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F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs. NetScaler vs. Oracle Dyn Managed DNS

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

    Score9.6 out of 10
    N/AF5 states that the "brain" of the BIG-IP platform, Local Traffic Manager (LTM) intelligently manages network traffic so applications are always fast, available, and secure.N/A

    NetScaler

    Score8 out of 10
    N/ANetScaler ADC is an application delivery controller.N/A

    Oracle Dyn Managed DNS

    Score8.8 out of 10
    Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
    Oracle Dyn DNS (domain name system) is an infrastructure-as-a-service that is touted by Oracle Dyne as one of the highest performance global networks existent. It is available as a managed DNS with secondary DNS available for more reliable business continuity on higher service tiers.N/A
    Pricing
    F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)NetScalerOracle Dyn Managed DNS
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)NetScalerOracle Dyn Managed DNS
    Free Trial
    NoNoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details———
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)NetScalerOracle Dyn Managed DNS
    Considered Multiple Products
    F5
    Chose F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
    Obviously NetScaler, because we had that functionality, we just turned it on. We were only using it for our Citrix farms and we migrated all of our F5 uses over to the NetScalers. So simply because that was, other than buying the product, which the actual NetScaler themselves …
    Incentivized
    Chose F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
    F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) was the most robust and highest performing ADC product.
    Incentivized
    Chose F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
    Its a complete security appliance.
    Incentivized
    Chose F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
    F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) has more features, cost is higher in some scenarios, lower in others
    Incentivized
    Cloud Software Group
    No answer on this topic
    Oracle
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    48 Answers
    93%
    Would buy again
    13 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    98%
    Delivers good value for the price
    43 Answers
    93%
    Delivers good value for the price
    13 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    46 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    14 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    97%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    37 Answers
    92%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    11 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    39 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    13 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Best Alternatives
    F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)NetScalerOracle Dyn Managed DNS
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Amazon Route 53
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Azure Application Gateway
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Azure Application Gateway
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Azure DNS
    Score8.9 out of 10
    Enterprises
    NetScaler
    Score8 out of 10
    Azure Application Gateway
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Amazon Route 53
    Score8.8 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)NetScalerOracle Dyn Managed DNS
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.6
    (49 ratings)
    8.5
    (26 ratings)
    8.5
    (103 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.7
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    9.5
    (27 ratings)
    7.4
    (6 ratings)
    8.6
    (101 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    7.3
    (4 ratings)
    8.6
    (99 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)NetScalerOracle Dyn Managed DNS
    Likelihood to Recommend
    F5
    I mean the only reason we changed away from it was price and it just simply had to do with the licensing that Citrix was offering on the NetScalers. They had basically an all you can eat consumption license that we were easily inside of with all of our VDI usage, whereas with F5 we had to buy the hardware and we had to license the software. Any place you need to actually do traffic balancing at scale, it's a fantastic product. I couldn't recommend it highly enough. There's just some things that hardware SSL offload and hardware load balancing just simply can't be equal that I don't know if there's a better product on the market for that.
    Incentivized
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    Cloud Software Group
    Citrix Netscaler can be a powerful network appliance for environments that are fully committed and open to utilizing a network appliance that isn't made by a traditional network vendor. Administrator user experience has improved over the years and will continue to improve with the flexibility of virtual and physical appliances available for medium and large enterprises.
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    Oracle
    Oracle managed DNS becomes very heavy when there is an ample amount of DNS being managed. However, the DNS creation and updating takes very less time to propagate and is very easy to use. So, for an organization, where there is a modest amount of DNS to manage, it works very well and gives a splendid experience. So, considering the complexity of managing the DNS for an IT company Oracle Dyn managed DNS is the best option to opt.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    F5
    • Sure. It does load balancing fantastically. I mean, it's an industry standard product for that. We also use it for TLS offload for applications. Those are the two main use cases for that. We do also use some of the I rules for traffic filtering. We've used that in some of the external facing services. It does a really nice job with that. It's a little bit complicated sometimes and some of the Cipher Suite stuff is interesting.
    Incentivized
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    Cloud Software Group
    • Flexibility. NetScaler assumes its admins know a bit about networking and in-depth details surrounding the applications they are configuring access for/to. This being so, the range of configuration options is very broad allowing various versions' combinations of protocol patterns, expressions, rules etc., all to the benefit of the admin.
    • Granularity. Having such a broad range of configuration options available, while still allowing simple options to be configured simply. The GUI is well-stylized and navigation has a good flow.
    • Ease of control. For load-balancing of simple services right out of the box, NetScaler makes it pretty easy, compared to the range of options available in the surrounding GUI and under the hood.
    Incentivized
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    Oracle
    • The portal management is very easy to use in comparison to other companies for DNS management.
    • The have expert mode that allows for multiple edits on records and allows you to make notes for each edit on a zone.
    • The have TTLs that are as low as 30 seconds.
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    F5
