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F5 Big-IP Advanced WAF vs. SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    F5 Big-IP Advanced WAF

    Score9.4 out of 10
    N/AF5 Networks offers the Advanced Web Application Firewall (WAF) to provide bot defense, advanced application protection, anti-bot SDK, and other features.N/A

    SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset

    Score7.6 out of 10
    N/ASolarWinds® Engineer’s Toolset (ETS) helps users monitor and troubleshoot a network with over 60 tools for network management. ETS allows users to monitor and receive alerts in real time on network availability and health, and perform network diagnostics for faster troubleshooting and resolution of complex network issues. With ETS users can deploy an array of network discovery tools including Port Scanner, Switch Port Mapper or advanced Subnet Calculator, manage Cisco® devices with specialized…

    $1,585

    Per Instance

    Pricing
    F5 Big-IP Advanced WAFSolarWinds Engineer's Toolset
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    One Time Price
    $1,585
    Per Instance
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    F5 Big-IP Advanced WAFSolarWinds Engineer's Toolset
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    F5 Big-IP Advanced WAFSolarWinds Engineer's Toolset
    Considered Both Products
    F5
    No answer on this topic
    SolarWinds
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    20 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    11 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    18 Answers
    90%
    Delivers good value for the price
    9 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    20 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    11 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    14 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    10 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    17 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    10 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    F5 Big-IP Advanced WAFSolarWinds Engineer's Toolset
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    F5 Distributed Cloud WAF (Web Application Firewall)
    Score9.2 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Enterprises
    F5 Distributed Cloud WAF (Web Application Firewall)
    Score9.2 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    F5 Big-IP Advanced WAFSolarWinds Engineer's Toolset
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.6
    (21 ratings)
    8.6
    (11 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    8.4
    (10 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    F5 Big-IP Advanced WAFSolarWinds Engineer's Toolset
    Likelihood to Recommend
    F5
    I believe that in industrial environments like ours where we have to have bare metal devices near the production environment combined with hybrid cloud, that is a good platform. That's a good use case. It optimizes traffic. It helps us stay more secure in our data centers. Now with regards to that are fully operating in the cloud, I'm not really sure if we would make the same decision considering the option that I said to have something that is self-provision to avoid too much management of virtual machines on the cloud. So that's an area of improvement.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    I have found the toolset especially useful for scanning subnets to discover devices, and for setting up temporary real-time monitors when we are troubleshooting or setting up new connections. The most useful aspect has been the ability to apply the tools to help troubleshoot and pinpoint intermittent issues. More general tools like Orion often do not have the granularity to detect issues like intermittent packet loss which are especially impactful to applications like Voice. The toolset gives us another level of capability to dig into issues.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    F5
    • So the product definitely is helping us for sudden attacks through DDOS, some injection ingestion into UI URLs, and definitely it's capturing those and I definitely see that as an advantage for us. They can stop the hackers from using our endpoints.
    Incentivized
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    SolarWinds
    • Various monitoring
    • Stores history
    • Suggests indices
    • Helps to find the SQL query text
    • Helps to see what machines/users the bad queries are coming from
    • Shows current blocking session
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    F5
    • The UI for events. E.g., clicking the "Accept" button does nothing.
    • Traffic learning suggestions are often very incorrect. We were originally suggested to use "Automatic" learning, and had to completely scrap the policy due to the suggestions.
    • "All in one" dashboard for viewing application URL/parameter overrides per policy.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    • The unifying component that is intended to be the initial interface to the tools seems clunky. I prefer to start the tools individually rather than using it.
    • The port scanner could use some improvements to make it easier to use.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    F5
    We just love work with f5
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    F5
    Most* of it is very intuitive and easy to use. The "Help" section is fairly fantastic. See some of my other comments about things like the "Traffic Learning" section being wildly wrong sometimes, and also the event logs with UI buttons that don't do anything. Overall though, it's an excellent product.
    Incentivized
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    SolarWinds
    Very easy to use and intuitive. Just be careful with the WAN Killer...it does what it says.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    F5
    Highly knowledgeable engineers who understand complex networking and application-delivery issues.


    Strong escalation paths — once a case reaches senior engineers, resolutions are fast and accurate.


    Comprehensive documentation and many self-service resources for troubleshooting.


    Clear communication with well-structured updates throughout the ticket lifecycle.


    Excellent for critical incidents, with reliable guidance during high-severity outages.


    Deep product expertise across BIG-IP, ASM/Advanced WAF, GTM/DNS, and modern F5 services.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    Our organization uses it regularly. It is reliable, and we keep finding new uses for it
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    F5
    -Stable data path equals to less crashes -Almost all the features working as expected -Provides more granular controls in allowing false positives -Request evaluation is accurate -Irules feature is a plus
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    I haven't compared any tools similar to SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset. This might be because I'm pretty biased when it comes to monitoring, and reporting solutions. I've found that SolarWinds provides the biggest bang for the buck in my opinion. I'm sure there are other solutions on the market that compete, but I haven't tried any of them because I've been very satisfied with SolarWinds.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    F5
    • One impact F5 Big-IP Advanced WAF has on our organization's overall business objectives is that F5 Big-IP Advanced WAF is security sensitive
    • Another impact F5 Big-IP Advanced WAF has on our organization's overall business objectives is the F5 Big-IP Advanced WAF blocking feature
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    • Spend less time downloading free buggy tools
    • All the tools in one spot, so you don't have to look around for tools
    • Get to the solution sooner
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset Screenshots

    Screenshot of Perform network stress tests with Engineer's Toolset WAN Killer. You don’t need to use real traffic for studying network activities, like testing traffic and load balancing. Instead, deploy Engineer's Toolset WAN Killer to help interactively test connections and adjust the IP traffic generated to achieve the desired network load based on your requirements.Screenshot of Quickly troubleshoot your network with enhanced ping capabilities and packet route tracing, among other network bandwidth usage and monitoring tools included in ETS.Screenshot of Using ETS, you can run scans to gain insight into how routers, hubs switches, and other devices are configured by analyzing SNMP queries and viewing MIB attributes. ETS is designed to help you more easily understand whether your network and ports are using appropriate settings.Screenshot of Config Compare, a part of ETS, is built to compare the running configuration of a Cisco router with the startup configuration. With the Cisco configuration compare tool, you can easily detect the changes made to the network, switch, and router configurations that are not committed to non-volatile memory (NVRAM).Screenshot of Manage your IP network from discovery to address tracking. Discover subnets on a seed router and scan the subnet or a range of IP addresses, generate a list of subnets along with their mask, size, range, and broadcast address and actively monitor subnets to identify and track which IP addresses are in use on your network.