Overview of Acceleration and Routing mode for WXA

Description

This article contains an overview of acceleration and routing mode for the WXA series.

Resolution

Feature/Application:

This document gives a quick overview of TCP & USMB acceleration when the SonicWall appliance is configured in "Routed Mode".

Note
  • There exists an issue when Web-Cache is enabled in Routed Mode. Click here to know more about the issue and its workaround.
  • Acceleration is not supported in dynamic/protocol routing.


There exists an issue when Web-Cache is enabled in Routed Mode. Click here to know more about the issue and its workaround.
: Acceleration is not supported in dynamic/protocol routing

Figure 1 Test network example

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Figure 2 NAT policies disabled on NSA3600
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Figure 3 NAT policies disabled on NSA250M
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Figure 4 NSA3600 routing table
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You can use any address object name you wish.

Figure 5 Route #2 on NSA3600
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Figure 6 NSA250M routing table
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Figure 7 NSA250M Route #1
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How to debug

Is traffic being forwarded to the WXA?

Couple of ways to figure this out

  • Look at the TCP Accel or WFS "Statistics" tab are the traffic counts increasing. May have to wait up to 10 minutes depending on throughput rate.
  • You can look at "Connection Monitor" and find connections with "src iface" the same as the WXA dedicated interface.
Figure 8 NSA250 X2 connection from WXA
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Traffic is not being forwarded?

  • Look at the logs for both WXA and NSA.
  • Look at the "Debug"" stats on the NSA "diag" page.
Figure 9 The show debug stats displays connections forwarded to WXA
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Figure 10 Debug statistics
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Figure 11 Zero the statistics
ImageWeb caching stops working in Route Mode due to Web Proxy NAT policy being lower than Routed Mode NAT policy.

If an interface is to be configured to be Routed Mode, the default outbound NAT Policy must be disabled and a new "no-NAT" NAT Policy created. This can be done either manually or by enabling Express Mode Settings on the Advanced tab of the interface.


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When WXA Web Cache is enabled, three NAT policies are auto-created to divert traffic to the WXA appliance.

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This prevents Route Mode subnet traffic from being cached by WXA.

As a workaround, perform the following steps:

  1. Login to the SonicWall management GUI
  2. Navigate to the Interfaces page.
  3. Click on Configure on the interface in Routed Mode.
  4. Disable the check box under Express Mode Settings.
  5. Click on OK to save.

This will delete the auto-created outbound no-NAT NAT policy.

  1. Click on Configure on the Routed Mode interface.
  2. Click on the Advanced tab.
  3. Enable check box under Express Mode Settings.
  4. Click on OK to save.

This will re-create the outbound no-NAT NAT policy with a lower priority than the Web Cache NAT policy.

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Categories

Firewalls
WAN Acceleration
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