reporting options. Currently, it automatically deletes event logs after some limit if a customer doesn't have any external Syslog server. It is a problem for those customers who want to review event logs after a week or so because they won't get proper reports or event logs. They should increase the duration to at least a month or two for storing the data on the device. F5 is not a leader in Gartner Quadrant, which affects us when we go and pitch this solution. Customers normally go and take a look at such annual reports, and because F5 is currently not there as a leader, the customers ask about it even though we are saying it is good in all things. F5 is not known for something totally different or unique. They were a major player in ADP, and they are just rebranding themselves into security. They should improve or increase their marketing as a security company now. They have already started to do that, but they should do it more so that when it comes to security, customers can easily remember F5. At the moment, if we say F5, load balancing comes to mind. With rebranding and marketing, all customers should get the idea that F5 is now mainly focusing on the security part of it, and it is a security company instead of load balancing. This is the first solution that should come to a customer's mind for a web application firewall."
"You have to buy another module with an extra license, to have the authentication feature."
"More legacy protocols should be added to the solution."
"One area for improvement in the product is its SSO integration, which posed challenges and required significant effort to resolve."
"Its price should be better. It is expensive."
"The reporting could be clearer and embedded to include our movement data."
"The solution's dashboard could be improved. When you're moving from policy to policy, the logs and the integration of the logs in other systems aren't straightforward."
"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."
"F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager could improve by having an FNI feature for a single source to multi-domain load balancing."
"A more hybrid approach would be beneficial for users."
"A lot of functions that are attributed to iRules can actually be simple profile changes. iRules do have a certain performance impact. Therefore, instead of writing simple iRules, they can create certain profiles for classes that will perform the same function."
"For a future release, I would like to see more features in the cloud."
"The initial setup can be complex - it's quite flexible in terms of configuration, but the person configuring it needs to understand the application side, the network side, and the server."
"One area for improvement with F5 BIG-IP LTM could be its pricing, which some may find on the higher side."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing of F5 Advanced WAF is more expensive than other solutions like Radware and CD18, it is quite high."
"I am not sure about pricing but licenses are available on Google."
"I would rate the pricing as seven out of ten"
"It is a little bit costly, but it has all the features that are required."
"The way we deployed it, I would rate it a four out of five in terms of pricing."
"The solution is very expensive so should only be used in the right environment."
"F5 Advanced WAF is not a cost-effective solution. Although they are attempting to reduce prices with their VE and cloud options, they are more expensive than other solutions. The solution is more expensive on average."
"Its price is fair. We have done a couple of deals where they were able to give some kind of discount to the customers. The price was initially high for the customers, but after a couple of negotiations, it came within their budget. They were happy with that."
"I would recommend that the cost be lowered."
"The price is little bit on higher side compared to the cost of NGINX."
"Purchasing through the AWS Marketplace was good. We chose to go through the AWS Marketplace because everything that we needed was a soft appliance. We needed something to work in Amazon, and this product was available there."
"There are additional costs depending on what modules or what functionality is required."
"The tool is a bit expensive."
"You can buy it on a yearly basis, or you can go for a subscription. For on-premise boxes, it is just the RMA."
"There are no additional fees to the standard licensing fee; everything is paid once."
"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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions are best for your needs.
815,854 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
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 F5 Advanced WAF?
It's a fairly easy-to-use and user-friendly tool. My administrators and team also like its ability to customize the rules per the requirements.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Advanced WAF?
I don't have direct knowledge of the pricing. From what I know, it is not too expensive compared to other solutions.
What needs improvement with F5 Advanced WAF?
The product could be more user-friendly for administrators. The user interface could be easier.
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
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

MAXIMUS, Vivo, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office, City Bank
Riken, TransUnion, Tepco Systems Administration, Daejeon University, G&T Bank, Danamon, CyberAgent Inc.
Find out what your peers are saying about F5 Advanced WAF vs. F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) and other solutions. Updated: September 2020.
815,854 professionals have used our research since 2012.