Abstract

Application delivery controllers (ADCs) are the unseen workhorses of the internet. Every back-end application that consists of two or more servers has an ADC of some type on the front end to optimize delivery to the application end user. ADCs are also called upon to handle security-oriented tasks. NetScaler VPX is a virtualized ADC designed to enhance the application end-user experience by providing high- performance traffic management coupled with low latency for delivering applications in hybrid cloud environments.

NetScaler commissioned Tolly to benchmark the performance of the NetScaler VPX virtualized ADC and compare it with the F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition (VE). Tests were run in an Amazon Web Services (AWS) environment and included tests of ADCs running various combinations of traditional load balancing (LB), Policy (rewrite) processing, and application security (App Sec). Tests measured data throughput, CPU  efficiency, and  latency.  For latency, tests measured P95 latency which measures the latency of the worst 5% of the flows.

NetScaler VPX outperformed F5 BIG-IP VE in all test scenarios, achieving lower (better) latency, better CPU efficiency, and higher throughput when running with similar CPU usage.