Simple Question about Traffic Flow - Simple Answer Required

If both the F5 and the real servers are in the same network, but the clients reside on another network, you have te following options to keep the F5 in the traffic flow to prevent asymmetric routing.

• the real servers have their default gateway pointing towards the F5.
• the F5 uses SNAT to keep itself in the flow between the client and real servers. Remember that the F5 is a full proxy. It will use a clientside and serverside connection. When using SNAT it will use it own (floating) self ip address in the serverside connection towards the real servers. This results in the real servers responding to towards the self ip address of the F5.

If both the clients and realservers are in the same network, they will not use their default gateway address to route traffic towards each other. In this case you'll need to use SNAT on the F5.