Alternatives to Citrix NetScaler?

I'm interested in Citrix product NetScaler. It's an applicance that you put in front of the web-servers. Features I like is:

• SSL offload an acceleration (good because of performance and that Verisign charges per machine)
• GZIP compression of HTTP traffic
• Caching of static content (images, css, js etc.)
• Load balancing

Are there any similar products with features like these?

Solution 1:

Yes, certainly.

• F5 BIG-IP
• Cisco ACE
• Foundry (now Brocade) Server Iron
• Juniper DX series (being discontinued)
• Zeus ZXTM (available as software or appliance)

There are also (quite many) cheaper load balancer appliances. Some examples:

• Coyote Point
• Barracuda
• KEMP Technologies

The one thing that stands out in your post is caching. Many load balancers can do some small-scale caching, but it is usually best done by dedicated HTTP caches, installed as software on servers. Examples are Squid and Varnish.

Read my previous post here, and find the links at the bottom and follow them.

Solution 2:

Bluecoat Proxy can do that and a few more. I have used them in the past as SSL reverse proxy dealing with a few sites and load balencing.

F5 BIG-IP also does the SSL acceleration and offloading and a lot more, but I have not used their products in years, but when I did they were nice and more then able to do what you need.

Solution 3:

Check out A10's offerings. The API is not as strong as F5 and they use TCL for their traffic control scripting, but it's cheaper and faster than F5.