Radware Alteon vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) comparison

Radware and Fastly are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. Radware is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.9, while Fastly is ranked #25 with an average rating of 7.7. Additionally, 92% of Radware users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 50% of Fastly users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Radware Alteon and Fastly Next-Gen WAF compete in the web application security space. Fastly Next-Gen WAF holds an edge due to its modern security features compared to Radware Alteon's focus on pricing and support advantages.

Features: Radware Alteon is known for traffic management capabilities, including load balancing and SSL offloading. It provides reliable application delivery and enhanced performance. Fastly Next-Gen WAF prioritizes advanced security features such as proactive threat detection and real-time insights, offering protection against a range of security threats.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Radware Alteon provides a straightforward deployment process with strong customer support for resolving technical challenges. Fastly Next-Gen WAF features streamlined deployment, minimal setup time, and ease of integration, though its support is less extensive than Radware.

Pricing and ROI: Radware Alteon offers competitive setup cost appealing for cost-effectiveness and reliable performance. Fastly Next-Gen WAF has a higher initial cost but offers substantial ROI through advanced security, making it a worthwhile investment for companies valuing cybersecurity.

To learn more, read our detailed Radware Alteon vs. The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Radware Alteon vs. The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

January 2025

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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

Cloudflare

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad

Owner at Tech Exchange

It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes

Cloudflare is highly scalable. Cloudflare is a system with a web portal that the end users like me see. It's a console where we can adjust the DNS, caching, and security features all in that console. Cloudflare owns thousands of servers across the world that cache the data. It's a powerful solution. When clients sign up for Cloudflare, they're getting this monster content delivery network, security, and a web application firewall in one. It's all rolled into one, and it's massive. Unless you have your website hosted on a massive hosting provider, there's no way that you can deliver the amount of data that Cloudflare can provide to the end users. If you have static content, there's no way that you can ever match what Cloudflare can do. Obviously, there are competitors to Cloudflare that do the same, but I'm saying other types of solutions. Let's say you go with F5. Great, that's on-prem. That's in your colo. You can't deliver as much data to the internet as you can with a CDN. You don't have to spend $20,000 on a net scaler, F5, or whatever Cisco's selling now. You don't have to buy that. You pay them $50 a month or $150 a month. It's totally worth it because even in five years, you'll never get the performance value, not just the actual ROI. You have to consider how much throughput you can get with Cloudflare.

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MaverickHurley

Sr network arch at Mohawk Industries

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.

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Archana Heeralal

Security Engineer at Amazon

A good solution to implement web application firewall for applications

There are some lags in Signal Sciences for the web application firewalls. Even if we create some custom rules, Signal Sciences cannot capture some of the malicious traffic. There is a little bit of complexity with custom rules that should be removed. Signal Sciences should add a feature called rate limiting with multiple options, wherein I can create a rate limiting based on the cookie request or the IP.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The DDoS protection is the most valuable aspect of the solution."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is external DNS. It is also very secure. They have their own main server and once you configure it, the product takes care of everything. There are no issues in resolving IPs and low latency is also present."

"The attacker won't have details since my public IP is anonymous. It offers us good privacy."

"The overall experience with Cloudflare is positive, with a rating of eight out of ten."

"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is that it has a free version. They give us the free version with the anti-DDoS features and also the load balancing solution."

"The solution offers the flexibility to control configuration rules."

"Cloudflare allows us to self-host services such as Rocket.Chat and Node-RED, in high-availability mode, thanks to round robin DNS which allows us to share one hostname between our two locations."

"The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security."

More Cloudflare pros

"The interface is easy, it's friendly, and has good alerting."

"The best part is that we are able to manage it easily. It is easy to manage and easy to integrate with third-party applications."

"The best features are the security through the web application firewall, the functionality that the solution offers, being a load balancer with the security functionality on top of it, and the ease of administration."

"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 is the support from the engineering team."

"The device blocks threats and allows legitimate users to work correctly."

"Overall, I would rate Alteon a nine out of ten."

"The GUI was a valuable feature. It was uncomplicated and easy to use."

More Radware Alteon pros

"Fastly (Signal Sciences) integrates and tags the intermittent traffic based on patterns. It generates signals and provides them in a dashboard where we can view them and decide whether to allow or deny traffic. It's a more advanced and easy-to-navigate dashboard."

"When configuring a web application firewall using Signal Sciences, we configure a rule whereby no one except a few people can access the application."

"The product's most valuable feature is its ability to set up the rules easily."

Cons

"Technical support is lacking."

"In the last two years, there has been a certain amount of downtime when using the VDM."

"There might be helpful if there was some web application firewall feature."

"Sometimes their more advanced caching tools can cause higher first-byte times and problems with JavaScript."

