Avaya P333R-LB User’s Guide 1
Chapter 14
Load Balancing in the P333R-LB
This chapter provides information on Load Balancing in the Avaya P333R-LB. Both
Firewall Load Balancing and Server Load Balancing are treated in detail.
Firewall Load Balancing
This section provides information on Firewall Load Balancing (FWLB) in general, as
well as on specific types of firewalls supported by the P333R-LB, and configuration
examples.
FWLB intercepts all traffic between protected and unprotected zones, and
dynamically distributes the load among the available firewalls, based on the FWLB
configuration.
In terms of P333R-LB configuration, firewalls are referred to as Real Servers, the
group of firewalls is a Real Server Group, and the firewall group is associated with a
Virtual Firewall Service, which is a routing or bridging firewall.
Benefits
FWLB allows multiple firewalls to operate in parallel, giving you the ability to:
• Scale firewall performance.
• Eliminate the firewall as the single point of failure.
How It Works
The P333R-LB:
• Balances traffic across two or more firewalls (up to1024) in your network,
allowing your firewalls to work in parallel.
• Maintains state information about the traffic flowing through it and ensures
that all traffic between specific IP source and destination pairs flows through
the same firewall.
• Performs health checks on all paths through the firewalls. If a path is
malfunctioning, P333R-LB diverts traffic away from that path, maintaining
connectivity across the firewalls.
Often, a pair of P333R-LBs are needed to support FWLB. One device is deployed on
the LAN side (internal) of the firewalls and another on the WAN side (external).
Another P333R-LB is required to balance a Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) on the DMZ
side of the network, if it exists, to allow remote access. Additional P333R-LBs can be
added to provide redundancy, eliminating any P333R-LB or path as the single point