Applies To:
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BIG-IP GTM
- 11.6.5, 11.6.4, 11.6.3, 11.6.2, 11.6.1
Configuring GTM to Determine PGW Health and Availability
Overview: Configuring GTM to determine packet gateway health and availability
Service providers can configure the BIG-IP® GTM™ system to increase the availability of their customer services on the System Architecture Evolution (SAE) network. One way is to configure a GTP monitor for the health and availability of a packet gateway (PGW). The GTP monitor issues an echo request to a list of PGW systems. If a PGW fails to respond to the GTP echo request, it is marked as down, and removed from the list of available PGW systems that are returned to an MME in a DNS response. GTM can also be configured to load balance DNS queries for the access point name (APN) across the PGW systems that are active and available.
This illustration presents a simplified depiction of how the process works on the SAE network.

GTM monitoring packet gateways
- A smartphone that is preprogrammed with an APN, for example, apn.servprov.com, initiates a data connection.
- The EPC MME performs a DNS lookup on apn.servprov.com in order to select a packet gateway.
- GTM handles the DNS request and returns only IP addresses for PGW systems that are active and available.
Task summary
Configure GTM using these tasks to determine PGW system health and availability, and to load balance DNS queries across the active and available PGW systems.Defining a data center
Defining BIG-IP GTM systems
Defining packet gateway systems
Creating listeners to identify DNS traffic for an APN
Creating a custom GTP monitor
Create a custom GTP monitor to detect the presence and health of a packet gateway (PGW) system. The GTP monitor issues a GTP echo request, and if the PGW system fails to respond, it is automatically marked as down and removed from the available list of PGW systems that the BIG-IP® system returns to an MME.
Creating a pool of packet gateway systems
- Create servers to represent the PGW systems, and manually add at least one virtual server to each server.
- Create a GTP monitor.