    • Some of the stuff you have to dive into the CLI to really use, I'm going to reach back to the previous employer for this. So I had a much greater degree of involvement with it at that point in time for, I was the crypto guy at the company and I had to design all the cipher suites that we actually implemented on our front end banking products. So in order to do that, I had to dive into it, download all the Cipher suites, figure out the actual order of operation for them, how they were selected because I wanted to design the Cipher Suites to actually provide a specific customer experience for the types of connections that our customers were likely to initiate. Getting at that information was a giant PITA. It was poorly documented at the time. I'm not sure if it's documented any better now. Every time the software changed or got upgraded, made your version, I'd have to do it all over again because the upgrades to the stack, which looked like it was based on open SSL, but it was heavily modified with a different syntax. Oh yay. That's fun too. So I had to write giant documents describing all of the ciphers that I was designing for this because it just kept changing all the time. So I didn't care for that aspect of it. Traffic management does a great job for that.
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    Cloud Software Group
    • The documentation could use an overhaul with specific examples related to the command line as well as GUI. Explanations in the documentation would also be helpful.
    • Being able to have more than just one routing table would allow the ability to leverage security.
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    Oracle
    • Simpler billing interface
    • More responsive sales team to provide relevant QBRs to ensure proper and best practice use of the product/platform
    • Integration of the Dyn ECT Managed DNS with Dyn Domain Registration would be a nice feature as currently I have to manage two consoles and billing accounts.
    Incentivized
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    Likelihood to Renew
    F5
    F5 has always been one of the best products we have in the data center. We had few issues with the BUG and Code upgrades but the main use cases for F5 was always top notch. From High availability to Globally load balancing applications across multiple data centers and muti cloud environments.
    Incentivized
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    Cloud Software Group
    No answers on this topic
    Oracle
    It does exactly what we need, its fast, secure and reliable.
    Incentivized
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    Usability
    F5
    I am very comfortable with this product not only configuring it but automating it as well. There are not many configurations or situations where I do not know how to implement it on the device. I find it straightforward and easy to use.
    Incentivized
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    Cloud Software Group
    I gave the NetScaler a 7 here because the system once configured and deployed is very easy to use. However, if you did not deploy the system and do not have the fundamental background knowledge then you will have trouble using the product in general. Overall it is a great product and service but does typically require professional services to be deployed.
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    Oracle
    This is the only real gripe we have with Dyn; their web-UI can be remarkably painful to use. In the "simple" editor, DNS records are arranged in a kind of "node" view, where each record is a node and any records of the same name or longer (i.e. all records called "record.example.com" or "other.record.example.com") fall under it. This creates an odd sort of hierarchical view that's not really representative of the zone file. The "expert" editor doesn't have an actual delete button, just a checkbox. If you want to update conflicting record types (for example, replacing an A record with a CNAME) you have to check the box for the record being deleted, save changes, create the new record, save changes, and finally publish changes. Dyn uses a publish model for changes, where all changes you make are staged and can be reverted or published all at once. This is fine, except that the publish/revert dialog is in a different page. This is nice when you have many changes, but very annoying when you're changing just one or two records across multiple zones. These are relatively minor issues in an otherwise good platform; annoyances more than deal breakers.
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    Support Rating
    F5
    Good after sales support if one purchased direct support from F5.
    Incentivized
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    Cloud Software Group
    Overall, our organization's experience with Citrix support is that support can be hit or miss. Oftentimes it takes multiple attempts and much longer than desirable to obtain a viable solution for issues experienced with their products. It would be great to see Citrix invest time, effort, and almighty dollars into improving their support and bug fix process across the board.
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    Oracle
    The support team at Dyn has always been very helpful and have tried to answer our questions to the best of their knowledge. We have never had any issues from support tickets and they are often resolved in a few hours
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    Implementation Rating
    F5
    Easy to implement if one had attended F5 Training for Local Traffic Manager (LTM).
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    Cloud Software Group
    No answers on this topic
    Oracle
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    F5
    F5 is doing its specialized function. There is no other product that can beat them. We are extremely happy with the product. Especially on load balancing, traffic redirecting TLS encryption, and SNI modification. We will continue to explore F5's product, especially on the public cloud side. e.g. NGINX.
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    Cloud Software Group
    easy to use and setup and reliable. Once the configuration was setup and running this has been really useful and easy to maintain. The other solutions seemed overly complicated and difficult to configure and get up and running with the security that we required
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    Oracle
    We use both Oracle Dyn Managed DNS and Amazon Route 53. We like having our main DNS provider outside our cloud provider in case there's an issue with Amazon and we need to point things somewhere else temporarily. But for all the smaller stuff and internal stuff, we use Route 53 successfully.
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    Return on Investment
    F5
    • It has allowed us to let application developers know that the issues are with their application and not due to the network, because of where it sits. This has been invaluable when troubleshooting issues when they arise. Knowing whether or not traffic is even hitting the F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM), either ingress or outgoing. If the Dev's information is not even making it to the F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM), we can quickly tell them and let them figure the issue out on their own, saving the rest of the Network Team from getting that 2am call.
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    Cloud Software Group
    • We had this set up before COVID and it saved us. We just added user licenses and scaled out our citrix farm and IT sat back and just monitored users from home.
    • Scales up and out with ease
    • Challenging to find NetScaler experts for advanced features you want to enable and use
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    Oracle
    • For the law firm its being used for, it keeps their remote users working. For law firms, time is money, usually every 15 minutes lost can be a big deal to them.
    • Sometimes it has switched when its not supposed to, and causes downtime. No real way to inform users when the switch is happening, it would be great to have an email alert we can not only send to ourselves but a notification to primary and technical partners in the firm so they don't have to yell at us like something is broken, instead they are aware it had to change.
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    ScreenShots