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Jesus_42825
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Aug 20, 2007

Technical Question about Big IP

Hi,

 

 

In my company there is a Big IP Load Balancer. The current configuration is shown below:

 

 

 

 

SoftSwitch --> (F5 – Big IP) --> IVR x 5. In this configuration the SIP signaling from the SoftSwitch send a request messages to IVRs through the Big-IP. The answer from the IVRs goes from them to the SoftSwitch without passing back through the Big-IP (asymmetric signaling traffic). I think there is something wrong in this configuration because there is not a topology hiding and exists a security hole. I’d like to confirm that we can configure the Big-IP in order to handle the symmetric traffic from and to the IVR passing through the Big-IP.

 

 

 

 

Current Flow:

 

 

SoftSwitch --> (F5 – Big IP) --> IVR x 5.

 

SoftSwitch <<<---------------------- IVR

 

 

 

 

Wish Flow:

 

SoftSwitch <--> (F5 – Big IP) <--> IVR x 5.

 

 

4 Replies

  • This sounds like a question for the advanced design forum, not the iControl forum. It might be worth posting the question there as you might get more answers from that one. I'd try to give you an answer myself but I'm not really familiar with SoftSwitch/IVR so I don't know what kind of special configuration might be required.
  • Hi,

     

    Thanks for the Tip, i'll move my question to that forum.

     

     

    Best Regard,

     

    Jesus T.
  • Yes, you should be able to do that. The BIG-IP understands SIP traffic and you can use the SIP profile or SIP persistence to handle SIP traffic correctly. In that new scenario, the BIG-IP may need to insert a VIA header which is available in the version 9.4 SIP profile. This depends on whether the server requires to the VIA header. If not, you may need a forwarding virtual server for the response traffic since your IVR may look at the original source IP in the SIP header and send a response to there instead of to the source IP in the IP header.
  • Hi Jesus, Did you get an answer to this question? If not, I have a very similair setup, and we got it working Incoming SIP >> Big-IP >> SIP_Servers >>Big-IP >>Outgoing SIP. Let me know if I can help. matt