White Papers

In December of 2004, Visa and MasterCard joined forces to simplify compliance for merchants and payment processors with the jointly-developed, 12-point PCI standard. This White Paper discusses how F5 Networks helps with the 6 core areas and 10 of the 12 requirements.

• Author: F5 Networks
• Date: November 2006

This Stratecast Partners (Frost and Sullivan) White Paper introduces and describes the three core components of an enterprise-grade remote access solution - Connectivity, Security, and Performance/Administration. It goes on to describe why these components are essential in an enterprise-grade remote access solution and how SSL VPNs (specifically FirePass), are addressing them.

• Author: F5 Networks
• Date: November 2004

This White Paper provides an overview of F5"s Application Security Manager (ASM), an Application Firewall, and how it protects applications from hackers and other malicious attacks, and enforces granular security policies to protect web applications, as well as confidential information from both random and targeted application security attacks.

• Author: F5 Networks
• Date: October 2007

There are many unique challenges and pieces to application security that most devices today aren"t able to provide. Most enterprises still want to provide application security with just a Web Application Firewall, ignoring the rest of the application security puzzle or leaving those duties to existing security appliances and controls. This White Paper describes application security, and discusses integrated security for any application.

• Author: Alan Murphy - Technical Marketing Manager - Security, F5
• Date: November 2007

After many years of purely negative security provided by anti-virus scanners, IDS/IPS, and antispam engines, it"s refreshing to hear that the positive security model - the basis for tried and true security devices like network firewalls and ACLs - is coming back in vogue. This White Paper discusses positive and negative security models and Web Application Firewalls

• Author: Ken Salchow and Alan Murphy - Technical Marketing Managers, F5
• Date: October 2007

The volume and sophistication of attacks that threaten business email networks and systems are growing at exponential rates. This White Paper describes the current types of email threats, why the exponential growth in email volume poses significant challenges for the corporate network infrastructure, and how adding a messaging security layer at the network edge addresses these challenges and significantly strengthens an overall messaging security solution.

• Author: F5 Networks
• Date: January 2007

This White Paper details how F5"s FirePass^® controller enables enterprises to provide secure, reliable and intuitive remote access to corporate applications and data using standard web browser technology, without the headaches associated with time-consuming client software installation and configuration, or changes to server-side applications.

• Author: F5 Networks
• Date: September 2005

As SSL VPN technology becomes more mainstream and organizations extend their internal infrastructures to users who are not necessarily employees, Endpoint security has become an increasing concern. Allowing an infected device access onto the network is just as bad as allowing an invalid user to access proprietary internal information. This White Paper describes how F5 FirePass Endpoint Security prevents infected PCs, hosts, or users from connecting to the network, and much more.

• Author: F5 Networks
• Date: April 2006

With F5, organizations can provide employees with reliable and secure access to email, from wherever they are, no matter what type of device they"re using. This White Paper provides an overview of how F5 solutions can help make your email more secure, allowing employees to rely on email that is efficiently delivered, with minimal latency times and a dramatic improvement in performance.

• Author: F5 Networks
• Date: September 2006

HIPAA, The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, requires healthcare organizations to take added precautions to ensure the security of their networks and the privacy of patient data. This White Paper provides an overview of HIPAA security compliance, explores how companies can mitigate their security risks and adapt a strong HIPAA compliant posture using F5 products, illustrates how F5 products map to specific HIPAA security rules, and explores some of the key reasons F5 products are unique in their ability to provide companies with a simple means to allow compliance with HIPAA.

• Author: F5 Networks
• Date: October 2007

This White Paper shows how several Service Provider drawbacks can be overcome when using F5"s FirePass SSL VPN product, and elaborates on FirePass deployment in various service provider networks.

• Author: F5 Networks
• Date: June 2005

This White Paper describes how the BIG-IP system provides a holistic and integrated approach to securing your network and applications against potential application-level and network-level threats and attacks. The BIG-IP system is deployed as a critical gateway to your most precious resources: the applications and networks that run your business.

• Author: F5 Networks
• Date: October 2007

The concepts behind application and operation system virtualization are not new concepts, they have been around long before server appliances and desktop PCs were readily available in our daily vocabulary. The recent rate of virtualization adoption however, especially that of software operating system virtualization, has grown exponentially in the past few years. This White Paper describes some of the security implications of the virtual datacenter.

