Radware Alteon Reviews

We are using Radware Alteon as a web application farm for all of our on-premise websites and as a reverse proxy.

The most valuable features of Radware Alteon are the reverse proxy functionality and the SSL offload and hardware.

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

I have been using Radware Alteon for approximately 10 years.

The stability of Radware Alteon is good.

Radware Alteon is scalable.

We have approximately 10,000 users using the solution globally. We have all of our applications for our web and EDI environment using the solution.

The technical support from Radware Alteon is wonderful.

I rate the support from Radware Alteon a five out of five.

Positive

The initial setup of Radware Alteon is straightforward. The full installation took approximately three to four days.

I rate the initial setup of Radware Alteon a four out of five.

We did the implementation of the solution in-house.

We have received a return on investment using Radware Alteon. It is one of their strong points. You receive the value of your money out of using it.

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

We compared Radware Alteon to other vendors, such as F5, and not only was Radware Alteon less expensive but it is more user-friendly in the interface and configuration.

We are going to change solutions. However, we are staying with Radware. The solution we are using is the hardware Radware Alteon 5208 but they make a virtual Alteon now. We are moving to all virtual Radware Alteons instead of physical hardware. The cost of us using all virtual Radware Alteon solutions will be $154,000 over three years. This includes 80 load balancers and 10 GB.

I rate Radware Alteon a nine out of ten.

We use Radware Alteon for data protection and security compliance.

Radware Alteon's integrated application protection is a good choice. It provides better protection for our web applications by delaying access to the interface and limiting access to specific web applications. This centralized and limited access makes it easier to manage our web applications, even if we have multiple users or customers. We have also provided suggestions for a release that includes the customer's recommended modifications and edits. This release is sufficient for cloud-based applications.

Radware Alteon's out-of-the-box integration feature is good.

The automation script libraries for each orchestrator are of good quality. Our team can apply the updates and configure them.

Radware Alteon has improved our organization by providing an interface for connecting 10 Gigabit Ethernet transceivers. This allowed us to increase our network bandwidth and improve the performance of our applications.

Radware Alteon Analytics saved us around 15 percent of the time troubleshooting. The dashboard provides a helpful overview of active alerts and warnings, and we can easily investigate and add new ones as needed. This has made it much easier to identify and resolve issues quickly.

The UI is user-friendly. 

The cloud features are valuable.

The interface implementation can be improved. If any features of the current version need to be upgraded, such as those related to net flow, we need to reboot the system properly. We also need to be able to upgrade any Radware updates related to the version.

I have been using Radware Alteon for one and a half years.

Radware Alteon is a stable solution.

Radware Alteon is scalable. The solution is deployed in multiple mobile locations with over 1,000 users.

Radware Alteon's technical support is excellent.

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward. The deployment took two days and two people to complete. We received training from the Radware team.

The implementation was completed in-house.

The cost of Radware Alteon is mid-ranged.

The GEL licensing is flexible. The GEL license has helped save us around 25 percent.

I give Radware Alteon a ten out of ten.

We have seen time to value especially around the data security and compliance of Radware Alteon. We saw time to value after one and a half weeks of implementing Radware Alteon.

Radware Alteon is a scalable and available application delivery controller that can be used by organizations of all sizes. It offers a wide range of features, including automation, optimization, and migration from older to newer versions.

Radware Alteon is easy for organizations to switch to because it has training portals that provide all the necessary information, which minimizes the learning curve.

The maintenance is completed on a quarterly basis by the vendor.

I recommend Radware Alteon, but it is always a good idea to do a proof of concept before switching solutions.

My organization used the solution as a load balancer to balance the traffic on our application servers.

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

The service could be improved by better customer support. 

They could also introduce much-needed cybersecurity as well as governance and tax reporting features.

I used the solution for almost four years.

The solution was stable.

The product is scalable. The functionality worked well. One issue was insufficient bandwidth to handle all the traffic, which likely impacted our timing. 

When we approached customer service and support with configuration-related issues and multiple cases of bugs in the Radware Alteon software, the response was slow, and there was no resolution. 

Neutral

I never used any other load balancer or ADC before. I've only worked with Radware Alteon.

From 2010 to 2018, when I was working, they had Alteon, which they implemented in 2000 when implementation was more complex.

