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F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs Radware Alteon comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Man...
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
120
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Radware Alteon
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is 15.0%, down from 16.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Radware Alteon is 4.3%, up from 3.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
 

Q&A Highlights

HG
Dec 04, 2020
 

Featured Reviews

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.
MaverickHurley - PeerSpot reviewer
Makes it easier and quicker to spin up services when we deploy applications
The most valuable aspect is the ability to customize the types of load-balancing scenarios needed for customized applications. Some of the load balancers on the market today are strictly out-of-hand load balancers for SSL or HTTP. Radware Alteon is most useful for customizing in-house applications based on ports and protocols. Another great feature is integrated application protection. There are many features you can activate. Some of them are add-ons, such as WAF protection, DDoS, rate-limiting, and connections-per-second per application. We also use Radware where we do all the programming.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is being able to manipulate the iRules, so you can send traffic to different avenues."
"The feature I find the most valuable is the support infrastructure."
"it has TCP LAN and WAN optimization features. It has has caching."
"Initial setup is easy and pretty standard."
"The solution is robust and reliable."
"The most valuable features of the solution are in the area of DDoS and WAF."
"BIG-IP LTM's most valuable feature is that it allows you to seamlessly add more servers without impacting your application's configuration."
"Bandwidth optimization and capacity awareness of the bandwidth are valuable features. Its video streaming capabilities are also very useful."
"The most valuable features of Radware Alteon are the reverse proxy functionality and the SSL offload and hardware."
"The strength of this solution is the application delivery controller."
"The features that mitigate attacks are very valuable."
"his solution allows me to secure applications, by blocking suspicious traffic based on the signature that has been enabled for that particular application."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its stability. During the time that I have been using it, it has not undergone a service failure... And with the integrated application protection, we have not suffered from attacks anymore."
"I am finding SSL-TLS acceleration the most valuable function, with certificate management. It is easy to generate certificates and assign them to services"
"The solution has been very stable."
"SSL offloading feature is one of the most important features. Traffic distribution is also done very well by Radware."
 

Cons

"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."
"Its price can be better. It is a bit expensive."
"The GUI needs improvement."
"For a future release, I would like to see more features in the cloud."
"The solution could improve the documentation."
"I would like F5 to incorporate the ability to create your own custom roles and customised permissions within the product set. I have seen many customers wanting to give a certain level of access for the purposes of out-of-hours servicing to out-of-hours staff or teams that fulfill an operations type role."
"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."
"There is a need for a more modular version to concentrate on the current monolithic structure of both the virtual and hardware versions."
"The reverse proxy piece is a little bit complicated. If the reverse proxy were easier to implement, that would help."
"We’d like the solution to include more security features in the standard license."
"The GUI needs to be improved. Right now, the solution isn't so user-friendly."
"The solution could be more robust."
"It can be improved by combining the web application firewall (WAF) facility."
"I would like the solution to display and help visualize the reference map more easily. I would also like to better understand where queries come from and know which users are consulting the application, along with which app."
"Support is an area that needs improvement."
"Multiple software bugs exist. Most of the time, they're issues with Radware's patching. The organization has a vulnerability and penetration team attempting to upgrade the system to version n minus one. If we have deployed the software to the n-minus-one range, the device isn't performing well because it's already in the testing version."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"F5 pricing is too high, compared to Citrix."
"Though functionality is high, its cost can be considered slightly higher than its competitors​."
"It is the best solution, but that comes with an increased price."
"This is a high-priced tool. We pay for its license yearly."
"I use a yearly subscription, which is the most expensive one now compared to its competitors."
"The tool is a bit expensive."
"When we purchased additional licenses for our other locations, we received a discount of between 20% and 25%."
"It has a good price point and is more reasonable than other comparable products"
"It is cost-efficient. That is why we have gone with Alteon. As a product, it is efficient and robust. We have not faced any issues with the device."
"The pricing is better than the competition. It is getting more pricey as the years go on, as more people are migrating to it, and as the technology gets better."
"Alteon's price is excellent compared to other solutions. F5 costs around twice as much. We still have about three years left before this hardware reaches the end of its life. We're migrating to the cloud, and phasing some of this out, but it's nice that they've given us a long window to keep their hardware in place."
"Radware Alteon is less expensive than many of the other competitors."
"The pricing seems reasonable to me for what the solution provides. It is within the parameters of this type of solution."
"We have three-year contract with Radware. It is beneficial to have a longer-term contract because you can obtain more discounts. It seems to be a much cheaper alternative."
"Its pricing is very good. It is very competitive. Radware Alteon is the leader in the market. At a lesser price, we get a good product and also good support. Other vendors who are providing load balancers charge separately for two items. You have the hardware cost, and you have the support cost, whereas, in the case of Radware, you get both in a single package."
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Answers from the Community

