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BIG-IP

BIG-IP

Overview

What is BIG-IP?

F5 BIG-IP software from Seattle-based F5 Networks is a load balancing and application protection solution suite available on cloud or via virtual editions, on a subscription or perpetual licensing basis. The BIG-IP suite of products supports a wide range of…

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Recent Reviews

F5 BIG-IP is the Best

10 out of 10
March 22, 2024
Incentivized
We are using F5 BIG-IP for applications , load balancers to distribute our load and application data. this tools help us to efficiently …
Continue reading

Review of F5 BIG-IP

8 out of 10
March 22, 2024
Incentivized
It is used for load balancing. Balancing across multiple servers or data centers to ensure optimal distribution of incoming traffic. This …
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BIG-IP Information

10 out of 10
March 22, 2024
Incentivized
We use F5 as our local traffic management, global traffic management as well as application security appliance in our organisations. …
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F5 BIG-IP Review

8 out of 10
February 16, 2024
Incentivized
It's used to provide applications, the ability to load balance network traffic, and also offer some sort of protection against external …
Continue reading

Big IP Review

10 out of 10
February 16, 2024
Incentivized
There's a lot of different ways that we use it. We use the WAF, which I didn't even mention the WAF, but we also use the GTM for load …
Continue reading

F5 Big-IP Review

10 out of 10
February 16, 2024
Incentivized
I think LTM is pretty self-explanatory. That's pretty much what everybody uses, so I'll stay away from that one. The biggest use …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 10 features
  • Customer Support Services (8)
    8.0
    80%
  • IP Address Masking (6)
    7.7
    77%
  • AES 256-bit Encryption (7)
    7.7
    77%
  • Simultaneous Connections (8)
    7.6
    76%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Video Reviews

2 videos

Senior Level Engineer Drops Their Thoughts | F5 BIG-IP Review
03:21
Manager of Security Engineering and Architecture Delivers His Verdict | F5 BIG-IP Review
04:43
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Pricing

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What is BIG-IP?

F5 BIG-IP software from Seattle-based F5 Networks is a load balancing and application protection solution suite available on cloud or via virtual editions, on a subscription or perpetual licensing basis. The BIG-IP suite of products supports a wide range of security and application performance…

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Product Demos

Cisco ACE to F5 BIG-IP Migration and Heartbleed Mitigation

YouTube

F5 BIG-IP Edge Gateway Performance Demo

YouTube

F5 BIG-IP LTM Command Line Demo

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BIG-IP AWAF Demo 02 - Block Common Web App Vulnerabilities with F5 BIG-IP Adv WAF (formerly ASM)

YouTube

BIG-IP AWAF Demo 01 - Create Simple App Security Policies with F5 BIG-IP Adv WAF (formerly ASM)

YouTube
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Features

Virtual Private Network

Virtual Private Network features aim to create a more secure and private network connection.

7.1
Avg 7.3
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Product Details

What is BIG-IP?

BIG-IP software products are licensed modules that run on top of F5's Traffic Management Operation System® (TMOS). This custom operating system is an event driven operating system designed specifically to inspect network and application traffic and make real-time decisions based on the configurations provided. The BIG-IP software can run on hardware or can run in virtualized environments. Virtualized systems provide BIG-IP software functionality where hardware implementations are unavailable, including public clouds and various managed infrastructures where rack space is a critical commodity.

BIG-IP Primary Software Modules
  • BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) - Central to F5's full traffic proxy functionality, LTM provides the platform for creating virtual servers, performance, service, protocol, authentication, and security profiles to define and shape application traffic. Most other modules in the BIG-IP family use LTM as a foundation for enhanced services.
  • BIG-IP DNS - Formerly Global Traffic Manager, BIG-IP DNS provides similar security and load balancing features that LTM offers but at a global/multi-site scale. BIG-IP DNS offers services to distribute and secure DNS traffic advertising application namespaces.
  • BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) - Provides federation, SSO, application access policies, and secure web tunneling. Allows granular access to various applications, virtualized desktop environments, or just go full VPN tunnel.
  • Secure Web Gateway Services (SWG) - Paired with APM, SWG enables access policy control for internet usage. It can allow, block, verify and log traffic with APM's access policies allowing flexibility around an organization's acceptable internet and public web application use.
  • BIG-IP Application Security Manager (ASM) - This is F5's web application firewall (WAF) solution. Traditional firewalls and layer 3 protection don't understand the complexities of many web applications. ASM allows users to tailor acceptable and expected application behavior on a per application basis . Zero day, DoS, and click fraud all rely on traditional security device's inability to protect unique application needs; ASM fills the gap between traditional firewall and tailored granular application protection.
  • BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) - AFM is designed to reduce the hardware and extra hops required when ADC's are paired with traditional firewalls. Operating at L3/L4, AFM helps protect traffic destined for the data center. Paired with ASM, the user can implement protection services at L3 - L7 for a full ADC and Security solution in one box or virtual environment.

