F5 Networks

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F5 Networks, Inc.
Public
Traded as NASDAQ: FFIV
S&P 500 Component
Industry Technology
Predecessor F5 Labs
Founded February 26, 1996 (1996-02-26)
Headquarters Seattle, Washington, United States
Key people
 John McAdam (President and CEO)
Products Networking
Revenue
  • Increase US$ 1,481.314 million (2013) [1]
  • Increase US$ 1,377.247 million (2012) [1]
  • Increase US$ 430.818 million (2013) [1]
  • Increase US$ 426.303 million (2012) [1]
  • Increase US$ 277.314 million (2013) [1]
  • Increase US$ 275.186 million (2012) [1]
Total assets
  • Increase US$ 2,230.554 million (2013) [2]
  • Increase US$ 1,911.201 million (2012) [1]
Total equity
  • Increase US$ 1,538.712 million (2013) [2]
  • Increase US$ 1,329.4 million (2012) [1]
Number of employees
 4180 (2015)
Website www.f5.com

F5 Networks, Inc. is a multinational American company which specializes in Application Delivery Networking (ADN) technology that optimizes the delivery of network-based applications and the security, performance, availability of servers, data storage devices, and other network resources. F5 is headquartered in Seattle, Washington and has development, manufacturing, and sales/marketing offices worldwide. F5 originally manufactured and sold some of the industry's first load balancing products. In 2010 and 2011, F5 Networks was on Fortune's list of 100 Fastest-Growing Companies worldwide.[3] The company was also rated one of the top ten best-performing stocks by S&P 500 in 2010.[4]

F5 offers products in various segments of the application delivery controller market. According to Gartner, in 2010 F5 had "a continued market-leading position"[5] in the Application Delivery Controller (ADC) market and the Advanced Platform Application Delivery Controller market. As of June 2011, Gartner cites the most significant competitors (in terms of market share) as Cisco Systems, Citrix Systems, and Radware.

Corporate history

F5 Networks, originally named F5 Labs,[6] was established in 1996.[7] The company name was inspired by the 1996 movie Twister, in which reference was made to the fastest and most powerful tornado on the Fujita Scale: F5.

F5's first product was a load balancer called BIG-IP. When a server went down or became overloaded, BIG-IP directed traffic away from that server to other servers that could handle the load. In June 1999, the company went public as F5 Networks and was listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange (NASDAQ: FFIV). As it was in 1999, corporate focus in 2013 remains on providing network intelligence that enables customers to respond quickly to change, streamline business processes, reduce costs, and provide differentiated offerings that help increase revenue.

Through internal development and acquisitions, F5 extended its reach beyond load balancing, producing a range of integrated products for Application Delivery Networking. These products seek to improve the delivery of web-based applications by attempting to make them run faster and more securely.

Acquisitions

  • uRoam (SSL VPN vendor) for USD $25 million in 2003[8]
  • Magnifire WebSystems (web application firewall) for USD $29 million in 2004[9]
  • Swan Labs (WAN acceleration and web acceleration) for USD $43 million in 2005.[10]
  • Acopia Networks (file virtualization) for USD $210 million in 2007[11]
  • DPI intellectual property from Crescendo Networks in 2011 (amount undisclosed) [12]
  • Traffix Systems (Diameter protocol switching technology) in 2012 (amount undisclosed) [13]
  • LineRate Systems in 2013 (high-performance, software-based Load Balancer for x86 systems with nodejs datapath scripting)[14]
  • Versafe in 2013[15]
  • Defense.Net in 2014[16]

Products

BIG-IP

F5's BIG-IP product family comprises purpose-built hardware, modularized software, and virtualized solutions that run the F5 TMOS operating system.[17][18] Depending on the appliance selected, one or more BIG-IP product modules can be added to a BIG-IP device to deliver multiple networking functions on a single, unified platform.

BIG-IP appliances

On the line of BIG-IP appliances released between 2008 and 2010, the hardware models used a single custom-fabricated system board. The previous platforms had two internal boards — a PC/server-type motherboard connected to a switchplane. Some models included hardware SSL acceleration for key exchanges and bulk encryption/decryption provided by Cavium Networks, and hardware compression assistance. The new hardware used Intel CPUs, but some previous models included AMD Opteron CPUs. Hardware models included a front LCD panel for configuration and monitoring and a separate service processor for out-of-band management.

The Viprion is a chassis that can hold up to four blades for enhanced redundancy and performance using clustered multiprocessing. In early 2010 F5 released a BIG-IP LTM virtual appliance for VMware.

The 2010 model line-up was, with approximate best-case throughput indicated:[19]

Model Advertised throughput
BIG-IP LTM Virtual Edition 10 Mbit/s, 200 Mbit/s or 1 Gbit/s
BIG-IP 1600 1 Gbit/s
BIG-IP 3600 2 Gbit/s
BIG-IP 3900 4 Gbit/s
BIG-IP 6900 6 Gbit/s
BIG-IP 8900 12 Gbit/s
BIG-IP 8950 20 Gbit/s
BIG-IP 11050 42 Gbit/s
Viprion 2400 Up to 160 Gbit/s L4 & Up to 72  Gbit/s L7. Per Blade Up to 40G L4 & Up to 20G L7
Viprion 4480 Up to 320 Gbit/s[20]

