BIG‑IP Modules

DATASHEET

Take a Flexible and Adaptable Approach

to Application Delivery
F5 BIG-IP devices work on a modular system, so you can add new functions as necessary
to quickly adapt to changing application and business needs. The following modules are
available for the BIG-IP system.

BIG-IP Access Policy Manager

BIG-IP APM is available
as an add-on module
for BIG‑IP® Local Traffic
Manager™.
Providing web access to networks and applications is essential to increasing worker
productivity and delivering valuable customer services. Yet ensuring security in the face
of increasing access needs adds complexity to IT infrastructures and makes it difficult and
expensive to scale.
BIG-IP® Access Policy Manager™ (APM) is a flexible, high-performance access and security
solution. With BIG-IP APM, you can provide policy-based, context-aware access to users
while simplifying authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) management. With
full AAA control directly on the BIG-IP system, you can consolidate infrastructure, reduce
AAA costs, and scale to support thousands of users simultaneously.

Key benefits
Drive identity into your network
Gain a simplified, central point of control to
manage access to web applications by leveraging
policies built on user context.
Simplify, consolidate, and reduce costs
Replace web access tiers and apply repeatable
access policies to reduce infrastructure and
management costs.

Provide dynamic access control Deliver high performance

Deliver fast web access to networks and
applications based on user identity and context.
Ensure strong endpoint security
Validate client security postures to protect
your organization from accidental data loss.
and scalability
Perform at unprecedented speed and scale
to support all of your users easily, quickly,
and cost-effectively.

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BIG-IP Application Security Manager

BIG-IP ASM is available
as an add-on module
for BIG‑IP Local Traffic
Manager or as a
standalone system.
As more application traffic moves over the web, more data is exposed to theft, security
vulnerabilities, and attacks at the application layer. BIG-IP® Application Security Manager™
(ASM) is an advanced web application firewall that significantly reduces and mitigates the
risk of loss or damage to data, intellectual property, and web applications. BIG-IP ASM
provides unmatched application and website protection, a complete attack expert system,
and compliance for key regulatory mandates. The result is an award-winning web application
security and integrity solution that is the most comprehensive in the industry.

Key benefits
Reduce costs and enable compliance
Achieve security standards compliance with built-in
application security protection.
Ensure application availability
Get comprehensive attack prevention from DoS,
brute force, cross-site scripting, and SQL injection
attacks as well as dangerous FTP and SMTP
commands, and more.
Improve app security and performance
Enable advanced application protection while
increasing performance and cost effectiveness
with app security and acceleration.
Handle threats with greater agility
Focus on fast application development and
deployment with automatic security policies.

Get out-of-the-box application

security policies
Provide protection with pre-built, rapid
deployment policies and minimal configuration.

BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager

BIG-IP GTM is available
as an add-on module for
BIG-IP Local Traffic
Manager or as a
standalone system.
Deploying multiple data centers is a big step toward protecting your business from site
outages and improving application performance. But to fully achieve these goals, your
organization needs an efficient way to monitor infrastructure and application health, and
to control your distributed infrastructure.
BIG-IP® Global Traffic Manager™ (GTM) provides a more intelligent way to respond to DNS
queries than simple load balancing among multiple data centers. BIG‑IP GTM distributes user
application requests based on business policies, data center conditions, network conditions,
and application performance, giving you holistic control of your global traffic to ensure high
availability and maximum application performance.

Key benefits
Ensure application availability across
multiple data centers
By ensuring that users are connected to the best
site, BIG‑IP GTM can help you create a strong
disaster recovery and business continuity plan.
Take control of global app delivery
Route users based on business, application,
and network requirements, giving you flexibility
and control over application delivery.
Improve application performance
Send users to the site with the best application
performance based on application and network
conditions.
Manage your complex distributed
network simply and efficiently
A streamlined GUI, powerful command line
interface, and other tools give you full visibility and
a single point of control for all of your resources.

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BIG-IP Link Controller

BIG-IP Link Controller is
available as an add-on
module for BIG-IP Local
Traffic Manager or as a
standalone system.
BIG-IP® Link Controller™ gives you control of your multiple ISP links. It monitors the
performance and availability of each link and directs connections—both inbound and
outbound—over the best possible link. BIG-IP Link Controller improves application
performance by prioritizing and optimizing traffic and reduces bandwidth consumption
with TCP optimizations. In addition, it gives you the tools to direct traffic over the most
cost effective connections first, helping to keep your ISP costs at a minimum.
The result is more effective use of multiple ISP connections, for higher reliability, better
performance, and lower costs.

