Great for SSLVPN
December 07, 2019

Great for SSLVPN

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with F5 BIG-IP

It's used by the network team as a load balancer and a VPN concentrator.

Pros

  • SSLVPN
  • Load balancing
  • SSL offloading
  • Great support

Cons

  • Interface is somewhat confusing.
  • Hard to find tutorials/learning.
  • Cost.
  • Helped replace an aging ASA-based IPSec VPN solution.
  • Enabled VPN connections from a range of devices, including mobile.
  • The only downside is that troubleshooting is relatively hard for someone with little F5 experience.
SSLVPN on F5 works much better than IPSec on ASA. From the user's side, no configuration is required - the user can just install the VPN client, input the URL, and the F5 client does the rest. For ASA, profile installation or configuration is required, so the user must go to help desk, which is a big drawback. I also found the SSLVPN to be more stable.
FortiClient installation/licensing is somewhat harder and more clunky, while configuration on the user's side is comparable to F5.
SonicWall SSLVPN is also very counterintuitive on Windows 10, with the user having to go to different places in the interface and Windows settings to start/stop their connection, while their IPSec VPN is better.
For load balancing, F5 stacks up well to NetScaler, with potentially more options using iRules.
I was pleasantly surprised by F5 support, with my experience being the best of all the network vendors. I was not speaking to someone across the world, the engineer fully took ownership and followed through to solution without me having to keep calling. The support engineer also was able to resolve an unusual situation, in which most other vendors' engineers would simply give up.

Do you think F5 BIG-IP delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with F5 BIG-IP's feature set?

Yes

Did F5 BIG-IP live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of F5 BIG-IP go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy F5 BIG-IP again?

Yes

I have extensive experience using F5 for SSLVPN, which it does really well compared to others - the VPN clients are available for a range of devices and work well most of the time. For a user, it's easy to sign onto the VPN using a centralized identity provider. The solution scales relatively painlessly. VPN access works well across the world.

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