Architecture - is this possible?

The advantage is that you can have a "flat" network where LTM is not the default gateway and still not use SNAT; because it is the bridge that devices talk through to get to the def gw, it can still do load balancing without the SNAT issues I discussed above.

 

 

The disadvantages are that it's a more complex setup, it's harder to troubleshoot, and if everything is not done correctly, you will end up with a bridge loop that takes down every device on the network due to a broadcast storm. It becomes particularly tricky when you have a redundant pair of LTM's.

 

 

It was designed primarily to replace implementations that were already in this mode (Cisco Local Directors especially) and could not be changed. I never recommend it for newly planned implementations, because in my mind the disadvantages outweigh the one advantage by quite a bit.

 

 

Denny