Forum Discussion

Alan_Taylor_122's avatar
Alan_Taylor_122
Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
Aug 29, 2013

IRule to Limit *Real* User Connections to VIP

Working with Big-IP 4200 (v11.3) and want to be able to identify actual user count (not connections) and apply a limit to a VIP. Any user exceeding the limit would be served some HTML.

 

I've seen various ways of doing this, but most are based on connection limits and don't really reflect the 'real' world.

 

4 Replies

  • So how are you defining "actual user count"? The number of requests per user? Number of open sessions/browsers? Or are you talking about total number of actual users accessing the application (vs. TCP connections)?

     

  • Thanks for the examples, Nitass. They look to be a good place to start.

     

    Kevin, thanks for the response - I am talking about the total number of actual users accessing the application (vs. TCP connections).

     

  • Both examples are actually pretty close I think to what you want then. The idea is that, because HTTP is a stateless protocol, you first need a state mechanism for the client to identify itself across requests - a cookie. You then need a tracking mechanism on the server side to correlate all of the clients, based on their cookie "IDs", into a countable structure - the session table. That does not preclude a single user from opening up multiple browsers, getting separate cookies, and consuming multiple sessions - unless you can add something else to the state reference like a source IP address.