1. F5 Internet Quality Control Products and Services
F5 is setting the standard
for delivering Quality Control for business-critical Internet sites.
Our holistic approach provides the finest combined products and services for servers, networks and content. 1

2. Server
Network
Content
Management

3. Server Control
High availability and intelligent load balancing controller for local networks
BIG/ip optimizes server availability and performance. BIG/ip sits between the network and server array. It continuously monitors each server for service availability and performance and routes incoming queries to the most available server. BIG/ip allows network managers to use a variety of sophisticated load-balancing algorithms to fine-tune performance and availability.
Click on the BIG/ip image to move to the detailed BIG/ip product section.

4. BIG/ip Controller
The BIG/ip controller is a high availability and intelligent load balancing appliance for Internet sites

5. BIG/ip Delivers High Availability Internet Server Quality Control
Advanced Security Protects Your Business
Complex Sites Demand Simplified Management
The 3DNS controller adds intelligence to industry standard DNS. 3DNS intelligently distributes traffic to multiple Internet sites based on information about the site availability and network “health”. 3DNS ensures that end users are sent to a site that is available and provides the best response. The 3DNS controller can operate as a standalone DNS server or function with existing DNS servers.

6. BIG/ip - Delivers High Availability
E-commerce - ensures sites are not only up-and-running, but taking orders
Fault-tolerance - eliminates single points of failure
Content Availability - verifies servers are responding with the correct content
Directory & Authentication - load balance multiple directory and/or authentication services (LDAP, Radius, and NDS)
Portals/Search Engines – Using EAV administrators perform key-word searches
Legacy Systems - Load balance services to multiple interactive services
Gateways – Load balance gateways (SAA, SNA, etc.)
(POP, IMAP, SendMail) - Balances traffic across a large number of mail servers
The BIG/ip controller provides fault-tolerance by eliminating the single points of failure. By distributing end user requests across a group of servers, content and applications are always available. Dual BIG/ip controllers provide additional fault tolerance with automatic fail-over in less than 1 second.
Content Availability – BIG/ip verifies that servers are responding with the correct content ensuring that end users never receive error messages.
E-commerce - BIG/ip can verify that e-commerce sites are not only up-and-running, but taking orders as well. BIG/ip can emulate the process the end user experiences at an Internet site. If a problem occurs, BIG/ip will notify the administrator and direct end users to another functioning server. For example; BIG/ip’s EAV feature provides the following proactive checking: Log onto multiple accounts; place items into a shopping cart just a customer would, complete the on-line financial transaction.
Directory & Authentication - BIG/ip allows users to load balance multiple directory and/or authentication services (LDAP, Radius, and NDS). EAV extends BIG/ip’s capabilities by allowing administrators to verify that these services are providing the correct information.
Portals/Search Engines – Using EAV, BIG/ip allows administrators to perform key-word searches. If response is inadequate (a missing advertising banner for example), BIG/ip directs end users to properly working servers while administrators take down the problem server for repair without affecting end user access.
Legacy Systems - BIG/ip controllers can load balance services to multiple interactive services (i.e. Telnet, TN3270, TN5520). EAV verifies legacy host connectivity such as login screens are functioning properly.
Gateways – BIG/ip lets you load balance gateways (SAA, SNA, etc.) – BIG/ip’s EAV feature verifies that the services provided by gateways are available. If not, EAV marks the problem gateway down for correction and directs end users to a functioning gateway.
(POP, IMAP, SendMail) - BIG/ip balances traffic across a large number of mail servers – Using EAV, BIG/ip verifies that those mail servers are accepting connections and responding properly.

7. BIG/ip - Internet Server Quality Control
What causes your customers to go to the competition?
Site failure
Software failure
Content failure
Network Traffic overload
BIG/ip proactively monitors these conditions and diverts customers to available systems
Server failure – Using the BIG/ip controller in conjunction with two or more servers, traffic is automatically routed around any server that fails or becomes unavailable. The BIG/ip controller proactively monitors the servers to detect failures and keeps them transparent to customers visiting the site. Once a server begins responding properly again, it is added back into the server farm.
Software failure - When an individual service stops running on a server, the BIG/ip controller’s proactive monitoring will automatically detect the failure. Requests for that service are sent to another server that has that particular service running properly.
Content failure - This occurs when a server and application are working properly but are responding to requests with "404 Object Not Found" or another response that does not contain the right content for end users. The BIG/ip controller actively queries individual servers at the application level to protect against this. If an application is not returning the right content, the BIG/ip controller will redirect requests to applications that are responding properly.
Too much traffic - The ultimate measure of server Quality of Service is how long a user must wait for a response. BIG/ip protects against users waiting too long for a response by setting thresholds for acceptable performance. If a server, service or application is unable to respond within the determined threshold, requests will be redirected until response times return to below the acceptable threshold.
Rate shaping – allows site administrators to define access performance based on service requirements. For example, in an e-commence site, greater access is made available for users doing secure transactions, while users just surfing for general information would get more limited access.