"We're facing challenges due to an upgrade in the machine learning model. The problem arises from some users abusing the APIs, resulting in an influx of suspicious traffic. Cloudflare's learning model mistakenly identifies this traffic as human. Consequently, it assigns it a higher trust score, akin to legitimate human traffic, causing complications in our architecture. Previously, such traffic would have been categorized as suspicious, enabling us to apply appropriate blocking rules. However, we encounter difficulties distinguishing between genuine and suspicious traffic with the new categorization. Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor."

"The timing aspect can lead to it being considered overpriced. This is a particular concern we have with Cloudflare, as they may struggle with accurately detecting the client."

"Cloudflare's free plan is limited to 5,000 records for their free plan. They should increase that. For example, if I create a domain called abc.com and a subdomain called a.abc.com, my record count will be two. I can make a maximum of 5,000 subdomains. However, if we use our own DNS hosted on another provider, there is no limit. Their free plan also lacks name server customization."

"It should have easier documentation for the configuration. It's very technical and people who aren't technical should also be able to do the configuration."

More Cloudflare cons

"We don't integrate anything with it because most things don't integrate with Radware. If it were F5, we could integrate it. We can integrate F5 with practically anything that integrates with a load balancer, but that's not the case with Alteon."

"I would like this solution to have an integration tool that will convert configuration from other software, into readable values for this product during implementation."

"Alteon's user interface and usability can be improved by providing a more modern and streamlined design and focusing on simplifying workflows in the UI."

"The solution could be more open to additional third-party add-ons being integrated into it."

"Radware Alteon could improve the troubleshooting from the command line interface, they could do a better job making it easier."

"Support is very important because if we get good support, we'll be able to sell and supply more numbers."

"Recently our team was talking about the things you can customize in Alteon and the level of programming that doing so demands. I would like to see more information on how to customize the programming and troubleshoot."

"We recently had a problem with the tables Obsolete ARP which was observed by the support team. It would be good to diagnose and solve this problem with a patch since it is not documented that it will be solved in later updates."

More Radware Alteon cons

"Fastly don't support caching for China users. That's the only feature lacking compared to Akamai."

"Even if we create some custom rules, Signal Sciences cannot capture some of the malicious traffic."

"The areas that could be improved in Signal Sciences include the effectiveness of rules, as many didn't function optimally and required custom rule-writing to address bypasses for WAF."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."

"The solution has many features but there are ones that you need to pay for. Sometimes you have to find out which is available for free and which you have to pay for."

"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."

"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."

"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."

"In terms of licensing costs, we don't pay for licensing for Cloudflare. We only establish communication, then for peering, Cloudflare takes care of the cross-connection in different data centers."

"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."

"I give the price a five out of ten."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"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."

"I'm content with Alteon's pricing."

"Price-wise, the solution is a reasonable one."

"It is not the priciest and it is not the cheapest. For our solution, it was right in the middle of price performance."

"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."

"The pricing seems reasonable to me for what the solution provides. It is within the parameters of this type of solution."

"It is the best in the industry. It was better than the competition, and that is what made us go ahead with them."

"Radware Alteon is less expensive than many of the other competitors."

More Radware Alteon pricing and cost advice

"The product has an affordable cost."

"The pricing is 50% less than Akamai."

"Signal Sciences is pretty cheap compared to other solutions."

See which vendors are best for you

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

24%

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

14%

Government

11%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

24%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?

Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GR...

See all answers

Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?

Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service...

See all answers

What do you like most about Cloudflare?

Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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 mo...

See all answers

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 l...

See all answers

What do you like most about Signal Sciences?

The product's most valuable feature is its ability to set up the rules easily.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Signal Sciences?

The pricing is 50% less than Akamai.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Signal Sciences?

Fastly don't support caching for China users. That's the only feature lacking compared to Akamai.

See all answers

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 49% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Amazon Route 53 vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

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

Compared 18% of the time

NetScaler vs Radware Alteon

Compared 13% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Radware Alteon

Compared 10% of the time

HAProxy vs Radware Alteon

Compared 9% of the time

NGINX Plus vs Radware Alteon

Compared 7% of the time

More Radware Alteon Competitors

AWS WAF vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

Compared 14% of the time

Azure Front Door vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

Compared 11% of the time

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

Compared 9% of the time

Akamai App and API Protector vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

Compared 8% of the time

Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

Compared 8% of the time

More The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

February 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Radware Alteon

February 2025

Download Radware Alteon product report

Buyer's Guide

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

January 2025

The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) report

Download The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

Alteon, Radware AppWall

Signal Sciences Next-Gen WAF, Signal Sciences RASP

Overview

Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global connectivity cloud platform that is Cloudflare ensures users are able to connect to the Internet quickly, securely, and reliably. Cloudflare is one of the world's largest networks in the marketplace today. Using Cloudflare, businesses, educational entities, NGOs, vloggers, bloggers, and anyone else with an internet presence can experience more secure, faster websites and applications.

