Kentik and F5 BIG-IP AFM are competitors in the network monitoring and protection solutions sector. Kentik has the upper hand in network traffic insights and visualization, while F5 BIG-IP AFM excels in comprehensive network security and application protection.
Features: Kentik provides robust SaaS-based network monitoring tools with NetFlow visualization, analysis, DDoS alerting, and customizable dashboards for real-time visibility. F5 BIG-IP AFM offers comprehensive network protection with modules like LTM and APM, ensuring effective load balancing and firewalling along with application protection from threats.
Room for Improvement: Kentik could enhance granular user permissions and simplify its API for better data access, along with improving actionable insights within the tool. F5 BIG-IP AFM could streamline its geolocation updates and firewall configurations, boost automation and AI capabilities, and reduce pricing for better value.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Kentik's SaaS model simplifies deployment and ensures effective multi-channel support with proactive communication and swift responses. F5 BIG-IP AFM is mostly on-premises, offering strong support but facing critiques regarding setup complexity compared to Kentik’s user-friendly and feedback-driven model.
Pricing and ROI: Kentik offers competitive pricing with ROI through operational efficiency and network visibility despite being perceived as expensive. Large-scale use emphasizes cost reduction, especially in transit costs, while F5 BIG-IP AFM is pricier but justified by its extensive features and reliability, particularly in security capabilities.
For the small project I was working on, using the basic tier provided a huge improvement at zero cost.
In terms of return on investment with Cloudflare, it costs my time to set them up, but basically once they're set up, it's done.
The return on investment for me is significant as time is the critical aspect.
If we had, for example, a contracted capacity from Vivo of 50 GB and we were using 40, with Kentik we reduced this usage from 40 to 20.
In production environments, especially for service providers on IP networks and data centers, Kentik helps in reducing the time to identify and resolve issues.
I believe the return on investment has been mainly time savings in performing troubleshooting.
Cloudflare does not offer hands-on technical support to fix customer problems but rather a self-service model.
I would rate the technical support with Cloudflare as excellent every time I've had to call them.
We use other solutions where support is available through Slack channels and is more interactive, with someone responding within a couple of minutes or seconds.
The responses are generally fast and effective.
The customer service is excellent, and I rate it ten out of ten.
I rate the technical support by F5 a ten from one to ten.
I have mostly used forums for any support needed because the setup is straightforward and the documentation is quite good.
They have monthly calls and discuss the product roadmap with us to determine what is needed.
It is a SaaS tool, but the fact that they have workloads deployed across the world proves that it is a highly scalable tool.
The tool offers very good performance, even during high-traffic periods.
Cloudflare's scalability is quite good; it is very easy to scale whenever we want to include multiple domains.
The solution is highly scalable, allowing me to add or remove nodes and manage traffic without interruption, which is essential for meeting application demands.
Kentik's integration with Kubernetes makes scaling easier.
Kentik's scalability is effective; the platform can handle these large volumes.
Kentik's scalability depends on how it is contracted.
The service is very stable with no impacts during high-traffic periods.
Cloudflare's reliability and uptime has met my expectations; it has been quite good in general.
In production, however, dimensioning of the underlying platforms is something to be mindful of.
Based on stability, I would give Kentik a nine.
I can say it is so great for us because if we configure it with Flowspec, the orchestration that we use, which is Kentik, makes the decision and automatically forwards the traffic to another position that we have in our network, or outgoing that we use.
Customers do not have options to modify any configuration parameters in Cloudflare, whereas other competitor solutions, such as F5 Distributed Cloud, allow customers to tune configurations according to their requirements.
What Cloudflare is doing internally is that it is stepping ahead in areas like detection and protection.
Cloudflare could be improved by introducing a mid-tier pricing option.
Having advanced technology similar to other vendors like Palo Alto for zero-day attack prevention would be valuable.
The appliance and features could be enhanced further, especially in terms of security.
I would assess the importance of F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)'s integration with cloud services as significant.
More work is required to integrate AI for troubleshooting, simplifying root cause analysis, and providing suggested solutions for network issues.
It needed to be a bit easier for new users and have slightly more customized reports.
Currently, the way I'm configuring it uses reactive alerts, which means alerts are triggered when an issue occurs. I would prefer more proactive alerts in the future.
I find it to be cheap.
The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive.
However, the enterprise price for small projects is a bit high.
The standard license is reasonably priced, but additional features like the WAF can be more expensive.
