F5 – SSL Options (SSL Offloading vs SSL Bridging vs SSL Passthrough)

SSL Offloading (or SSL Termination)

In this method, SSL traffic is terminated at the F5 BIG-IP system, decrypted and inspected, but is not re-encrypted before being forwarded to the server. The BIG-IP system maintains the SSL session with the client, and the server session is over plain HTTP.

Pros:

• Offloads the CPU-intensive task of encryption/decryption from the server, potentially improving server performance.
• Provides the ability to inspect, manipulate, and manage the SSL traffic since it’s decrypted at the load balancer.
• Enables us