Manual Chapter : About Discovery

Applies To:

Show Versions Show Versions

BIG-IP AAM

  • 11.5.10, 11.5.9, 11.5.8, 11.5.7, 11.5.6, 11.5.5, 11.5.4, 11.5.3, 11.5.2, 11.5.1
Manual Chapter

About Discovery

About discovery on BIG-IP AAM systems

To simplify configuration, particularly in large networks, BIG-IP® systems licensed and provisioned for acceleration perform two types of discovery.

  • Dynamic discovery of remote endpoints occurs when the local BIG-IP system detects a remote iSession endpoint on the other side of the WAN.
  • Local subnet discovery occurs, for example, when a client request to a server triggers the server-side BIG-IP device to discover and display the subnet that is connected to the server.

About subnet discovery

An advertised route is a subnet that can be reached through a iSession™ connection. After the iSession connection is configured between two BIG-IP® devices, they automatically exchange advertised route specifications between the endpoints. The local endpoint needs to advertise the subnets to which it is connected so that the remote endpoint can determine the destination addresses for which traffic can be optimized. Advertised routes configured on the local endpoint become remote advertised routes on the remote endpoint; that is, the BIG-IP device on the other side of the WAN.

When a BIG-IP device is deployed in a large scale network with large number of servers, and many of them belong to different subnets, manually configuring local optimization subnets can be very time consuming. Subnet Discovery is designed to ease such configuration challenges. With local subnet discovery, instead of requiring manual configuration of local subnets for traffic optimization, the BIG-IP system automatically discovers the local optimization subnet when traffic flows from a BIG-IP device on one side of the WAN to a BIG-IP device on the other side.

Note: A TCP request from the client to the server is the action that triggers discovery, not a ping between two endpoints.

About dynamic discovery of remote endpoints

Dynamic discovery is a process through which the BIG-IP® system identifies and adds remote endpoints automatically. The process occurs when the BIG-IP device receives traffic that is matched by a virtual server with an iSession™ profile, but does not recognize the remote destination. When a BIG-IP device receives a request destined for a location on the network behind the BIG-IP device on the other side of the WAN, the first BIG-IP device sends out TCP options or ICMP probes to discover, authenticate, and initiate communication with the new remote endpoint.

Note: A TCP request from the client to the server is the action that triggers discovery, not a ping between two endpoints.