Planning your deployment

Web acceleration

An HTTPS-enabled Web accelerator works to offload secure processing (encryption and decryption) from an origin server. In this environment, the appliance is exposed to clients, and connections are made over a private network to an HTTP server.

Example:

An appliance configured to support HTTPS Web site acceleration is installed with the certificate and private key of the accelerated server. Traffic from the HTTPS client to the cache is encrypted. Also, traffic from the cache to the accelerated server can be encrypted, although in many cases, HTTP is sufficient.

Forward proxy

An HTTPS forward proxy handles client requests for the origin server. In this environment, client browsers use HTTPS to communicate with the appliance, and the appliance uses HTTPS to communicate with the origin server.

Example

A site with an existing SSL application between the branch office and the central office can deploy an appliance at the branch office to offload traffic from the central office servers. This appliance has a copy of the central office's certificate and private keys, and is therefore able to terminate client SSL connections and decrypt traffic. The appliance acts as the central office server, and encrypts traffic from the appliance to the central office origin server, as well.