The IPFE stores an association record about each connection. The association contains the information necessary to identify packets belonging to a connection and to identify the application server that the IPFE has selected for the connection. The IPFE routes all packets associated with a particular connection to the selected application server.
The specific packet-identifying information is the source IPv4 or IPv6 address and the source port number. For each Target Set, packets matching both by source address and source port will be routed to the same target application server.
All association information is replicated between mated IPFEs, but not between IPFE pairs.
Association information is isolated to a Target Set so that the Target Sets behave independently.
Because returning packets bypass the IPFE, the IPFE has limited knowledge of the state of the connection. The IPFE cannot determine if a connection has reconnected from the same source port, nor whether the connection has been terminated.