• Author: Alan Murphy - GCIH | Technical Marketing Manager - Security, F5
• Date: May 2007

The reasons to investigate, and probably to deploy, an SSL-based VPN are numerous and compelling. They provide easier deployment and ongoing management, more reliable and consistent connections regardless of originating network and a host of new tools to help you provide more robust and appropriate security. All of this drives the numbers of lower TCO and quicker ROI-things the business, and you, should really be concerned with.

• Author:Ken Salchow, Manager - Core Technical Marketing, F5
• Date: November 2005

The detection of SQL injection attacks has primarily been accomplished through pattern matching techniques against signatures and keywords known to be malicious. Until recently, this technique has been successful. Now attackers are hiding their malicious intent in a variety of ways to escape detection. This White Paper discusses SQL Injection attacks, and how BIG-IP Application Security Manager technology can help prevent them.

• Author: Lori MacVittie | Technical Marketing Manager - Application Services, F5
• Date: October 2007

TMOS^™ -- the foundation and architecture for F5"s application delivery controllers running on the BIG-IP platform -- brings a wealth of security to existing application delivery networks. But before the secure implementation of TMOS can be discussed, the question is often asked "How is TMOS itself secured?" This White Paper provides the answer.

• Author: Alan Murphy - GCIH | Technical Marketing Manager - Security, F5
• Date: January 2007

This White Paper discusses the concept of Unified Access Control or Network Admission Control within the information security and network architecture industries. It defines the depth and breadth of the pitfalls with current architectures and how new solutions may solve them.

• Author: F5 Networks
• Date: July 2006

The F5 universal access approach is based on F5"s FirePass product, Secure Sockets Layer Virtual Private Network (SSL VPN), which is integrated with F5"s BIG-IP^® Local Traffic Manager. This integration establishes F5 as the only vendor in the industry that can unify and centralize security and access control for remote, wireless LAN (WLAN), and Local Area Network (LAN) users, while scaling to meet the throughput requirements for unified access.

• Author: F5 Networks
• Date: April 2006

Phishing scams have become a sad fact of life - but developers can stop them, with a little help from F5"s BIG-IP system and iRules. This White Paper describes a new iRule designed to help stop phishing in its tracks.

• Author: F5 Networks
• Date: September 2006

Companies today are moving more and more of their mission-critical applications and data into web browsers. This paper explores some of the underlying reasons for the emerging vulnerabilities in web applications, illustrates some of the ways hackers commonly exploit them, and suggests a few ways in which companies can mitigate their risks.

• Author: F5 Networks
• Date: October 2007

The introduction of BIG-IP Application Security Manager (ASM) version 9.4.2 marks a major step forward. This White Paper describes the new version of ASM and its new XML firewall features.

• Author: Dan Gilbert | Product Management Engineer, F5
• Date: October 2007

Any site that stores data is at risk for exploitation. However, these interactive sites are a healthy breeding ground for attacks that attempt to use the data storage capabilities to reach a wide audience for the purpose of spreading malicious code and enticing users to share sensitive information. This White Paper discusses XSS attacks, and how BIG-IP Application Security Manager technology can help prevent them.

• Author: Lori MacVittie | Technical Marketing Manager - Application Services, F5
• Date: October 2007

Nearly all WAN optimization appliances leverage advanced compression routines to improve application performance. At a high level, they all store and leverage previously transferred network data to achieve high compression ratios. When examined further though, how they achieve these gains, and their resulting limitations, varies widely. This White Paper describes how F5"s WANJet and TDR technology improves application performance.

• Author: F5 Networks
• Date: January 2006

The BIG-IP LTM system contains targeted and specialized optimizations which leverage F5"s unique WAN, LAN and data acceleration technologies. This allows the BIG-IP system to deliver unmatched optimization, packet loss recovery, and a more intelligent intermediation between suboptimal servers and clients. This White Paper details the extensive real world testing that prove the benefits that F5 brings to applications and web sites over the Internet. Includes testing results gathered using the Gomez Performance Network.

• Author: F5 Networks
• Date: May 2005

Because improvements in practical computer power lag far behind these exponential hardware improvements, the key to maintaining processor performance has become multiprocessor or multicore design. This White Paper details how the Clustered Multiprocessor (CMP) from F5, in combination with TMOS, provides customers with scalability, extensibility, adaptability, and manageability.

• Author: Ken Salchow, Manager - Core Technical Marketing, F5
• Date: January 2008

Deploying dynamic web applications in the enterprise offers significant benefits, but users may well experience unpredictable application performance. One cause of poor performance is server overload, which results from greater application usage and content complexity. This White Paper describes how the F5 WebAccelerator solves this key issue with its Dynamic Caching technology.

