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

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Man...
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
120
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Radware Alteon
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is 15.7%, up from 15.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Radware Alteon is 4.7%, up from 3.8% 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

Mahmoud-Yassin - PeerSpot reviewer
You can fully automate disaster recovery
LTM's cloud capabilities could be improved. Cloud providers all offer load balancing, but you can't get the same level of security. F5's cloud service is still not on par with its on-prem service. F5 acquired multiple companies a few years ago, but they still haven't integrated those solutions. For example, F5 acquired Shape Security, which had an excellent solution for detecting bots and automated login attacks, but F5 offers the solution in an inflexible way. It is only available as a cloud-based solution. It isn't zone-based. Some companies are restricted from sending financial data outside the country because of GDPR in Europe or other national regulations. Here in the UAE, we can't send host data out.
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

"You can create multiple virtual servers on F5 BIG-IP technology, and within multiple virtual servers you can have multiple nodes, where a node equals two application servers."
"We have multiple solutions we can deploy through the F5."
"LTM's most valuable features include application security, data collection, and parameter-level rules."
"The scalability of the solution depends on the sizing of the network. Generally, the scalability is quite good."
"Initial setup was straightforward. We were up and running in three hours."
"Bandwidth optimization and capacity awareness of the bandwidth are valuable features. Its video streaming capabilities are also very useful."
"I have never faced any stability issues with F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)."
"BIG-IP LTM's most valuable feature is that it allows you to seamlessly add more servers without impacting your application's configuration."
"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."
"I like the concept of self-service, that I can do everything on my own."
"The performance and stability are the most valuable features."
"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."
"With Alteon, the load-balancing options are practically unlimited. We haven't had any issues with offloading, decryption, putting in cookies, or any other load-balancing features. We can check URLs, etc., on the back end for load balancing instead of running a TCP check. We're also doing some certificate stuff on there. Alteon covers all of the standard load-balancing techniques, and we employ most of them daily."
"The health status information, with its highly detailed reporting, has saved us time on troubleshooting. We have the precise information needed that helps us find different types of situations."
"The most valuable feature of Radware LinkProof for traffic distribution is its DNS management capability."
"The link load balancing is a great feature."
 

Cons

"My only point of contention would be that it is a little pricey."
"Security enhancement should be more user friendly."
"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 GUI needs improvement."
"If we decide to migrate to the cloud, I don't think that BIG-IP is a good solution and we probably won't use it."
"I used GitHub for autoscaling CloudFormation, and I found two bugs and I submitted them. Their implementation in GitHub could be cleaner and allow for a bit more customization."
"The SharePoint SSO part has some room for improvement."
"For a future release, I would like to see more features in the cloud."
"The solution could be more robust."
"The interface implementation can be improved."
"Support is an area that needs improvement."
"The user interface can be improved."
"I would like for the load balancing to work with premier and the cloud, a mix of premium and cloud."
"Radware should work on the vulnerabilities part. There are third-party security solutions that do the security vulnerability assessment (VA). The assessment part needs to be worked on and improved. There should be more solutions. If any issue comes up and if any vulnerability is reported, the Radware team should do an R&D on that and work on that. They should give the solution to the customer."
"The solution could be more open to additional third-party add-ons being integrated into it."
"They keep integrating new features that sometimes break our production, but we use clustered systems, so we can test those software releases. However, sometimes they take a while to reach us. We have had to work with Radware to remedy issues on their side that they have verified."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Great product for the money. But they can get really expensive, so get what meets your needs."
"I would recommend that the cost be lowered."
"Purchasing through the AWS Marketplace was very simple. The main reason that we went this way was the simplicity of buying it there. It is maintained and upgraded for us, and this makes it easy to stay current."
"There are no additional fees to the standard licensing fee; everything is paid once."
"We have found the pricing and licensing on AWS to be competitive."
"I am not aware of the exact cost of the product. However, it is expensive."
"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."
"Though functionality is high, its cost can be considered slightly higher than its competitors​."
"It has a good price point and is more reasonable than other comparable products"
"The Radware team we work with always gives us the best price. As a university, our budget is limited. We need something that is the best solution but with a low or economical pricing. We are getting a better price than competitors. The shift from Barracuda to Alteon was primarily due to cost efficiency. It is very economical, and the price fits our business needs."
"Radware LinkProof is neither cheap nor expensive."
"The price conforms to what the tool provides. It is not an inexpensive tool and not all companies can afford an ADC solution such as Alteon. However, it justifies its price with the options it offers."
"It is the best in the industry. It was better than the competition, and that is what made us go ahead with them."
"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."
"It is not the priciest and it is not the cheapest. For our solution, it was right in the middle of price performance."
"Our government agency opted for Radware Alteon due to its affordability and efficiency. While I can't say precisely how much it costs the organization, the price per device. In India, we always look for affordable products, so I assume Alteon is cost-effective because the government chose it."
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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%
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
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?
There are no specific areas for improvement as it is already well-resolved and doesn't require further enhancements.
What is your primary use case for F5 BIG-IP?
The primary use case includes load balancing to serve application servers and basic web application firewall solutions. Our customers use it for that purpose.
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
 

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: March 2025.
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