In all, First Command tested each device for at least two weeks in production-level scenarios. "Because we use server load balancing, we were able to create alternate IP addresses, and then run parallel tests against the same servers at the same time to evaluate the various devices," he explains.

Like many other organizations, First Command's Web environment is complex, including not only Microsoft SharePoint applications and Outlook Web Access for Exchange e-mail, but also several BEA Weblogic and ASP.NET-based applications. "Each of those has their own unique set of challenges, so we tested against all of them," he says.

The first box, the Juniper DX, tested well and got high marks for ease of use. Unfortunately, not long into the test, Juniper announced it was dropping the entire DX line. "That was a surprise," Dunn says, noting that he first heard about the move when reading the story in Network World. (See story here.)  "So right away, we were down to three."

Shoring up SharePoint

The Citrix NetScaler and Nortel ACEdirector boxes also worked well—for the most part. "They had issues with specific test cases, where we couldn't get them to perform in our environment," Dunn says, noting that SharePoint was a key stumbling block.

After weeks of testing, the F5 box came out on top. "We were really impressed by the flexibility of the platform to address a wide variety of requirements," Dunn says, noting that F5 has partnered with Microsoft to better support SharePoint. The BigIP box also lets users build customized programs, called iRules, to handle unique load balancing and content management scenarios.

That's a feature most other devices lack, he says. "Usually, you're picking from a drop-down list of things the designers have thought you might want to do. But you always run into a case they haven't thought of. With the F5's iRules interface, you don't have that problem," Dunn says.

With the F5 box in place, First Command has improved page load times by 25 percent, with minimal tuning. And now that F5 has integrated Symphoniq's TRUE customer experience monitor, tuning the box to garner further improvements should be easier.

In a load balanced environment, Dunn says it's typically difficult for a monitoring application to follow the path of a session through the load balancer to determine where it goes in the back-end server environment. "[Symphoniq lets us get a browser to server view of that performance," he says.