I have no idea about the price, but the organization I was working for was always looking for economical products. So I would assume the price was quite competitive.

I would definitely recommend Radware load balancer to organizations around the globe that don't have a huge budget.

I would give the product an overall rating of seven out of 10.

We had an average of around 1,500 users. They used the product on everything and on every application server they had.

Regarding maintenance, we didn't have a very big IT environment. Two guys were enough to load the configuration and deal with operational issues.

Our maintenance included conflict backup, which differed depending on the organization. We scheduled load balancer reports as required, usually monthly, occasionally bi-monthly, and sometimes after six months, depending on customer requirements.

Potential users should use the application before implementing it and understand the infrastructure. They need to know how they will use the load balancer, what features it has to load, and whether they can utilize it.

We have deployed Alteon to our cluster to provide load balancing of the applications. We also utilize the security functionality, which is a WAF on top of the load balancing.

The solution has added a secure layer in front of the servers, protecting them from malicious actors, especially the actors who are targeting our application.

And the analytics have definitely helped save time, about 20 to 25 percent, when troubleshooting, due to the breadth of monitoring and the visibility that the solution offers.

The best features are the

• security through the web application firewall
• functionality that the solution offers, being a load balancer with the security functionality on top of it
• ease of administration.

The integrated application protection is very good.

Pretty much every feature is as promised.

I would like to see future enhancements in security, specifically in threat protection. That would definitely make it a 10 out of 10.

We've been using Radware Alteon for less than a year.

It's pretty stable.

It is scalable. We use it to protect our mail application, so Alteon is used by approximately 1,000 users.

The customer support is an area that can be enhanced, in terms of response time.

Neutral

We had a different solution before but not one specifically like Alteon. For load balancing we used different solutions from Citrix and Barracuda.

The integrated WAF in Alteon is much easier to administer as compared to the other solutions. That aspect is 50 percent better than those solutions.

The initial deployment was pretty straightforward. It took a few weeks and the fine-tuning, as per the customer's requirements, took one or two months.

We have it in one location but in multiple departments. Alteon is sitting in front of the server farm and the users in different departments are accessing these servers. Alteon acts as a security layer before the traffic gets passed to the actual servers.

Maintenance is required, of course, and we have two people involved in that process. But Alteon has helped to reduce our maintenance overhead by about 20 percent.

It's too early for us to see ROI. Still, we have absolutely seen time to value with Alteon. The moment the solution was implemented, we started observing the logs, which helped us fine-tune the policies. The visibility decreased the time to value helping us tweak the policies and get the boxes ready for production.

The solution is cost-efficient.

I would recommend Alteon and I would also recommend a proof of concept because every customer's environment is different. But it can definitely add value, considering the feature pack the solution provides with security and WAF, especially on top of the load balancing.

The vendor usually overloads the devices with a lot of functionality. The strength of this solution is the application delivery controller. The best functions are load-balancing services and multiple backend servers.

The SSL uploading feature is helpful, and every vendor has it. It terminates the full connections and takes care of all the power required for the backend servers to process the SSL load. Radware Alteon also makes our environment and web applications more scalable because the devices are half-sequence and specifically designed to handle web traffic and SSL web traffic.

These devices work as hypervisors on the cluster that we have on-premises. We can run virtual applications and delivery controllers inside them. We can also isolate resources and environments. In addition, Radware Alteon has a helpful scripting engine for automation called AppShape+.

I have worked with Big IP F5. It is a veteran solution that is more stable and has more resources. Big IP F5 has a virtual hub in the community with a lot of resources and already-made scripts that can be used for free. Radware Alteon has a community portal, but the community portal does not have a place to find scripts. It would be great if they could be transparent and deploy a community where their users can share the scripts.

We have been using this solution for almost 11 years. We have a cluster of two Radware 52808 devices. We are currently using version 32.2.12. Some devices are deployed on-premises, but we have a client running SIWA, a cloud web environment in Radware Alteon, so we deploy both. So it is on public and hardware cloud.

It is pretty stable, and we are happy with the solution. We had some problems in the past, but they have been resolved. In the past, we suffered some key performance bags. For example, there was a memory leak that persisted during firmware releases. We had to reboot and failover the devices. Every Wednesday at 6:00 pm, we had failovers of the digital application delivery control from one device to another for about a year. The device had a problem where if you ran it for too long without rebooting, it generated a corrupt memory and crashed. The device stopped accepting new connections, and we couldn't see any issues in the logs. The technical support told us it could be a tricky memory leak back. When we started rebooting the devices periodically each week, we managed to resolve the situation. It took about a year, and multiple upgrades and versions before the vendor fixed the issue.