BIG-IP Hardware

BIG-IP hardware offers several types of purpose-built custom solutions, all designed in-house at F5. BIG-IP hardware is offered via series releases, each offering improvements for performance and features determined by customer requirements. These may include increased port capacity, traffic throughput, CPU performance, FPGA feature functionality for hardware-based scalability, and virtualization capabilities. There are two primary variations of BIG-IP hardware, single chassis design, or VIPRION modular designs. Each offer unique advantages for internal and collocated infrastructures. Updates in processor architecture, FPGA, and interface performance gains are common so we recommend referring to F5's hardware page for more information.

BIG-IP Videos

What is F5 BIG-IP?
In this video we're going to talk about some of the top access gateway tools you should be using to keep your network protected, including F5 BIG-IP

BIG-IP Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

F5 BIG-IP software from Seattle-based F5 Networks is a load balancing and application protection solution suite available on cloud or via virtual editions, on a subscription or perpetual licensing basis. The BIG-IP suite of products supports a wide range of security and application performance needs. The suite includes BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) traffic management and optimization, BIG-IP DNS, BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) identity and password protection, BIG-IP Application Acceleration Manager, BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) and BIG-IP Application Security Manager (ASM) web application firewall (WAF) and advanced DDoS protection.

NetScaler ADC, Cloudflare, and Akamai are common alternatives for BIG-IP.

Reviewers rate Customer Support Services highest, with a score of 8.

The most common users of BIG-IP are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(196)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 116)
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March 22, 2024

F5 BIG-IP is the Best

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using F5 BIG-IP for applications , load balancers to distribute our load and application data. this tools help us to efficiently manage our application and infrastructure as well. Using the high availability feature in this product will be helpful during the patches and maintenance windows. It helps us reducing the downtime
  • Load Balancing
  • Easy to setup
  • Reduced downtime
  • Preconfigured templates
  • Realtime incoming traffic including the ip and location
  • Single dashboard for the cluster
This product is easy to setup and configure and maintain. Due to simplicity and easy patch management process makes the product more efficient and effective.
even in a situation of hardware related issue which can be resolved by the engineer itself. The support by F5 is very easy and very supportive. You will get a quick response
March 22, 2024

Review of F5 BIG-IP

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is used for load balancing. Balancing across multiple servers or data centers to ensure optimal distribution of incoming traffic. This helps organizations achieve high availability and scalability for their applications, preventing downtime due to server failures or overload.
  • Application Security
  • Centralized Management and Automation
  • Traffic Management and Load Balancing
  • Complex user interface
  • Cloud Native support needed
  • Scalability performance
1. Suited for load balancing
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
- Performance issues with high throughput volume of customer transactions in finance and securities domain
- F5 BIG-IP standard models are not easy, fast, resiliency to scale when the system have problems on performance and need to scale
- Velos chassis from F5 help us to resolve this challenge when our business grow up fast in time.
  • Performance with SSL encryption
  • Security Function
  • Stability
  • Scaling
  • Investment & operation price
  • Simple procedures to maintain or upgrade with minimal impact to operation
  • Performance improve when work both LB and WAF with high volume concurrent transactions, latency
- Performance for over 200k concurrent transactions in securities finance systems.
- Easy to scale out when upgrade and not impact to operation, keep infrastructure architecture
- Good support from F5 engineers when customers have problems or issues. Maintenance price too high to maintain F5 products.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our office uses F5 BIG-IP to solve a big hit from the client to access our server (data center). Every year, we hold exams for prospective employees (national civil service agency).
  • Balancing
  • The future our office must WAF
Prove to solve the problem of big hit from our client's access to the data center.
March 22, 2024

