For more information regarding the security incident at F5, the actions we are taking to address it, and our ongoing efforts to protect our customers, click here.

Forum Discussion

Amresh008's avatar
Amresh008
Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
Jun 13, 2017

Is Mac masquerade necessary ?

I have a pair of F5 7200v configured in single arm mode setup acting as Active/Standby. Both of them are connected to nexus 7k distribution switches and the latter are connected to each other via tru...
application delivery
BIG-IP
devops
LTM
tbyerly_229301's avatar
tbyerly_229301
Historic F5 Account
Jun 13, 2017

Generally you do not need it.

 

"Ordinarily a failover to a new Active system will result in issuance of Gratuitous ARP broadcasts with the newly Active system’s MAC address supplied as L2 address for each L3 Failover Address (Virtual Addresses/VIPS, Floating Self-IP’s, NAT addresses)"

 

Some devices ignore Gratuitous ARP's..

 

So..MAC Masquerading solves these problems by using a common L2 address shared by BIG-IP devices for L3 traffic; no ARP entry is changed, only Switch’s MAC address/port forwarding table.