The rumor last week at Velocity was that F5 Networks was competing against security focused CDNs in accounts that were in need of DDoS Mitigation Services. The interesting part is not that they lost every single time, but that they’re even in this particular game. For F5 Networks, it’s great news because they have gone from the appliance business, to Network DDoS Mitigation via an acquisition, to competing head-to-head with the security focused CDNs. It’s a good start, but they have a long ways to go. First of all, non-CDNs offering DDoS Mitigation Services, via a few scrubbing centers are going to have a tough job beating security focused CDNs, who have an average of 30 PoPs.
When one looks at CDN infrastructure, in reality the CDN PoP is a scrubbing center, even though it’s not packed with Arbor Networks gear. CDNs can absorb massive attacks, because they have massive bandwidth and servers to squash most DDoS attacks. The million dollar question is “will F5 Networks get into the CDN business?” Probably not, but it would be a cool sight to behold. In all honesty, F5 + CDN is the only way they are going to win the DDoS play against a CDN, especially a CDN that offers DDoS Mitigation and WAF at CDN scale.