BIG-IP Information

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use F5 as our local traffic management, global traffic management as well as application security appliance in our organisations. Usually our business user would like to have an active-active application between sites hence the use or global traffic management helps in providing this solution that the business user requested. At the same time, business user usually would have multiple web or app servers that requires load balancing between them. Since we are using local traffic management, this helps to achieve what is being requested by the business user. At the same time business user requires protection and security fronting their applications. Having an application security management appliance helps in achieving and protecting the application of the business user.
  • Local load balancing
  • Global load balancing
  • Application security Protction
  • Link controller
  • Having a real time connection log
  • Having a more detail log
  • Having a better stability on the virtual appliance especially on the cpu and memory
  • Having a better health monitoring get string checker
Scenario which F5 BIG-IP is well suited is when there is a request from the business user to have a load balancer whether local or global to assist in load balancing their application. It can also be well suited when business user required a security protection for their application
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use F5 BIG-IP as an application load balancer & as a reverse proxy. The problems we're not just need it for balancer but we want to use it as security appliances.
  • Load balancing
  • Reverse proxy
  • DNS reverse
  • Cookies handling
  • Concurrent connections
  • Security features
  • Log management
Works well as load balancing & reverse proxy in our IT infrastructure.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
F5 BIG-IP is used as GTM and LTM.
  • Application security
  • Traffic prioritization and load balancing
  • Application monitoring
  • GUI interface since it looks like a website rather than an interface for managing a device e.g. LTM
  • Search functionality
F5 BIG-IP is like the gold standard in load balancing and app prioritization.
March 22, 2024

BIG-IP Review

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It used for traffic management and route
  • Manage traffic as per need
  • Allow routing
  • More multi path traffic allowed
  • Cloud based solution in depth
As our environment is too big with many apps instances so big ip help to do traffic route and management well with zero latency
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We purchased a set of R5900 and R5600 appliances for our on-premises datacentre, which includes a load balancer, forward and reverse proxy, and SSLO functionality. We use SSLO in our DC for SSL offload and application visibility to copy decrypted traffic to our SIEM and IDS solutions. Application configuration is done using Ansible playbooks for speed, simplicity, and error-free configuration.
  • Forward Proxy.
  • Reverse Proxy.
  • SSL Offload.
  • Encrypt/decrypt.
  • Application visibility.
  • Training bundled into large orders by default.
  • In person targeted workshops offered.
  • Online targeted workshops.
F5 BG-IP is a flexible product. Additional functionality can be bolted onto the initial purchase. This makes working with customers easy because they can start with the basic functionality, and then we can sell advanced services when they are ready to consume them. In-built API/programmability makes automation simple.
February 16, 2024

F5 BIG-IP Review

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It's used to provide applications, the ability to load balance network traffic, and also offer some sort of protection against external threats.
  • It helps network traffic not get bogged down for apps. It also allows freedom and flexibility to scale out network infrastructure for the enterprise as use cases come. So whether it be expanding an app service or decreasing app services, the ability to allow us to do all that helps out.
  • I think BIG-IP next is supposed to touch on that. Hopefully with Next maybe we'll get some of those issues sorted out.
I think it's a good product for actually on-Prem. Enterprise or business. Maybe not so much suited for completely Cloud-based technologies. If you're on-Prem then you definitely need a load balancer. If you have over 50 plus VMs, then yeah, you probably need a load balancer.
February 16, 2024

Big IP Review

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
There's a lot of different ways that we use it. We use the WAF, which I didn't even mention the WAF, but we also use the GTM for load balancing of our VS for the internet, as well as internal applications. And we also use the LTM to balance the backend servers for that. All of our applications are load balanced through the F5 and we have multiple hundreds of them. We use it to balance between data centers. So for disaster recovery.
  • It's pretty stable. I mean, it is very fast switches. It's almost a seamless experience switching in the back end, doing all the switching. Nobody notices it. So I think the connectivity and the logic works pretty quickly. Not that easy to use, but easy to use.
  • Right now I don't have anything that needs to be done differently. I mean a nicer, more modern, more features on the ui, ux, which I'm hearing about on this next IP or whatever it's called, IP Next whatever.
Where it's more suited and I mean for load balancing, I think it's the only way to go. Probably the top provider of load balancing services. I think for whether you're in the cloud or hybrid or on-prem or any way, it seems like F5 is the leader in all of that realm for application management
February 16, 2024