Key benefits
Eliminate downtime caused by Control ISP costs
link failures Aggregate inexpensive links and create policies
Monitor the health and availability of each to control your bandwidth costs.
connection to dynamically direct users around
ISP outages.

Improve application performance

Route users over the best link and optimize
the connection to provide the best application
experience.

BIG-IP Message Security Module

BIG-IP MSM is available
as an add-on module
for BIG-IP Local Traffic
Manager.
BIG-IP® Message Security Module™ (MSM) is the industry’s first reputation-based, network
edge security module. Leveraging data from Secure Computing’s TrustedSource™ multi-
identity reputation engine, BIG-IP MSM extends protection for enterprise email to the edge
of the corporate network—providing an extremely powerful and efficient tool for dealing
with the growing volume of unwanted email.

Key benefits
Drastically reduce unwanted email
BIG-IP MSM eliminates up to 70 percent of
unwanted email at the edge of the network—
before it gets through the firewall—increasing
the capacity of existing anti-spam solutions.
Reduce overall infrastructure costs
By eliminating unwanted email before it reaches
your infrastructure, BIG-IP MSM enables you to
reduce bandwidth expenditures, use fewer server
resources, and reduce business continuity risks.

Base policies on real-time lookup of

sender reputation
Going far beyond blocking “bad” emails,
BIG-IP MSM gives you the ability to set up
sophisticated message distribution policies
based on sender reputation.

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BIG-IP Protocol Security Module

BIG-IP PSM is available
as an add-on module
for BIG-IP Local Traffic
Manager.
BIG-IP® Protocol Security Module™ (PSM) provides powerful security services for HTTP(s),
SMTP, and FTP at BIG-IP system speed. BIG-IP PSM is perfect for environments that require
more than layer 3 and layer 4 inspection services, where the expertise and management
overhead needed to deploy a full-featured web application firewall isn’t possible or there
is a need to secure other protocols. Protocol enforcement services can be implemented on
a per-virtual-server basis and configured within a matter of minutes.

Key benefits
Broad protection from HTTP attacks
Safeguard your brand by filtering out attacks
related to web server vulnerability, request
smuggling, buffer overflow, and command
injection and masking sensitive data.
Centralized FTP security management
With centralized configuration of FTP servers,
BIG-IP PSM provides simplified security
management and comprehensive FTP security.

Spam-blocking SMTP security

BIG-IP PSM stops spam at the perimeter by
performing DNS checks and blocking dangerous
SMTP commands.

BIG-IP WebAccelerator
is available as an add-on
module for BIG-IP Local
Traffic Manager or as a
standalone system.
BIG-IP WebAccelerator
BIG‑IP® WebAccelerator™ gives your users an instant improvement in web application
performance and helps you reduce costs. By offloading your network and servers,
BIG‑IP WebAccelerator decreases your spending on additional bandwidth and new hardware.
Users get fast access to applications, and you gain greater ability to focus IT resources on
projects that drive your organization’s business objectives.
Key benefits
Accelerate applications 2x to 10x Optimize server and bandwidth usage
Spend less time worrying about frustrated users Extend server capacity and reduce bandwidth
and more on projects that support strategic usage.
business decisions.
Simplify deployment and management
Deploy according to your business needs Use pre-defined policies to simplify configuration
Improve asymmetric deployment performance by for apps such as Microsoft SharePoint, Oracle
2x to 5x, and symmetric deployment by up to 10x. Portal, SAP ERP, and more.

Save with SSL acceleration

Reduce server processor utilization by up to
50 percent.

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DATASHEET
BIG-IP Modules

Professional Services and Support

F5 is dedicated to helping you get the most from your F5 products. To find out how
F5 support services can help you improve your ROI, reduce administrative time and
expense, and optimize the performance and reliability of your IT infrastructure, contact
consulting@f5.com.

More Information
To learn more about BIG-IP Modules, use the search function on F5.com to find these
and other resources.

Datasheets
BIG-IP Application Security Manager
BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager
BIG-IP Link Controller
BIG-IP WebAccelerator
BIG-IP Access Policy Manager

White papers
Unified Application and Data Delivery
TMOS: Redefining the Solution
BIG-IP Version 10.1: An Integrated Application Delivery Architecture

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