BIG-IP product modules

  • Local Traffic Manager (LTM): Local load balancing based on a full-proxy architecture.
  • Global Traffic Manager (GTM): Global server load balancing using DNS.
  • Link Controller: Inbound and outbound ISP load balancing.
  • Application Security Manager (ASM): A web application firewall.
  • WebAccelerator: An asymmetric or symmetric advanced caching solution for HTTP and HTTPS traffic.
  • Edge Gateway: An SSL VPN.
  • WAN Optimisation Module: A data centre symmetric WAN optimization solution.
  • Access Policy Manager (APM): Provides access control and authentication for HTTP and HTTPS applications.
  • Secure Web Gateway (SWG): URL filtering, malicious website blocking, safe corporate web browsing, Websense OEM
  • Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM): On-premises DDoS protection, data centre firewall
  • IP Intelligence (IPI): Blocking known bad IP addresses, prevention of phishing attacks and botnets
  • WebSafe: Protects against sophisticated fraud threats, leveraging advanced encryption, client-less malware detection and session behavioral analysis capabilities

BIG-IP software development history

On September 7, 2004 F5 Networks released version 9.0 of the BIG-IP software in addition to a new collection of BIG-IP appliances on which customers could run said software. Version 9.0 was significantly different than the previous versions of BIG-IP. The significant changes include:

  • Moved from BSD to Linux to handle sys management functions (disks, logging, bootup, console access, etc.)
  • Creation of a Traffic Management Microkernel (TMM) to directly talk to the networking hardware and handle all network activities.[18][21][22]
  • Creation of the standard full-proxy mode, which fully terminates network connections at the BIG-IP and establishes new connections between the BIG-IP and the real servers. This allows for optimum TCP stacks on both sides as well as the complete ability to modify traffic in either direction.

On April 3, 2009, F5 Networks released version 10.0 of the BIG-IP software. BIG-IP v10 is a major release supporting the company goals of "Unified Application and Data Delivery Services". This is the company vision on how applications, servers, storage, and network resources are managed in an organization.

Version 10 of BIG-IP contained new features to reduce latency, remove congestion or other impediments. Application delivery is enhanced by features such as symmetric adaptive compression operates between any two BIG-IP appliances, providing the data reduction, optimization and acceleration found in WAN traffic optimization products.[citation needed]

BIG-IP software features

  • iControl Application Programming Interface (API): an open API for management of the BIG-IP
  • iRules: a TCL-based scripting language allowing arbitrary manipulation of traffic flowing through the BIG-IP, including real-time modification of said data.

FirePass

The FirePass is an SSL VPN appliance and comes in the following models:[23]

Model Recommended Concurrent Users
FirePass Virtual Edition Up to 2000
FirePass 1200 100
FirePass 4100 500
FirePass 4300 2000

Compared to a traditional IPsec VPN, FirePass and other competing SSL VPNs have the following differences:

  • Granular access control: grant users different sets of privileges based on who they are, what client they are on, and where they are coming from. When combined with an authentication server such as Active Directory or LDAP, the group memberships for the user can determine which resources they can access with fine-grained control.
  • Access through firewalls: IPsec connections may be blocked by firewalls or proxy servers while port 443/TCP is almost always allowed.
  • Endpoint security: the client can be checked for an active virus scanner, registry entries, personal firewall, etc., before being allowed access to the network.
  • In addition to providing full network access like IPsec, the FirePass can provide access to only one server and port, and provide portal access to web sites and file shares, thus eliminating the need for any network access.

ARX Series

The ARX series is a series of file virtualization appliances that use technology F5 acquired through its acquisition of Acopia Networks. The devices work as proxies for CIFS and NFS, enabling administrators to control where files physically reside based on policies for age, file type, etc. whilst presenting users with a single target.

Enterprise Manager

Enterprise Manager is an F5 product that provides centralized management of multiple F5 BIG-IP devices. Enterprise Manager is available both as a physical and virtual appliance.

BIG-IQ

BIG-IQ is an emerging control plane for BIG-IP devices. F5 describes BIG-IQ as an intelligent framework for managing BIG-IP devices and application services, irrespective of their form factors (hardware, software or cloud) or deployment model (on-premises, private/public cloud or hybrid). BIG-IQ supports integration with other ecosystem participants such as public cloud providers, and orchestration engines through cloud connectors and through a comprehensive set of open RESTful APIs. Complementing the orchestration capability of BIG-IQ is a multi-tenant approach to management. This allows organizations to move closer to IT as a Service without concern that it might affect the stability or security of the services fabric.[24]

Three BIG-IQ modules are currently available:

  • BIG-IQ Device: Manages physical and virtual BIG-IP devices including device deployment and provisioning, license management, and inventory and monitoring as well as device configuration backup and restore.
  • BIG-IQ Cloud: Provides dynamic provisioning of devices in VMware, Amazon and OpenStack-based cloud environments.
  • BIG-IQ Security: Provides a single point of management for F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) and F5 BIG-IP Application Security Manager (ASM) solutions.

Additional BIG-IQ modules have been described but not formally announced.

LineRate

LineRate is a high-performance, software-based load balancer. It can be deployed on bare-metal x86 hardware or in virtual machine environments, including Amazon Web Services, VMWare, and KVM.

LineRate includes Node.js for running scripts. When a script is created for a Virtual Server, it sits in the data path and can add very custom logic to an application. There are several demonstration use-cases of scripting provided by F5 on the LineRate web site. They include:

  • Production Web Traffic Replication
  • Web Traffic Steering
  • Custom Content Filtering
  • Stronger Security in Software: SSL Offload via ECC and PFS

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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  4. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.[dead link]
  6. ↑ http://www.alacrastore.com/storecontent/Thomson_Venture_Economics/F5_Networks_Inc_AKA_F5_Labs_Inc-Y45115
  7. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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  9. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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  11. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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  14. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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  16. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  17. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  19. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  20. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  21. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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  23. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  24. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External Links

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