Our organization usually buys load balances and hand-held devices oversized. We have not had any problem with scalability, and none of the devices fall short of our expectations. In addition, the devices are usually more powerful than the license they sell you. If there are problems with scalability, we can upgrade our license to a superior one.

We work with public institutions and have tens of thousands of potential users because we use Radware Alteon in public administration and digital offices. In Spain, the public administration sector is our biggest client.

They have good support, and we have used them for years.

We have used Big IP F5 for many years.

I rate the initial setup an eight out of ten. It was not straightforward because we needed to set it up. Radware Alteon has a specific syntax requiring navigation of all menus and venues. 

Deployment depends on the area and configuration that needs to be applied. With setup experience, deployment of Radware Alteon could be reasonably fast. The initial deployment was done in-house. But now, connecting to a third-party coworker in the data center is easy. We can rack the device in the data center and plug the cables into a laptop that can plug into the Radware Alteon. The user can connect to a smartphone data plan and easily configure the device remotely. We need just two people for maintenance.

I believe there is a return on investment. Therefore, the solution is worth buying, and if you don't buy a load balancer, it is difficult because you will need more backend servers.

I do not have specific details about the costs. There is a licensing fee, and they have an SSL transaction license and others. They have two or three licenses that you pay based on the volume.

I rate this solution a seven out of ten. Of recent, we tend to lean towards using cloud. This is because the on-premises devices are less common and are losing presence in my company's services. Regarding advice to others, I would recommend they upgrade the device before entering the production stage to reduce the bags.

Our primary use case for the solution is protection. We have just one web application protected behind this AppWall, and it is automatic with the default configuration. This device periodically downloads new threat signatures from Radware, and most of the time, we let the device AppWall handle the traffic and block the threats that it thinks are ahead.

The error detection system is very valuable. When an error is encountered, the WAF blocks an illegitimate user and sends a message. The message contains a transaction ID that can be matched in the locks of the AppWall. So, it's not hard to investigate these events when people write an incident because some illegitimate user is often trying to use this web that is protected behind the WAF and getting errors.

The user interface can be improved.

We have been using this solution for less than a year, and the version we use is integrated into the Alteon on-premises device.

The solution is scalable. However, because we are tending towards the cloud version of these products, if we increase the usage, it would be cloud WAF versions of AppWall.

I was not involved in the initial setup.

It's difficult to tell our precise return on investments because we let the AppWall operate by itself and don't look at the AppWall events. So we probably need to look closely at the events and everything. Still, whenever we look up the events, we see that the device blocks a fair amount of attempts to breach security, and we barely see incidents with legitimate users. So I assume it's a good return on investment because the device blocks threats and allows legitimate users to work correctly.

I cannot comment on licensing costs as I am not very knowledgeable about them.

I rate the solution a six out of ten. The solution is good but can be improved by including a better user interface.

A Radware Alteon load balancer is a hardware device that acts as a reverse proxy and distributes network or application traffic across a number of servers. Load balancers are used to increase capacity (high-availability) and reliability of application. Load balancers ensure reliability and availability by monitoring the health of applications, and only sending requests to servers and applications that can respond in a timely manner. They improve the overall performance of applications by maintaining application and network sessions, as well as by performing application-specific tasks.

Load balancers are generally grouped into two categories: layer 4 and layer 7. Layer 4 load balancers act on data found in the network and transport layer protocols like TCP/IP, FTP, and UDP. Layer7 load balancers distribute requests based on data found in application layer protocols like HTTPS, HTTP. 

Requests are received by both types of load balancers and they are distributed to a particular server based on a configuration algorithm.

• Eliminates complexity
• Reduces deployment time
• Increases efficiency
• Improves performance
• Enhances productivity
• Simplifies access
• Enables consistent security, deployment automation, single sign–on, any-IP support, mobility

Radware's application delivery controller (ADC) provides advanced and comprehensive application delivery capabilities, ensuring 24/7 availability.

