F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs. F5 Distributed Cloud DNS

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
F5 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
F5 Distributed Cloud DNS
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
More than 75% of enterprises today operate in multiple clouds, according to the 2022 F5 State of Application Strategy Report. But a much smaller percentage are known to have implemented a cloud-based DNS (Domain Name System), which offers considerable speed and performance benefits for publishing applications. Why? It is because extending traditional DNS to all their applications across different environments, especially those running in the cloud, can be time-consuming and…N/A
Pricing
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)F5 Distributed Cloud DNS
Editions & Modules
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Offerings
Pricing Offerings
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)F5 Distributed Cloud DNS
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)F5 Distributed Cloud DNS
Considered Both Products
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
Chose F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
A10 Networks AX Series
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 …
Chose F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
F5 BIG-IP DNS
Chose F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
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 …
Chose F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
F5 BIG-IP DNS, F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) and F5 BIG-IP SSL Orchestrator
Chose F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
It serves the needs of our organization and assists with additional needs regarding the network.
Chose F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
We use both products and performed well.
Chose F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
We are using both of them for load balancing and our web apps firewall.
Chose F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
We combine the AWAF and F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager to not only deliver high performance apps but also secure the apps against so many kinds of threats.
Chose F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
F5 Big-IP Advanced Web Application Firewall
Chose F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
The F5 LTMs integrate great with the F5 DNS appliances and makes on the fly decisions using iquery. We have two HA data centers that the F5 LTMs are used in and integrate great with teh F5 DNS servers.
Chose F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) was the most robust and highest performing ADC product.
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
Chose F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
F5 BIG-IQ Centralized Management, F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM), F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM), F5 BIG-IP DNS and F5 BIG-IP SSL Orchestrator
Chose F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
Chose F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
As far as I know, F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) from F5 is the best and the number of features is unmatched compared to its competitors. The first-time setup is also quick and easy and the product behaves as a full proxy which is rarely seen. The support is good and …
F5 Distributed Cloud DNS

No answer on this topic

Best Alternatives
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)F5 Distributed Cloud DNS
Small Businesses
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Score 8.7 out of 10
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Medium-sized Companies
Cloudflare
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Score 8.7 out of 10
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Score 8.7 out of 10
Enterprises
NGINX
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User Ratings
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)F5 Distributed Cloud DNS
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)F5 Distributed Cloud DNS
Likelihood to Recommend
There was a need to have the DR environment to be available actively but not to send the traffic unless the production is down The F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) priority feature helped achieving it. It was well suited in handling the HTTP headers using polices and iRules. It was less appropriate from the application security perspective in the current version. But after attending the AppWorld 2024, I see a lot of ways to protect the network and the application with several features.
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Probably less appropriate for smaller, very small IT departments, but more suited like when you're doing migrations to the cloud. If it is going to be doing setups for DNS within the cloud, this will let you help you set it up so there's no loss of communication between the two.
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Pros
  • 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.
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  • I think probably the UI, it's very easily you could scan through and select what you're going to do, and it's kind of similar of the functionality when you compare it to say the Oracle Cloud. So you can go side by side with the windows and then just go through these level when you're going to sell like a new DNS or a new opening on that.
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Cons
  • 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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  • Probably more like AI suggested customizations, like when you do something and then have something like in the background of the AI. When you start doing something, it'll show you what you previously have done and then you could select, you wouldn't have to go through the whole steps over again. It'll say this is what you've done before, do you want to do a copy? And then just modify a couple of things so you don't have to go through the whole process.
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Likelihood to Renew
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.
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Usability
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager is a very good product. It is used in our company widely. So far we are very happy with the product. Esspecially on the load balancing and TLS encryption and Traffic redirecting based on HTTP path and http query. iRules is very easy to use as well.
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Very user friendly.
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Support Rating
Good after sales support if one purchased direct support from F5.
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Implementation Rating
Easy to implement if one had attended F5 Training for Local Traffic Manager (LTM).
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Alternatives Considered
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 were cheap. I mean it cost us like $60,000 for all of them for the hardware. We were already licensed for it, so it was a no-brainer. We didn't have a choice. Definitely a superior product. A lot more functionality, particularly in corner cases where you might need to make some specific traffic tweaks. I would say that the NetScaler doesn't do nearly as good a job with that traffic filtering. You only really get URI filtering with NetScaler. You don't have the flexibility, the eye rolls or the complexity of the eye rolls, so that's a negative too.
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Return on Investment
  • We use these for 600+ applications and we are able to manage all of them remotely and provide security across every application in one single platform.
  • We are able to provide an amazing customer experience load balancing across multiple nodes and this increases traffic on our websites and ultimately increases orders and traffic.
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  • I guess positive because we know when we're going to open up, say a DNS or anything, or we're going to have to set something up. We can do it quick and fast instead of having to wait longer for the different steps of how we used to do it before.
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ScreenShots

F5 Distributed Cloud DNS Screenshots

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