• Author: F5 Networks
• Date: September 2006

This White Paper shows how an F5 BIG-IP WebAccelerator can significantly reduce the variability of a fee-based CDN while offering additional performance enhancements not available from traditional CDN vendors.

• Author: Lori MacVittie | Technical Marketing Manager - Application Services, F5
• Date: November 2007

Web application delays caused by network latency cannot be fixed by increasing bandwidth or increasing server capacity. This White Paper shows how F5"s WebAccelerator solves this problem with its Intelligent Browser Referencing (IBR) technology, which is a group of capabilities that eliminates the need for the browser to download repetitive or duplicate data, and ensures the best use of bandwidth by controlling browser behavior.

• Author: F5 Networks
• Date: April 2007

Compression technology can provide dramatic application performance improvements. This White Paper discusses the need for compression, the different approaches to compression available in the market today, and how F5"s BIG-IP^® system provides organizations with a powerful way to optimize their bandwidth intelligently while accelerating the delivery of their applications.

• Author: F5 Networks
• Date: August 2005

This White Paper sheds light on the issues affecting application performance in the wide area, and gives IT managers the knowledge required to design strategic enterprise application acceleration and deployment solutions.

• Author: F5 Networks
• Date: November 2006

This White Paper details F5"s Advanced Client Authentication software module. This module, for use with the BIG-IP^® Local Traffic Manager, provides client authentication of HTTP and other traffic types for a variety of authentication schemes, including LDAP, Radius, TACAS, SSL, and OCSP.

• Author: F5 Networks
• Date: April 2006

F5"s BIG-IP^® Local Traffic Manager provides a state-of-the-art TCP/IP stack that delivers dramatic WAN and LAN application performance improvements for real-world networks. This highly optimized TCP/IP stack, called TCP Express, combines cutting-edge TCP/IP techniques and improvements in the latest RFCs with numerous improvements and extensions developed by F5 to minimize the effect of congestion and packet loss and recovery.

• Author: F5 Networks
• Date: April 2006

This White Paper describes the benefits of the F5 WebAccelerator for document distribution. The WebAccelerator is the only acceleration solution that resolves all document repository network access problems, whether local or remote, regardless of the enterprise environment.

• Author: F5 Networks
• Date: January 2006

This White Paper details F5"s TMOS architecture, a collection of real-time features and functions, purpose-built and designed as a full-proxy solution with the power and performance required in today"s network infrastructure.

• Author: F5 Networks
• Date: August 2006

The new F5 VIPRION chassis brings not only performance and capabilities beyond today"s demands, but also creates cost efficiencies that will appeal to accountants and management everywhere. This White Paper highlights some unexpected savings that the deployment of the VIPRION system brings to the table.

• Author: Paul Stalvig - Technical Marketing Manager, F5
• Date: January 2008

This White Paper describes how F5"s WANJet device can dramatically accelerate CIFS transactions. Each WANJet appliance has a deep understanding of the CIFS protocol and can therefore act on behalf of a CIFS client and server to make the interaction between the two much more efficient.

• Author: F5 Networks
• Date: March 2006

This White Paper explains how WANJet, leveraging its Session Matrix Architecture and utilizing technologies such as SpeedArray^™ and Transparent Data Reduction, solves problems prevalent in the deployment of Data Replication, Redundancy, Wide Area File Services, and Backup/Restore Applications.

• Author: F5 Networks
• Date: January 2006

The F5 WANJet product uses Transparent Data Reduction (TDR) technology to address bandwidth challenges. This White Paper explains how WANJet, using TDR, delivers LAN-like application performance over the WAN, accelerating file transfer, email, client server applications, data replication, and others while delivering predictable, fast performance for all WAN users.

• Author: F5 Networks
• Date: March 2006

The demand for (and benefits of) web-based interfaces combined with an increasingly mobile and distributed workforce has exposed inefficiencies inherent in the browser, the network and its protocols, and the data center. These inefficiencies create performance problems for applications that continue to be magnified by emerging technologies like Web 2.0 and SOA. This White Paper details how F5"s approach to Application Delivery Networking eliminates the bottlenecks inherent in browsers, in the network, and in the data.

