Circumventing transparent redirection of client requests

Options you can use to bypass transparent redirection

If you want certain types of client requests to bypass the appliance, you must configure one or more of the request forwarding options provided by NetCache. The request forwarding options are described in the following table.

Request forward method	Behavior
IP forwarding	Forwards requests for specified IP addresses directly to the origin server
URL forwarding	Forwards requests for specified URLs directly to the origin server
Dynamic forwarding	Redirects clients to the origin server after an initial request results in a specified HTTP response code

To access the request forwarding options in the Appliance Manager, select Setup tab > Transparency > Request Forwarding.

How to use the request forwarding options

The following table describes how to use the request forwarding options.

If you want to...	Use these features	Gather this information
Enable direct routing for servers that require authentication	IP forwarding URL forwarding	Record all IP addresses or URLs that require authentication
Enable direct routing for servers that require client logging data	IP forwarding URL forwarding	Record the IP addresses or URLs of servers that require client logging information
Enable direct routing for requests that cannot be satisfied by the appliance	Dynamic forwarding	Identify the HTTP status codes that you want to result in direct routing

If you want to...

Use these features

Gather this information

Enable direct routing for servers that require authentication

IP forwarding
URL forwarding

Record all IP addresses or URLs that require authentication

Enable direct routing for servers that require client logging data

IP forwarding
URL forwarding

Record the IP addresses or URLs of servers that require client logging information

Enable direct routing for requests that cannot be satisfied by the appliance

Dynamic forwarding

Identify the HTTP status codes that you want to result in direct routing

IP and URL forwarding restrictions

The following restrictions apply to the request forwarding options:

IP forwarding is a global option that applies to all protocols that have been enabled for transparency.
URL forwarding is applicable only to HTTP and RTSP.
You cannot enable IP spoofing and the request forwarding options for the same protocol.
Note
If you have IP spoofing enabled and want to bypass specific IP addresses, you can use the "Enable tunneling of server IP addresses" option to bypass them (Setup tab > HTTP > Tunneling).
NetCache does not cache objects associated with the requests that are being forwarded as a result of IP or URL forwarding. Objects are not cached because the origin server returns the objects directly to the client, not through the appliance.

How request forwarding works

When you enable a request forwarding method, NetCache returns client requests to the network for direct routing to the client. Therefore, requests arrive at the destination server with the client's IP address intact. The origin server then responds directly to the client.