HG
Dec 4, 2020
Dec 4, 2020
Apart from throughout consideration. Radware license charges based on throughput and F5 charges based on features only. For example, if you buy F5 with an appliance throughput of 10g that throughput available on day one, but if it's Radware, you will get a 1gbps license and hardware has 10gbps throughput. You can only use 1gbps on day one. On the load balancing side, both are equal only I rule ...
2 out of 3 answers
SP
Jun 3, 2020
I can say the difference between both high end devices as F5 BIG-IP 4200v and Radware Alteon 5224XL comparission, 1. Layer 4 Throughput of F5 BIG-IP is 10 GBps whereas Radware Alteon is 8 GBps. 2. Layer 4 Connection per second of Radware Alteon is 480000 whereas F5 BIG-IP is F5 BIG-IP is 300000 only. 3. Layer 7 Connection per second of Radware Alteon is 190000 whereas F5 BIG-IP is F5 BIG-IP is 100000 only. 4. SSL Transaction per second wise Radware Alteon is 11200 whereas F5 BIG-IP is F5 BIG-IP is 9000 only. 5. SSL Bulk Throughput of F5 BIG-IP is 8 GBps whereas Radware Alteon is 4.1 GBps only. 6. Compression rate of F5 BIG-IP is 8 GBps whereas Radware Alteon is 3.6 GBps only.
OK
Jun 4, 2020
For ADC both are very good, But in the leader in Gartner of ADC products, the tops rivals are Citrix ADC and F5  They are very good and can do the job but only some major differences to consider are. Citrix ADC -  Has App Expert Wizard which is a GUI ready to use to build simple to complex traffic syntax rule easily. Any admin that has some good background sees this syntax can understand and configure, it is very easy. This is good for a big complex environment or in case your network admin leaves the job and new one comes to take the role. GUI; Travesing each menu is very easy as they are all in the same pattern with every feature. F5 - Use the iRule, which does the same job. If you like to write programming code with lots of { {   } }, etc, it's ok. But for many admin teams, it may be hard to troubleshoot the traffics rules if the guy who wrote the rule left, not that hard to learn but still harder than GUI. GUI- F5 GUI is sometimes too complex than needed, sometimes it's left, right, under have to drill down a lot just to get to the simple tasks. Overall there are both good. 
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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.
What do you like most about Radware Alteon?
It saves us a lot of work in terms of management since it has tasks already defined automatically. That enables us to better administer our services. It is very dynamic and easy to administer.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Radware Alteon?
We have a three-year contract with Radware. It is beneficial to have a longer-term contract because you can obtain more discounts. It seems to be a much cheaper alternative. We use their Gel Elasti...
What needs improvement with Radware Alteon?
It is a fairly complete service and it is difficult for me to think of what can be improved. A feature that I would like to see included in the next version might be better analysis when working wi...
 

Also Known As

F5 BIG-IP, BIG-IP LTM, F5 ASM, Viprion, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition , Crescendo Networks Application Delivery Controller, BIG IP
Alteon, Radware AppWall
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Riken, TransUnion, Tepco Systems Administration, Daejeon University, G&T Bank, Danamon, CyberAgent Inc.
Convergys
Find out what your peers are saying about F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs. Radware Alteon and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
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