• Author: Lori MacVittie | Technical Marketing Manager - Application Services, F5
• Date: September 2007

One of SOA"s primary goals is to align IT with the business. F5"s BIG-IP can and does assist in aligning IT with the business by enabling agility, mitigating risk, and encouraging reuse. As part of the IT infrastructure, these devices can improve overall performance, enhance security, and offload tasks from both servers and developers, providing quantifiable benefits over alternative solutions.

• Author: Lori MacVittie | Technical Marketing Manager - Application Services, F5
• Date: March 2007

This White Paper describes how you can use F5 BIG-IP iRules and the Rate Shaping feature of the BIG-IP^® LTM system to identify different types of traffic for individualized control that can return double-digit capacity without spending a dime on additional bandwidth.

• Author: F5 Networks
• Date: December 2007

The modern SP needs tools and technology to help them start deploying NGN services today on their existing networks with a mindful-eye toward tomorrow. This White Paper describes how F5 Networks provides these tools and technologies and is already a major contributor to many existing SP networks providing cutting-edge technology.

• Author: Ken Salchow, Manager - Core Technical Marketing, F5
• Date: September 2007

This White Paper explores the challenges that businesses face when deploying a multi-homed network and how the BIG-IP^® Link Controller provides a cost effective solution to not only manage availability, but also to optimize the performance of ISP connectivity in an operationally efficient manner.

• Author: F5 Networks
• Date: December 2007

This is a question and answer session with Erik Giesa, VP of Product Management and Marketing, on the topic of Data Center Virtualization.

• Author: F5 Networks
• Date: March 2006

This White Paper describes how businesses can use F5 Networks" BIG-IP GTM to leverage all the benefits of their secondary site in an active-active configuration to holistically manage their applications across multiple site. It also describes how you can use the BIG-IP Link Controller to maintain ISP link connectivity and WANJet^® to accelerate site-to-site data replication across the WAN.

• Author: Paul Stalvig - Technical Marketing Manager, F5
• Date: March 2008

This White Paper addresses the performance needs of a disaster recovery plan, and the common barriers to achieving success. It also addresses the performance gains that can be achieved by combining the F5 WANJet application acceleration solution with the EMC Symmetrix Remote Data Facility^® (SRDF^®) family of remote storage replication solutions.

• Author: F5 Networks
• Date: November 2007

This White Paper addresses the increased performance needs of a disaster recovery plan, and the common barriers to achieving success. It also addresses the performance gains that can be achieved by combining a F5 WANJet application acceleration solution with Double-Take^® replication solutions from Double-Take^® Software.

• Author: F5 Networks
• Date: February 2007

F5 pioneered the concept of breaking up data center virtualization technologies into eight unique categories within the data center. Any virtualization products or technologies implemented in the data center will fall into one of these eight categories. With this paper, F5 discusses how it has implemented these same technologies within its own product line, helping enterprises get closer to achieving their goal of a implementing a complete Virtual Data Center with F5"s Application Delivery Networking products.

• Author: Alan Murphy - GCIH | Technical Marketing Manager - Security, F5
• Date: March 2008

This White Paper shows how understanding HTTP, and how these headers control behavior of web-based applications, can lead to better end-user performance, as well as making it easier to choose an application acceleration solution that addresses the shortcomings of HTTP and browser-based solutions.

• Author: Patrick Chang | Systems Architect - Acceleration Solutions, F5 and Lori MacVittie | Technical Marketing Manager - Application Services, F5
• Date: January 2008

This White Paper discusses the impact that AJAX has on the Network, and how an application delivery controller, such as the BIG-IP LTM system, combined with an application firewall address the network, server, and security issues that will certainly arise with increased deployment of these new web-oriented rich applications.

• Author: Lori MacVittie | Technical Marketing Manager - Application Services, F5
• Date: March 2007

Web services are definitely going to tax your network infrastructure. In the rush toward realizing the benefits of a Service Oriented Architecture via Web services, enterprise architects and developers must factor in the role the network plays in the successful delivery of Web services. This White Paper shows how F5 products can help reduce the burden of Web services on the network.

• Author: F5 Networks
• Date: January 2006

By extending the capabilities of the F5 suite of products to include pre-built support of the core IMS needs, F5 is positioned to bring the same ease of design, deployment, and management to IMS that we have in enterprise architectures for more than a decade. This White Paper discusses how F5 provides security, performance, and availability to IP networks.

• Author: Ken Salchow, Manager - Core Technical Marketing, F5
• Date: September 2007

This White Paper is written to achieve two main goals: to explain the basic vision/need for the IMS architecture and to give the reader a high-level understanding of how it works. In the end, the overarching goal is to help educate the reader on this burgeoning and powerful technology change.

