Stream profile vs redirect rewrite in http profile vs proxy pass irule

The stream profile performs find/replace on the byte stream (request or response) without having to buffer any data. An irule must buffer to perform a replacement. Stream profiles lack the ability to define that conditions/criteria be met before performing replacement which is why you see examples of an irule calling a stream profile. This allows the irule to examine conditions and decide if a replacement should be done by the stream profile.

The redirect rewrite setting in the http profile does not rewrite content. It acts on redirects only. It is used to change an http redirect from the pool member to https before passing it to the client - useful when offloading ssl on the BIG-IP. This setting also has a node option for cases where the app on the pool member redirects the client to the node IP. When using 'node' BIG-IP changes the node addr to the virtual address before passing the response to client.