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F5 announced on August 20, 2025, that it had acquired MantisNet, a Reston, Virginia-based company focused on eBPF-powered cloud-native network observability. F5 said it plans to integrate MantisNet’s technology into its Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP), connecting network telemetry more closely with security and policy enforcement. The deal was described as closed, but its financial terms were not disclosed.
What F5 bought—and what the announcement does not establish
MantisNet’s technology centers on its Containerized Visibility Fabric (CVF), a system designed to gather network telemetry in containerized environments. F5’s stated aim is to use that visibility across cloud-native, virtualized, encrypted, and 5G traffic. The announcement identifies MantisNet technology as an addition to ADSP, but does not establish whether MantisNet remains a standalone product, brand, subsidiary, or sales channel.
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F5 and CRN described the acquisition as closed. Neither source disclosed a purchase price. F5’s announcement and CRN’s coverage provide the public deal details.
Why network visibility is difficult in cloud-native environments
Containers and Kubernetes services can be short-lived, and traffic often moves east-west between services rather than only entering or leaving a data center. Encryption can further limit what conventional network monitoring can infer. A setup that depends on application instrumentation or a sidecar deployed alongside each workload may also add configuration and operational work.
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F5’s rationale is to add visibility closer to where network activity occurs, then connect useful telemetry to its delivery and security controls. The company says the technology is intended for containerized and virtualized applications, telecom and 5G environments, cloud-native network functions, and enterprise, government, cloud-provider, and managed-service deployments. These are target use cases, not evidence that every environment is supported in every product configuration.
What eBPF and MantisNet’s CVF are intended to do
eBPF allows approved programs to run in the Linux kernel and observe certain system and network events. In practical terms, kernel-level collection can provide network information without requiring developers to instrument application code. F5 describes MantisNet’s CVF as sidecar-free and says it avoids application-level agents or instrumentation.
“Sidecar-free” is more precise than “agentless.” It does not, by itself, tell a buyer whether deployment requires a privileged process, a DaemonSet, host access, a collector, or a control plane. Nor does eBPF automatically expose every flow or protocol: visibility depends on where collection runs, kernel and workload support, permissions, traffic paths, and what the software exports. F5’s eBPF Observability product page describes kernel telemetry for cloud-native applications, but detailed compatibility and deployment requirements should be confirmed for a specific environment.
Rank #2
The disclosed focus is network observability: flows, protocols, service-to-service communication, and network intelligence. That is not the same as full application performance monitoring, distributed tracing, log management, code profiling, or user-experience monitoring. A network view can complement those tools, but the acquisition announcement does not show that CVF replaces them.
How F5 says the telemetry could connect to security
F5 described possible integrations with BIG-IP Policy Enforcement Manager (PEM), Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM), BIG-IP DNS, Carrier-Grade NAT, and BIG-IP Next for Kubernetes. Its proposed direction is to observe traffic, produce network metadata, identify behavior relevant to policy, and pass intelligence to analytics or enforcement systems.
That is the announced strategic direction, not confirmation that all of those integrations are generally available. F5’s March 11, 2026, announcement of F5 Insight for ADSP points to a broader observability strategy using technologies including OpenTelemetry. It does not establish that F5 Insight is the same product as MantisNet CVF or that every MantisNet capability has shipped.
Rank #3
What F5 means by visibility into encrypted traffic
F5 says the technology can provide visibility into encrypted sessions, including metadata and pre-encryption context associated with TLS 1.3. That wording should not be read as a claim that the product decrypts all payloads or inspects all encrypted content. Metadata and connection behavior can be useful without revealing message contents.
For a deployment involving TLS or mutual TLS, ask where telemetry is collected, which versions and traffic paths are covered, whether keys or termination points are needed, what metadata is retained, and whether service-mesh traffic is supported. The public acquisition announcement does not settle those implementation details.
What customers can verify now
Three developments should be kept distinct:
- Acquisition: F5 announced the MantisNet acquisition on August 20, 2025, and described it as closed.
- Marketed capability: F5 currently describes eBPF Observability for cloud-native applications, emphasizing Linux-kernel telemetry without sidecars or application-level instrumentation.
- Broader platform direction: F5 announced F5 Insight for ADSP on March 11, 2026, describing observability across application and infrastructure layers and citing OpenTelemetry.
These facts do not confirm that every CVF feature, named BIG-IP integration, or proposed security workflow is generally available. The public material cited here also does not establish customer entitlements, a full licensing matrix, or independent performance benchmarks. F5’s Distributed Cloud observability documentation lists third-party integrations, but that documentation should not be mistaken for a release statement about MantisNet-derived features.