• Author: Ken Salchow, Manager - Core Technical Marketing, F5
• Date: September 2007

The intent of this paper is to familiarize the reader with both the vision and need for SCTP. While it currently has a very limited use, its capabilities will soon prove too tempting, and SCTP adoption will grow quickly. Within IMS architecture, SCTP provides the call signaling over IP. The key benefits of SCTP, multi-homing and multi-streaming, will allow development of numerous new devices which include the ability to support and carry this new protocol.

• Author: Paul Stalvig - Technical Marketing Manager, F5
• Date: October 2007

As the use of IPv6 within the Internet grows, the basic concept of IP address configuration and use becomes critical to all organizations. This White Paper gives a detailed introduction to IPv6.

• Author: Paul Stalvig - Technical Marketing Manager, F5
• Date: November 2007

This White Paper describes how the BIG-IP LTM system can operate as an IPv4 to IPv6 gateway; operating identically in either environment, and within mixed environments. This capability is ideal for organizations that are either actively planning for or anticipating an IPv4 to IPv6 transition.

• Author: F5 Networks
• Date: August 2006

This White Paper describes how F5"s BIG-IP^® Global Traffic Manager can solve the challenges of a multi-service application infrastructure to provide maximum availability, reduce infrastructure costs and management overhead, and improve application performance for a superior end-user experience.

• Author: F5 Networks
• Date: January 2006

One of the unfortunate effects of the continued evolution of the load balancer into today"s application delivery controller (ADC) is that it is often too easy to forget the basic problem for which load balancers were originally created-producing highly available, scalable, and predictable application services. This White Paper describes the Evolution of load balancing devices to Application Delivery Controllers.

• Author:Ken Salchow, Manager - Core Technical Marketing, F5
• Date: July 2007

The pervasiveness of load balancing technology does not mean it is universally understood, nor is it typically discussed other than from a basic, network-centric viewpoint. This White Paper thoroughly explains load balancing and strips away some of the mystery and magic from basic load balancing practices.

• Author:Ken Salchow, Manager - Core Technical Marketing, F5
• Date: July 2007

Health monitoring, or the ability to verify that back-end systems are operational, is a basic tenant of load balancing and therefore critical to Application Delivery Controllers. This White Paper describes passive monitoring, and F5"s monitoring solutions.

• Author:Ken Salchow, Manager - Core Technical Marketing, F5
• Date: October 2007

Real-Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) is a foundation for the current convergence of communications. This White Paper discusses RTSP, and the BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) RTSP proxy service.

• Author: Paul Stalvig | Technical Marketing Manager
• Date: September 2007

This Meta Group White Paper describes how new approaches to application delivery - such as service-oriented architectures, peer-to-peer, and grid computing - are radically changing the flow of traffic between points on the network.

• Author: META Group for F5 Networks
• Date: February 2005

This White Paper goes into detail on the challenges and solutions of a service oriented architecture.

• Author: Lori MacVittie | Technical Marketing Manager - Application Services, F5
• Date: March 2007

The key to SIP is that it provides only five functions: user location, user availability, user capabilities, session setup, and session management. This White Paper defines SIP and discusses these five functions.

• Author: Paul Stalvig | Technical Marketing Manager
• Date: September 2007

This White Paper defines high availability and reliability in SIP-based services and discusses techniques of designing and building reliable SIP networks.

• Author: Paul Stalvig | Technical Marketing Manager
• Date: September 2007

While it is important to understand the numerous benefits F5"s BIG-IP application delivery networking products bring to an organization, such as high availability, improving application performance, optimizing infrastructure, and providing unique application security, the goal of this White Paper is to explore a more fundamental business and technical problem plaguing today"s organizations and how BIG-IP, specifically version 9.4 and the 8800 platform, solves it.

• Author: F5 Networks
• Date: February 2007

If you are currently using an SSL VPN solution for remote access, you already have a robust wireless access solution in place. This White Paper describes the benefits of using an existing SSL VPN solution for secure wireless LAN access.

• Author: F5 Networks
• Date: March 2007

This White Paper focuses on virtualization as it pertains to the data center. Before considering any type of data center virtualization, it"s important to define what technology or category of service you"re trying to virtualize. This White Paper describes eight different categories of virtualization so readers thoroughly understand the differences (and similarities) between the definitions of virtualization.

• Author: Alan Murphy - GCIH | Technical Marketing Manager - Security, F5
• Date: August 2007