Of the other two F5 products announced Monday, W.C. Bradley Co. in Columbus, Ga., has been testing the Link Controller for three months, and it expects to deploy two of the Link Controller boxes in about two months, said Shane Sheppard, network infrastructure manager at the outdoor grill manufacturer. Link Controller starts at $14,990.

Bradley is testing the Link Controller to manage load balancing on e-commerce traffic. Bradley has three Internet service provider links, and the Link Controller will help determine which link is the best available to a user, based on up to 10 variables for determining what's best, Sheppard said.

The most important variable set in the Link Controller is to find which link is most available, but Bradley has also set the device to avoid added link costs by moving traffic to prepaid lines when possible instead of a more expensive Digital Subscriber Line 3 link. "This feature works so well that we've never gone above the first bandwidth level. So, in that sense it helps you with cost avoidance."

The Link Controller valuable in optimizing TCP/IP traffic for Bradley, Sheppard said.

Sheppard has been using various F5 products for about three years, and estimated that Bradley has spent about $100,000 in total. When Sheppard started working with F5, he evaluated Foundry, Cisco and Radware, but found F5's technology the best.