Firewall Load Balancing (Fwlb); Fwlb Overview - Avaya P330 User Manual

Firewall Load Balancing (FWLB)

FWLB Overview

Avaya P330 Load Balancing Manager User Guide
This section provides information about Firewall Load Balancing,
including a general overview and detailed information about routing
and bridging firewalls.
Firewall Load Balancing intercepts all traffic between the LAN and the
WAN, and dynamically distributes the load among the available
firewalls, based on FWLB configuration. Using FWLB, all of the firewalls
are utilized concurrently, providing overall improved firewall
performance, scalability and availability.
The firewalls are the Real Servers, and the group of firewalls is the Real
Server Group. The firewall group is associated with a Virtual Service,
which is a routing or bridging firewall.
The load balancer:
• Balances traffic across two or more firewalls (up to 1024) in your
network, allowing the firewalls to work in parallel.
• Maintains state information about the traffic flowing through it
and ensures that all traffic between specific IP address source and
destination pairs flows through the same firewall.
• Performs health checks on all paths through the firewalls. If any
path is not operational, the load balancer diverts traffic away
from that path, maintaining connectivity across the firewalls.
Often, two load balancers are needed to support FWLB. One device is
deployed on the LAN side (internal) of the firewalls and another on the
WAN side (external). If a Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) is implemented to
allow remote access, a third load balancer must be deployed on the DMZ
side of the network. Additional devices can be added to provide
redundancy, eliminating any device or path as a single point of failure.
Avaya P330 Load Balancing Manager supports both routing and bridging
firewalls. Routing firewalls may be transparent or non-transparent.
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