About Next-hop Proxies

Next-hop proxies can be used as an additional means of forwarding requests received from the clients of an appliance to their destinations.

When next-hop proxies are implemented, a rule in a corresponding rule set uses a module (also known as engine) to call next-hop proxies that have been entered into a list for forwarding requests.

For example, you can forward requests that have internal destinations using internal next-hop proxies. IP addresses of destinations that are internal are then entered into a list, which the forwarding rule relies on. In addition to this, there is a list of internal next-hop proxies for use by the rule.

A rule set with a rule for using next-hop proxies is not implemented on the appliance after the initial setup. You can import a rule set from the library and modify it according to your needs or create a rule set of your own.

When you import the next-hop proxy rule set, a list of servers that can be used as next-hop proxies is also imported. The list is initially empty and must be filled by you. You can also create more than one list and use these lists for routing in different situations.

Settings for the next-hop proxy module are imported with the library rule set. You can configure these settings to let the module use a particular next-hop proxy list and to determine the mode of calling the next-hop proxies (round-robin or failover).