If considering a one-stop solution that provides load balancing, DNS security, AAA authentication, and firewalling on the same hardware, the cost is reasonable.
The pricing is good and aligns with the market target.
Kentik’s pricing is competitive in the marketplace.
Later, the prices are very high to maintain all the functionality blocks.
The solution has been able to compare it to the market, and I think the product has taken great strides in automating quite a bit of things, and they use a lot of AI.
Most of our DNS records that are presented to the internet are proxied whenever possible, providing another layer of defense from our perspective.
Cloudflare has positively impacted our organization by giving us flexibility to manage the DNS part, being quite fast, and allowing us to manage everything from a single dashboard.
The solution provides behavioral analysis via AI to detect malicious traffic.
The most valuable features for me are stability, availability, and security, along with the ability to manage multiple features to secure my applications.
I think the DDoS features are valuable in F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM), and I recommend it usually for certain types of companies.
The best features that Kentik offers are the ability to identify traffic end-to-end and to know which transit is used, if it goes through any other transit, to see the entire flow, from the subscriber to the content provider and vice versa.
This allows for better understanding of whether there is a critical ongoing case related to incoming traffic, such as a DDoS event, which is crucial for a service provider dealing with numerous customers.
Kentik has positively impacted our organization because when something happens, we use Kentik to analyze the problem and it brings us a faster solution to the problem, and the troubleshooting is clearer.
| Product | Mindshare (%) |
|---|---|
| Cloudflare | 12.4% |
| Kentik | 1.3% |
| F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) | 1.9% |
| Other | 84.4% |



| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 46 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 11 |
| Large Enterprise | 26 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 9 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 5 |
| Large Enterprise | 14 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 7 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 4 |
| Large Enterprise | 10 |
Cloudflare enhances web performance and security with features like CDN caching and DDoS mitigation while providing easy DNS management and intuitive setup through its user-friendly dashboard.
Cloudflare is recognized for its comprehensive web security and performance solutions. Speed improvements are achieved through caching mechanisms and DDoS protection, combining ease of DNS management with flexible page rules. The robust analytics and threat insight tools provide valuable data, assisted by a user-friendly dashboard allowing quick setup and configuration. An API offers dynamic DNS settings ensuring low latency and high performance across the globe.
What are Cloudflare's key features?
What benefits and ROI should users evaluate?
Cloudflare finds utility across industries for DNS management and defense mechanisms. Its content delivery network assures fast content distribution and fortified security. Businesses integrate features like web application firewalls, load balancing, end-to-end SSL, and zero trust to protect websites from cyber threats while ensuring resilience and reliable performance.
F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager provides robust network protection with advanced DDoS features and efficient load balancing. Its design prioritizes scalability and ease of management, catering to securing data centers and applications.
F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager is a strategic choice for combating cyber threats, including DDoS attacks. With powerful network defenses, integrated WAF, and adaptable capabilities, it efficiently handles web services on-premise and in the cloud. Users value its application-level threat defense with IP blocking and AI-enhanced reporting. Advanced integration with SIEM solutions allows comprehensive monitoring and enhanced threat detection through dynamic resource allocation. However, areas for improvement include better dashboard statistics and pricing adjustments. Enhancing integration with BIG-IQ and intuitive configuration would streamline its operation. Automatic geolocation updates and improved support could address current challenges alongside its high cost and complex initial setup.
What are the standout features?F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager is widely used in sectors requiring stringent security measures, such as finance and healthcare. These industries deploy it as a data center and web application firewall to protect against cyber threats, manage client connections, and ensure the security of on-premise and cloud applications.
Kentik provides real-time visibility into network infrastructure, focusing on monitoring, data visualization, and flow analysis to manage traffic patterns efficiently.
With robust analytics capabilities, Kentik offers insights into BGP peering status, aids in DDoS detection, and allows for detailed telemetry through its intuitive interface. The platform's SaaS nature simplifies operations by eliminating server maintenance concerns. Multi-vendor support and synthetic testing enhance network security and performance by simulating customer scenarios, while its API offers automation for querying and reporting tasks.
What are the key features of Kentik?Industries implement Kentik for network monitoring, traffic management, and flow data analysis across both on-prem and cloud setups. It proves valuable for detecting DDoS events, managing peering relationships, and optimizing costs, besides managing CDN configurations and performing synthetic tests in diverse environments.
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