8-2. Firewall Load Balancing in Software

Firewall Load Balancing (FWLB) is used to balance traffic flows to one or more firewall farms. A firewall farm is a group of firewalls that are connected in parallel or that have their inside (protected) and outside (unprotected) interfaces connected to common network segments.

FWLB requires a load-balancing device to be connected to each side of the firewall farm. A firewall farm with inside and outside interfaces would then require two load-balancing devices—each making sure that traffic flows are directed toward the same firewall for the duration of the connection.

FWLB is performed in software on the Catalyst 6500 switch platform, only in native IOS (also called supervisor IOS). This is known as the ...

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