2.8 IP Front End

The presence of IPFE does not prevent a system from having DA MPs directly connected to clients using for example SCTP Multi-homing connections.

The IP Front End (IPFE) is a traffic distributor that transparently does the following:

• Presents a routable IP address representing a set of up to 16 application servers to application clients. This reduces the number of addresses with which the clients need to be configured.
• Routes packets from the clients that establish new TCP or SCTP connections to selected application servers.
• Routes packets in existing TCP or SCTP connections to the correct servers for the connection.