• Needs to improve in automation, surge protection, DNS automation.
• There are no options to name basic configurations.
• SMS alerts, reporting alerts require some automation.
• Improvement is needed for live traffic monitoring in dashboard, live traffic tracking.
• It needs automated traffic capture and performance tasks, as per script.

I would rate this solution at seven out of 10. Radware Alteon is a system that monitors the availability and performance of global resources and uses that information to manage network traffic patterns. It uses load-balancing algorithms, topology-based routing, and AppShape++ scripts  to control and distribute traffic according to specific policies.

Alteon is used in our environment for the application traffic from the customers. The traffic is coming from outside the network. It then comes to the firewall. From the firewall, it goes to the load balancer which sends the traffic to different application servers in a distributed environment.

There is no lack of connectivity. The traffic is going smoothly. The handshake is happening. SSL offloading is happening perfectly on the device, and it is going to the application server. The response is being sent to the customers within milliseconds. We have done a hardware refresh. Earlier, we were using the 6 GB memory box, and we are now using a 12 GB memory box with the same features.

The downtime is minimal. The product is robust, and there are no issues that we have faced. We are running N-1 releases or the latest releases. The support from Radware is fantastic.

The downtime is very little. We have not faced any issues. Because we are using it in a cluster environment, we have redundancy built in there, so we do not face any issues.

Alteon’s analytics have saved us time when troubleshooting. We understand the traffic coming from various customers and analyze it. It has saved about 15% to 20% of our time.

SSL offloading feature is one of the most important features. Traffic distribution is also done very well by Radware.

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.

Everything else is perfect. We are not facing any issues with the product.

We have been using Alteon in our environment for almost seven to eight years. We have done a hardware refresh. Earlier, we were using the 5208 XL model, and now, we are using the 5208S model.

The stability of the box is a ten out of ten.

The solution is scalable. There is no problem. I would rate it a ten out of ten for scalability.

It is being used at multiple locations. About three to four people are working with Alteon, but for the application, we have a big team. Our customers are enterprises.

Their technical support from India is very good. However, when it is nighttime in India, it is a bit challenging because their support comes from outside India, most probably Israel. Sometimes, we face a challenge when the support is given by the team out of India. It takes time. Due to the language issues, it takes time for them to understand the issue, so the time to resolve the issue or work on an issue increases.

Positive

We were previously using the F5 load balancer, and then we switched to Alteon. Alteon is working fine for us, and we have not faced any issues with it.

We switched because of the features and pricing. Pricing plays the most important role in procurement. Alteon's pricing is competitive, and that is why we have moved on from F5 to Alteon. F5 is also not as flexible as Alteon.

It is an on-prem solution. Its deployment was straightforward. It was not complex.

We were able to migrate from old devices to new devices in minutes. We just copied the configuration from the old box and replicated it to the new box. It does not take much time. The releases and the patches that we deploy are also very efficient.

Replicating to a box took 20 to 30 minutes. Putting the operating system and replicating the configuration does not take more than 30 minutes.

It requires maintenance. When a new patch comes, we implement it. We plan a downtime and implement it. Even though we have a redundant node, we take downtime to be on the safer side. 

The solution has a minimum downtime, and the maintenance window is also short. It is not big.

We did not receive training from Radware on how to use Alteon. We are doing it by ourselves. It is an on-the-job kind of training.

Overall, two to three people were involved.

It is difficult to calculate the ROI because the Alteon load balancer is one part of the investment. There is the whole network and server infrastructure. We have not calculated the ROI, but it plays a very key role. The traffic is seamlessly distributed to the application servers. The application processes it and gives a response.

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.

I would recommend Radware Alteon because it is a very smooth solution. Someone who wants to deploy an application load balancer in their environment can go for this box without any thoughts or concerns. The box is very scalable. It is a very smooth system. It handles the traffic very comfortably. You will not face any issues with the box.

Our application is an in-house application. It does not go over the Internet. We do not have any cloud connectivity. We also do not have out-of-the-box application integrations in our environment. Alteon is supporting the SNMPv3 standard for sending the SNMP trap to the outside box. That is the only integration we have done, and it is working fine. We have not integrated with OpenShift, Ansible, etc.

I would rate Radware Alteon a nine out of ten. There are only two areas of improvement. The vulnerability part needs improvement and the support given at night time from outside the country needs improvement. It takes longer to get an issue resolved with the support team located out of India.