F5 BIG-IP LTM and NetScaler are two prominent competitors in the ADC category. F5 BIG-IP seems to have the upper hand in hardware performance and advanced features, while NetScaler is praised for its flexible deployment.
Features: F5 BIG-IP LTM is recognized for advanced traffic management, SSL offloading, and iRules for customization. It also delivers robust hardware performance and comprehensive security with its WAF. Meanwhile, NetScaler offers flexible deployment models, SSL offloading, global server load balancing, and NetScaler Gateway for secure remote access.
Room for Improvement: F5 BIG-IP LTM users suggest improvement in its high upfront costs, lack of a flexible licensing model, and its interface. Users of NetScaler point to its complicated licensing and the need for improved customization, support response, and more straightforward integration processes.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: F5 BIG-IP LTM supports multiple deployment environments including hybrid and cloud, with generally well-received customer service, although consistency can be an issue. NetScaler, praised for its customer service, also offers versatile deployment options but faces some complexity issues during integration.
Pricing and ROI: F5 BIG-IP LTM is considered more expensive than its competitors, though its feature set often justifies the cost for many users. Its licensing system adds complexity. NetScaler, while also pricey, offers a competitive feature set and a promising ROI when its strengths are capitalized on.
F5 BIG-IP LTM optimizes the speed and reliability of your apps via both network and application layers. Using real-time protocol and traffic management decisions based on app and server and connection management conditions, and TCP and content offloading, BIG-IP LTM dramatically improves application and infrastructure responsiveness. BIG-IP LTM's architecture includes protocol awareness to control traffic for the most important applications. BIG-IP LTM tracks the dynamic performance levels of servers and delivers SSL performance and visibility for inbound and outbound traffic, to protect the user experience by encrypting everything from the client to the server.
BIG-IP LTM provides enterprise-class Application Delivery Controller (ADC). You get granular layer 7 control, SSL offloading and acceleration capabilities, and advanced scaling technologies that deliver performance and reliability on-demand. The highly optimized TCP/IP stack combines TCP/IP techniques and improvements in the latest RFCs with extensions to minimize the effect of congestion and packet loss and recovery. Independent testing tools and customer experiences show LTM's TCP stack delivers up to a 2x performance gain for users and a 4x increase in bandwidth efficiency.
One platform for a consistent application delivery and security experience because nobody has time to learn multiple systems to manage ADC deployments. NetScaler is built with a single code base using a software-based architecture, so no matter which ADC form factor you choose — hardware, virtual machine, bare metal, or container — the behavior will be the same.
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