8. BIG/ip - Advanced Security Protects Your Business
Firewall capability (IPFW)
Allowing and denying ports on Virtual IP’s
"F-Secure" Administration, 1024 bit encryption software
Hardened Device designed to resist common attacks
Network Address Translation (NAT)
And More
The BIG/ip controller has a number of inherent security features designed to protect it against common attacks and provide protection for the servers and devices behind the BIG/ip controller. The BIG/ip controller ships, by default, in a very secure mode with these features:
Firewall capability (IPFW)
The BIG/ip controller uses packet filtering to limit or deny access to and from web sites based on monitoring the traffic source, destination or port.
Tight control of allowing and denying ports on Virtual Ips
The BIG/ip controller is configured to only allow specific types of traffic to pass through to the servers.
Only default destination port (TCP 22 - f-secure SSH)
Administration through "F-Secure", 1024 bit encryption software
The BIG/ip controller’s remote command line interface for configuration uses Secure Shell (SSH) for military-grade encryption.
The BIG/ip controller is a hardened device designed to resist common attacks such as:
Can reap idle connections (thwarts Denial of Service attacks)
Can perform source route tracing (thwarts IP spoofing)
Unacknowledged SYN without ACK buffers (thwarts SYN floods)
Thwarts teardrop and land attacks
Protects itself and servers from ICMP attack
Does not run SMTPd, FTPd, Telnetd, or any other attackable daemons
Security script identifies any services and ports that receive illegal access attempts.
Frequency – amount of attempts
Port – what port(s) were hit
IP Address – The source IP address of attacker
Network Address Translation (NAT). The BIG/ip controller uses NAT to do the following:
Can map well known ports to any ports on the servers (Port-mapping)
The BIG/ip controller can be configured to map multiple ports into a single port. Well known ports such as 80, 443, 20,21 can be mapped to any port number on the actual servers. This provides greater security by making it difficult for intruders to identify what services are running on which port.
Ability to use non-publicly routed addresses
Using the BIG/ip controller, Internet routable IP addresses can be saved, thus reducing consumption of IP addresses.

9. BIG/ip - Complex Sites Demand Simplified Management
Virtual Server Environment
Centralizes the management of server resources and devices
Offers end users a single URL
Allows you to make proactive decisions rather than react under pressure
Reduce total cost of ownership
The 3DNS controller adds intelligence to industry standard DNS. 3DNS intelligently distributes traffic to multiple Internet sites based on information about the site availability and network “health”. 3DNS ensures that end users are sent to a site that is available and provides the best response. The 3DNS controller can operate as a standalone DNS server or function with existing DNS servers.

10. BIG/ip Nuts and Bolts Network Address Translation
Quality of service availability checks
Intelligent load balancing
Load balance “Transparent” devices
Security
E-commerce
Network management
Enforcement of policy mgt.
Fault tolerance

11. User
Internet Servers
Internet Servers
High availability and intelligent load balancing controller for local networks
Router
Router
SEATTLE
NEW YORK
TOKYO
LONDON
Router
Router
The BIG/ip controller is a high availability and intelligent load balancing device for business-critical local web sites and/or data centers. BIG/ip intelligently manages and distributes Internet, Intranet and Extranet/e-commerce user requests across redundant arrays of network servers, regardless of platform type or combination. BIG/ip supports a wide variety of network applications such as Web, , news, LDAP, telephony, streamed multimedia and other IP protocol traffic; database access; and NFS, FTP, firewall, cache and VPN server traffic to provide high availability for end user connections.
The BIG/ip controller is a high availability and intelligent load balancing device for business-critical web sites and/or data centers. The BIG/ip controller manages and distributes Internet, Intranet and Extranet/E-commerce user requests across a redundant array of network servers, regardless of platform type or combination, without requiring additional software installed on the servers. The BIG/ip controller supports a wide variety of applications such as Web, , news, LDAP, telephony, streamed multimedia and other IP protocol traffic; database access; and NFS, FTP, firewall, cache and VPN server traffic, to provide high availability for end user connections. The BIG/ip controller simplifies the management of multiple servers with centralized server/device management tools.
Internet Servers
Internet Servers

12. High Availability and Quality Control
for Business-Critical Internet Sites