Azure Application Gateway vs. F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

Azure Application Gateway is a web traffic load balancer that enables you to manage traffic to your web applications. Unlike traditional load balancers that operate at the transport layer (Layer 4), Application Gateway operates at the application layer (Layer 7), allowing it to make routing decisions based on attributes such as URL paths and host headers. This capability provides more control over how traffic is distributed to your applications, enhancing both performance and security.

F5 BIG-IP LTM optimizes the speed and reliability of your applications via both network and application layers. Using real-time protocol and traffic management decisions based on application and server conditions, extensive connection management, and TCP and content offloading, BIG-IP LTM dramatically improves application and infrastructure responsiveness. LTM's full proxy architecture give users protocol awareness to control traffic for the most important applications.