8-3. Firewall Load Balancing in Hardware
FWLB is used to balance traffic flows to one or more firewall farms. A firewall farm is a group of firewalls that are connected in parallel or that have their inside (protected) and outside (unprotected) interfaces connected to common network segments.
FWLB requires a load-balancing device to be connected to each side of the firewall farm. A firewall farm with inside and outside interfaces would then require two load-balancing devices—each making sure that traffic flows are directed toward the same firewall for the duration of the connection.
FWLB can be performed in hardware with a CSM on the Catalyst 6500 switch platform. The CSM is a very robust and high-performance device, using the ASLB features to ...
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