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.
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NetScaler ADC
Score 8.1 out of 10
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NetScaler ADC is an application delivery controller.
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Pricing
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
NetScaler ADC
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Pricing Offerings
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
NetScaler ADC
Free Trial
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Free/Freemium Version
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Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
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Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
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Community Pulse
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
NetScaler ADC
Considered Both Products
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
Verified User
Engineer
Chose F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) was the most robust and highest performing ADC product.
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.
Citrix Netscaler can be a powerful network appliance for environments that are fully committed and open to utilizing a network appliance that isn't made by a traditional network vendor. Administrator user experience has improved over the years and will continue to improve with the flexibility of virtual and physical appliances available for medium and large enterprises.
Flexibility. NetScaler assumes its admins know a bit about networking and in-depth details surrounding the applications they are configuring access for/to. This being so, the range of configuration options is very broad allowing various versions' combinations of protocol patterns, expressions, rules etc., all to the benefit of the admin.
Granularity. Having such a broad range of configuration options available, while still allowing simple options to be configured simply. The GUI is well-stylized and navigation has a good flow.
Ease of control. For load-balancing of simple services right out of the box, NetScaler makes it pretty easy, compared to the range of options available in the surrounding GUI and under the hood.
The documentation could use an overhaul with specific examples related to the command line as well as GUI. Explanations in the documentation would also be helpful.
Being able to have more than just one routing table would allow the ability to leverage security.
Improve on the specifics I mentioned previously and could be a 10/10 product. It is also a confusingly branded product that I have supported in two large enterprises where IT departments are unsure if the product belongs to the Citrix remote access support team or the Network infrastructure support team (it should be the later) and typically under utilized.
Overall, our organization's experience with Citrix support is that support can be hit or miss. Oftentimes it takes multiple attempts and much longer than desirable to obtain a viable solution for issues experienced with their products. It would be great to see Citrix invest time, effort, and almighty dollars into improving their support and bug fix process across the board.
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 also the help articles are numerous.
We chose Citrix ADC over Kemp and F5 due to additional integrations with various products such as Citrix/Horizon/Monitoring tools. We additionally chose ADC due to better ease of use and ability to have the appliances be virtual or physical, with the configuration being a simple migration of code which provided flexibility to be able to do a hybrid environment with ease.
Negative impact in that it makes it very easy for applications to be spun up but cleanup of old/ unused deployments do not happen causing resources to be consumed unnecessarily
When used in a multiblade viprion guest, issues with backplane and blade replication causing impact
Ability to deploy multiple instances helped with network segmentation