What does the Icap.LoadBalanceFactor mean for the Network Prevent for Web?
Article ID: 374675
Updated On:
Products
Issue/Introduction
By default the Advanced Server setting Icap.LoadBalanceFactor is set the value 1.
This setting is only applicable to the Network Prevent for Web detection server but what does it do and what is the impact of this setting?
Environment
This applies to:
DLP Network Prevent for Web Server.
All current versions, 15.8 and above.
Resolution
The Load Balancer Factor is used to modify the Max Connections advertised during an OPTIONS request if a proxy is using this request; not all do so you may want to check this with your Proxy Administrator or Vendor.
When a proxy issues an OPTIONS request, one of the returned values is Max Connections.
DLP will take the configured Max Connections in the UI and divide the value by the DLP LoadBalanceFactor value so that we advertise the appropriate number of Max Connections knowing that we have X number of upstream servers connecting to us.
For example:
DLP Max Connections = 24
Upstream Proxies = 2
LoadBalancerFactor = 2
Options Request Result:
Max Connections = 12
If your proxy is not using the OPTIONS method then this setting won't be applicable.
Additional Information
If the value isn't set correctly it could mean that the connections are not honored and we could end up sending a HTTP Response code of 503 Service Overloaded if there are more proxies connecting than can be handle. Here are some articles which may also interest you:
Article ID: 195566 - Web Prevent Returning "503 Service Overloaded" to Upstream ICAP Client
Article ID: 235176 - Integrating ProxySG with DLP, with load balancing across multiple DLP servers.
For more about OPTIONS please see: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc3507#section-4.10
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