F5 Big-IP Review

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I think LTM is pretty self-explanatory. That's pretty much what everybody uses, so I'll stay away from that one. The biggest use case for us is protecting our medical record systems. With WAF, it's very flexible. There's a lot of cloud products out there from other vendors who we tried to use and they just didn't have all the knobs, bells and whistles that Big IP has. And we also work very closely with a vendor who works with F5 as well. So we have build guides available to us by going with F5 as opposed to other vendors. So being able to protect our workloads, customize apps, apply threat campaigns, IPI, it gives us some peace of mind as far as protecting our healthcare from attack.
  • I really like the flexibility. We have weekly meetings with our medical records admins and we go over all of our false positives and apply changes and custom scripting to make sure users can access the data effectively. It's really flexible and easy to manage.
  • So our current issue that we're seeing, we just upgraded to version 15 and there's some JSON validation issues that we're seeing that are causing us some headaches. There's tons of false positives with it and we're working our way through it. Support has been a little difficult. They're aware of the issue, but I don't think there's really a resolution yet.
I really do think it's well suited for any placement on the edge, especially with the WAF portion. APM is a whole different module unto itself that allows for VPN Connect connectivity, web top access. So it really is for these modules anyway, an edge appliance for us and not really usable in the interior of the network.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use F5 BIG-IP to improve security as to have high availability into thousands applications around the globe in support many business. BIG IP products can allow us to delivery more capacity and scalable option for them. We not use only BIG IP, there are other F5 products into our Data Centers like GTM, APM and BIG IQ that works together.
  • Load balancing
  • OS upgrade via BIG IQ improve the process.
  • HA option works very fast and well.
  • Report options that can be exported
  • There no easy way to rename objects
  • Tool to help on cleanup for un used objects
We have some cases that application team want to setup an virtual server and add only one pool member that has no any other server on the regional data center, in this scenario we can just use F5 BIG-IP - GTM to balance the application for any other Data Center if available.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
F5 BIG-IPs are used as to deploy applications at scale on all of our edge locations. BIG-IPs allow for our organization to standardize deployments across our edge and secure them. The products allows for integrations with partners to further enhance our security posture. The support team has been instrumental in helping with implementations, troubleshooting, and architecting our infrastructure.
  • Scaling our applications across hybrid and cloud environments
  • Protecting our endpoints through various integrations with partners
  • Flexibility to update configurations and profiles through iRules for our applications...enabling our business to quickly pivot when action is needed.
  • BIG-IP iRule versioning, when irules are updated on the fly, there's no way to roll back. This is generally addressed in a different product offering, but probably a moot point to address this in the current product. :)
We utilize LTM traffic manager and utilize integration partners for security for our applications.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
On prem application deployment, load balancing, using virtual servers, monitoring, and access control. We need to deliver ocsp, sts, and cdp services across multiple sites throughout the country and F5 devices allow us to do this efficiently. I am excited to see the upcoming BIG-IP next platform especially when it comes to upgrading versions since it it a pain point currently
  • Virtual server creation
  • Monitoring
  • Statistics
  • Bigip add automation
  • Ansible libraries
  • Better documentation
The FAA is still a very monolithic environment so we heavily use F5 BIG-IP on premis using virtual servers, load balancing, persistent loading of applications and NAT’ing. It would be great to move to a more agnostic approach since we have private cloud capabilities but the government moves very slow unfortunately
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
LTM/GTM for traffic management. We are also incorporating elements of the automation tool chain into our CMP platform. We need solution that will handle the data side traffic as well as provide tooling to support automation. We have about 300 big-ip devices and need centrally manage config/lifecycle for our deployments
  • Automation tools
  • Support team
  • LTM/gtm
  • Imish
  • Separate data/management plane
  • V6 MGMT support
  • MGMT functions via proxy
Data center with hardware is a good deployment model. We can provide asic for offload to support encrypted workloads.

Edge or purely virtual with SSL needs is not a good fit. This is less f5 issue and more just the nature of ve beast.


Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The biggest need that F5 BIG-IP addresses for us is application delivery. We use the F5 product to deliver our top apps.
  • Application delivery
  • Application security
  • Cloud delivery
  • Support used to be better and more reliable, faster, and used to have fewer transfers with the need for fewer escalations than we experience now.
  • Better upgrade support for users who are attempting to upgrade would be helpful.
F5 BIG-IP is well suited for application delivery and security. I also like F5 for DNS services. The only scenario where it is not sufficient is for alerting/management of certificates and licensing updates and status.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use F5 BIG-IP to perform load balancing for internal and external applications. We also use the product for reverse proxy.
  • Load Balancing
  • Reverse Proxy
  • Fast data transfer through the appliance.
  • The downtime during upgrades
  • The number of operations it takes to complete administrative a tasks
  • IRules are hard to follow sometimes.
I have used other load balancing product lines and find that F5 BIG-IP is the best option in almost all cases.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We mostly use F5 BIG-IP as load balancer. Common business requirement is to load balance traffic with non-standard methods (for example SIP session based on subscriber MSISDN number). Other frequent requirement is to do some modyfication in payload (SIP/HTTP headers). We fruitful it using (sometimes quite complex) iRules and ltm policys.
  • advanced traffic processing with iRules
  • many authentication options in APM
  • load balancing
  • logging is to complex, it really hard to understand how to configure it at the beginning
  • documentation is very week (incomplete, sometimes errors)
  • F5 support is not helpfull (slow responce, playing "on time" instead of concrete ansver
F5 BIG-IP is well suited in scenarios when complex (or non standard) load balancing is required. It is also very useful when traffic manipulation is required. Ability to combine srcurity (ASM / APM) with load balancing is also plus of BIGIP.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use F5 BIG-IP for load balancing of several applications such as exchange, sharepoint, ADFS, PKI, etc. We also use it for DNS GSLB. We have many applications that are in active/passive with our main site and coop site. Using the DNS GSLB makes it easier to manage failover to our coop site when needed. To be honest, if I can use F5 to load balance any application, I do it! It just makes things so much easier.
  • DNS GSLB
  • Load balancing applications
Load balancing between main and coop site. Load balancing applications. I have been working with F5 for 5 years now and have not had any issues with anything yet. I also have great F5 folks that are amazing (Melisa Wentz, Paul Simons and Jonathan Spigler(F5 Partner)). I can always contact directly and get assistance.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use F5 BIG-IP for DNS and LTM. For LTM case is simple, we route all Gi traffic in our network throu LTM. The major thing that we do is strip part of traffic and send it other way for adding special features like switching DNS for client. Our solution is very comllicated and only F5 is capable of doing such thing.
  • DNS
  • iRules
  • Better support for SURE !!!!
  • GUI is already adreessed witth upcoming BIGIP Next so nothing to add
F5 BIG-IP is very well suited when you want add someting special on top of normal traffic routing using special prepared iRules iRules function is for me best, im not aware of other productcts with this tyepe of functionality. We want to switch traffic from Juniper SRX to some VE solution, and we dont know yet if this is a good idea from maintenance and support point of view.
February 13, 2024

F5 BIG-IP and LTM success

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use F5 BIG-IP in our environments to increase the availability, performance, and security of several of our applications. We have been building applications into the LTM to allow for any downtime related activities for our application servers. The use cases for our applications include being able to take servers down for maintenance without needing additional outage windows, being able to understand additional performance metrics of our applications, and we also build tetration data from our security teams that allow for us to make intelligent business decisions. BIG-IP has been the best choice for our solutions because of the focus and commitment that F5 has to its reputation as the leader in load balancing products.
  • Application Availability
  • Application Performance
  • Application Security
  • Support response times
  • Functionality differences between CLI and GUI
  • More clear troubleshooting pathways
F5 BIG-IP is best suited for load balancing and security. Mainly for availability, performance, and security of our applications. The way BIG-IP LTM has pools nodes and VIPs as building blocks of their load balancing architecture is easy to understand and allows for any kind of custom layer 7 metrics you can think of. No matter how experienced you are within Network Engineering, BIG-IP will have a solution to the big three things it does well. Any other type of solution could not be a solution that BIG-IP is suited to solve, but F5 has other solution pathways for those things.
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