I've worked with both and have to say the F5 equipment is better in many respects. We tried the local director/distributed director setup but it failed after 3K simultaneous requests. We have had upwards or 7K simultaneous requests with the BIG/ip's with no problem. If you get into the GB range for performance needs - consider the content switch that F5 just came out with. If 200MB or less is your bandwidth needs the standard F5 is great. If you need SSL consider an SSL accelerator card and lots of RAM (1GB).
I am an advocate for multiple locations as well - versus beefing up a single location. Too much can go wrong that you can't work around at a single location. If you do go with multiple locations - also get the 3DNS product to do geographical and topological load balancing. Great combo. I've had 4 - 3DNS systems and 12 - BIG/ip systems all for one company working wonderfully at the same time.
Just my .02 worth
Ian
-----Original Message-----
From: Kevin Gannon kevin@gannons.net
Sent: Tue, 5 Sep 2000 16:45:18 +0100
To: cisco-nsp@puck.nether.net
Subject: [nsp] BigIP and F5 comments ?
We are looking at the F5 range of kit and I was looking for comments of it
vs
the Cisco equiv's. IMHO the cisco gear offers a better range of functions.
In particular I am interested in hearing from people who are hammering them
in large environments.
Thanks & Regards,
Kevin
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