Persistent and Persistence, What's the Difference?

The English language is one of the most expressive, and confusing, in existence. Words can have different meaning based not only on context, but on placement within a given sentence. Add in the twist...
Published Jul 11, 2008
Version 1.0
BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)
cookies
http
internet
load-balancing
Networking
persistence
security
ssl
tcp
Ross_Beehler's avatar
Ross_Beehler
Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
Mar 09, 2018

Great article. Can you help me then cut through the confusion created by F5 on this same topic when it comes to the State setting of pool members and nodes? Here are the 3 options:

 

  • Enabled (All traffic allowed)
  • Disabled (Only persistent or active connections allowed)
  • Forced Offline (Only active connections allowed)

But according to https://support.f5.com/csp/article/K13310, the terms "persistent" and "persistence" are used interchangeably and inconsistently. I'm assuming none of the usages have anything to do with persistent TCP connections, but always session persistence. For example, if we do not use "sticky" sessions, there is no difference between Disabled and Forced Offline.