Rank #4
Who is most likely to benefit
The strongest potential fit is for organizations that have both a substantial network-observability problem and a reason to use F5’s enforcement or application-delivery stack:
- Telecom operators: teams managing 5G services or cloud-native network functions may value network-level telemetry at scale.
- Large Kubernetes estates: platform and security teams seeking visibility into service-to-service traffic may find kernel-based collection relevant, subject to support and permissions.
- Existing F5 customers: organizations that want a potential path from network signals to F5 policy controls have a clearer strategic fit than buyers seeking a standalone monitoring backend.
- Managed-service providers and regulated organizations: multi-tenant operations, government requirements, and policy enforcement may make the intended combination relevant, although isolation and data-residency details need validation.
The fit is less obvious for a small team seeking simple, low-cost application monitoring; a developer team primarily debugging code with traces; an organization that only needs OpenTelemetry collection; or an environment where kernel privileges are prohibited. Buyers prioritizing portability may also prefer an independent telemetry backend rather than tying observability workflows to one vendor’s enforcement ecosystem.
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These options address overlapping but not identical needs. Public pricing shown below is provider-published pricing, not a like-for-like cost comparison; actual bills depend on usage, configuration, and applicable terms.
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Best Value
| Option | Best-aligned need | Published pricing signal | Key distinction |
|---|---|---|---|
| F5 eBPF Observability | Cloud-native network telemetry connected to F5 delivery or security controls. | No public price stated on the cited product material. | Potentially attractive to existing F5 customers; confirm availability, entitlement, and integration depth. |
| Grafana Cloud | Managed metrics, logs, traces, profiles, and application observability in a Prometheus- and OpenTelemetry-oriented ecosystem. | Grafana lists a free tier, Pro starting at $0.025 per host-hour plus a $19 monthly platform fee, and Enterprise with a $25,000 annual minimum commitment. Its Application Observability pricing for new customers changed February 13, 2026, to $0.025 per host-hour plus separate telemetry charges. | Broader telemetry-backend fit; it does not inherently provide F5’s traffic-enforcement plane. |
| Dynatrace | Full-stack application, infrastructure, Kubernetes, and observability operations. | Published prices include Foundation at $7 per host-month, Infrastructure Monitoring at $29 per host-month, Full-Stack Monitoring at $58 per 8-GiB host-month, and Kubernetes Platform Monitoring at $1.40 per pod-month; telemetry charges can also apply. | More directly aimed at broad APM and root-cause analysis than F5-native enforcement. |
| New Relic | General-purpose cloud observability spanning APM, tracing, infrastructure, logs, and digital experience. | Its public page says full-platform users start at $10 per user; data- and compute-based options are also available. | Does not by itself connect network telemetry to F5 AFM, PEM, or related enforcement controls. |
| Self-managed OpenTelemetry and open-source backends | Teams prioritizing portability and control over vendor-managed services. | Not stated in the cited sources. | Requires the team to select, operate, secure, and integrate the collection and storage components. |
Grafana’s Application Observability pricing page, Dynatrace rate card, and New Relic pricing page provide further terms. These figures are not directly comparable: they use different billing units and may exclude signal-specific, usage-based, or other charges.
Questions to ask before buying
Because the public material does not settle important deployment and commercial details, ask F5 to answer these against your actual environment and quote:
Quick Recap
- Which Linux distributions, kernel versions, Kubernetes versions, managed Kubernetes services, and node models are supported?
- Which interfaces, namespaces, pods, clusters, cloud-native network functions, and traffic paths can be observed?
- Does installation require privileged DaemonSets, host access, capabilities, or exceptions to eBPF admission policies?
- Which signals are exported—flow records, protocol metadata, TLS metadata, metrics, traces, logs—and through which APIs or OpenTelemetry paths?
- Which F5 products can consume the telemetry for automated enforcement today, rather than only display it in analytics?
- What measured CPU, memory, latency, and network impact should be expected at your packet rate and telemetry volume?
- How are mutual TLS, service meshes, short-lived jobs, serverless containers, and unsupported protocols handled?
- How are tenants isolated, and where is telemetry processed and retained? What retention controls are available?
- Is the capability included in a particular BIG-IP edition or ADSP package, or priced by nodes, clusters, throughput, workloads, or telemetry volume?
- What happens during kernel upgrades, node replacement, eBPF program failure, or rollback?
- Can it coexist with existing OpenTelemetry collectors, service-mesh telemetry, and APM agents?
- What support lifecycle, release cadence, and support commitments apply to the specific features being purchased?
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.