Currently, there are millions of Internet locations on Cloudflare, and the Cloudflare network
continues to grow every day by the thousands. The solution is able to fulfill the requests for
millions of websites seamlessly and serves on average 45 million HTTP requests per second.

Cloudflare has safe, secure data centers in close to 300 cities worldwide to ensure every
client request is filled as quickly as possible. It is Cloudflare’s edge network that makes this
possible by keeping content and other services as close to each client as possible, so the
information requests are always only seconds away.

Many organizations that work in democracy, civil society, human rights, or the arts are able to
access Cloudflare's highest levels of protection for free via Project Galileo. Additionally, official
election websites can be secured from hacking and fraud through Cloudflare’s Project
Athenian, also at no additional cost.

Cloudflare can also help organizations of all sizes develop a robust zero-trust strategy to
ensure the highest levels of productivity and profitability. Employees, stakeholders, and end users have a greater level of satisfaction and overall improved user experience, which can, in
turn, result in higher revenues and overall ROI. Zero-trust and BYOD (bring your own device)
access ensure end users and employees always have the best resources and technology
available to them at all times.

Cloudflare benefits

Cloudflare has many benefits. Some of its most valuable benefits include:

- Faster load times

- Robust DNS security

- Intuitive cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF)

- Free universal SSL

- Image enhancement

- Automatic browser caching

- Next-generation cloud load balancer

- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

- Rate limiting

- Minification

- Zero-trust capabilities

- Cost-effective

- Reduced carbon footprint

Reviews from real users

“Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare
comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and
an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. If you have a connection between your
website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host, you don't necessarily need a
certificate.” Spencer M., Owner at Tech Exchange

“What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage
applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare
also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering,
so it's a valuable tool.” Daniel P., Network Engineer at Ufinet

“The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is the GUI. You are able to control the solution very
well through the interface. There is a lot of functionality that is embedded in the service.” PeerSpot user, Competence Center Manager at a tech services company

Cloudflare

Radware Alteon is an application delivery controller (ADC) solution that provides global load balancing for all web, cloud and mobile-based applications. The solution is designed to help your organization simplify operations while ensuring resilience and SLA. It manages application traffic across both data and cloud center locations, optimizing availability and performance. In addition, Radware Alteon integrates multiple application protection services to provide protection against an array of cyberthreats.

Radware Alteon Features

Radware Alteon has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Robust
Load-balancing reverse proxy
Stable
Flexible
Guaranteed application availability
Application aware traffic redirection capabilities
Faster web application response time
Application specific optimized configuration guides
Configuration templates
Built-in virtualization
Built-in application and network security

Radware Alteon Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing Radware Alteon. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Flexible deployment options: Radware Alteon is deployable in a multitude of form factors, including on-premises, virtual, and cloud, and provides a consistent application delivery and security service in any application environment.

Automation scripts library: To support faster time to service for complex application delivery and security services, Alteon is supported by an extensive range of automation scripts library. This also enables seamless integration of Radware Alteon services into the DevOps CI/CD processes.

Integrated application protection: The solution offers comprehensive application protection via embedded WAF, bot management, threat intelligence, and API protection capabilities. This ensures application availability and helps to minimize false positives, as well as keep applications along with their data secure.

Actionable visibility: With Radware Alteon you can stay ahead of issues and threats. The solution provides real-time visibility and actionable insights for proactive management of application availability and security issues before the user experience is impacted.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the solution.

PeerSpot reviewer Jefe de implementaciones de Datos at RETO Industrial S.A. de. C.V., mentions, “The simple and well-documented configuration allows us to be able to implement new balancing services at the request of the user with the same conditions and good service that they expect. We can also make changes to services that are already running, as I mentioned before, the graphical interface is very intuitive and you can almost always make the most common changes quickly. Radware has been characterized by being extremely robust. This gives us the confidence to offer our users a continuous service.”

A director of consulting says, “The most valuable features are the load-balancing and reverse proxy. Global-load balancing as well is valuable. I also find it to be stable. To date, we have not had any issues with it.”

An SOC Specialist at a tech services company explains, “The interface is easy, it's friendly, and has good alerting. When you have a problem with a server, it will alert you. It is useful in many areas, especially for web applications and load balancing. It's something that the customer can see on the internet.”

Radware

The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) provides web application and API protection, RASP, rate limiting, bot protection and DDoS purpose built to eliminate the challenges of legacy WAF.

Fastly

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.

Convergys

Chef, Adobe, Datadog, Etsy, GrubHub, Vimeo, SendGrid, Under Armour, Duo, AppNexus

Buyer's Guide

Radware Alteon vs. The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

January 2025

Free Report: Radware Alteon vs. The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

Find out what your peers are saying about Radware Alteon vs. The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.

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