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Configure the F5 BIG-IP as an Explicit Forward Web Proxy Using LTM

In a previous article, I provided a guide on using F5's Access Policy Manager (APM) and Secure Web Gateway (SWG) to provide forward web proxy services. While that guide was for organizations that are...

Updated Dec 08, 2022

Version 2.0

application delivery

Ret. Employee

My name is Steve Lyons and I reside in Tampa, FL with my 3 children, wife and Frenchie. We live the typical Florida life of swimming, fishing, boating, and BBQ. I started my F5 journey as a customer in 2009 where I was first introduced to it as a "load balancer." I have since deployed and maintained all modules realizing the BIG-IP is so much more. I joined F5 in 2015 where I have made it a personal mission to educate as many people as I can so they too can take advantage of the tremendous potential of the BIG-IP.

Ret. Employee

My name is Steve Lyons and I reside in Tampa, FL with my 3 children, wife and Frenchie. We live the typical Florida life of swimming, fishing, boating, and BBQ. I started my F5 journey as a customer in 2009 where I was first introduced to it as a "load balancer." I have since deployed and maintained all modules realizing the BIG-IP is so much more. I joined F5 in 2015 where I have made it a personal mission to educate as many people as I can so they too can take advantage of the tremendous potential of the BIG-IP.

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Cirrus

Oct 13, 2020

Hi Steve.

Very interesting, thank you for the walkthrough. I tested this and it works quite well. I was wondering though what happens if you want to do URL Filtering. There is a guide for deploying an explicit forward proxy using APM and you can define URL Categories / URL Filtering there. Is it possible on this setup as well? I tried to apply certain iRules to restrict the explicit proxy to be able to reach e.g. *.microsoftupdates.com but it looks like the F5 doesn't really perceive this is an HTTP_REQUEST. I also tried to apply iRules on the wildcard VS, however no luck on that one as well.