IBM Support

Loopback Aliasing Alternatives when using MAC Forwarding for WebSphere® Edge Load Balancer on Linux™

Troubleshooting


Problem

The Load Balancer's MAC and encapsulated MAC forwarding methods require aliasing the cluster address on loopback interface of the back-end servers. The loopback interface is a special interface that is used for communication within the server and is not used to transmit data on the network. The default installation of Linux™ advertises all addresses, even locally scoped addresses on interfaces that do not transmit data. If these settings are not changed, client traffic is routed directly to the server, by-passing the Load Balancer.
MAC forwarding requires extra configuration on Linux servers.

Symptom

  • Cluster traffic is routed to a single back-end server.
  • The Load Balancer packet-forwarded statistics do not increase. 
  • Traffic not routed to all available servers.

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Historical Number

207567

Document Information

Modified date:
03 March 2025

UID

swg21177105