Transparent interception with software-based routing

You can deploy Content Gateway without adding routers or switches by using routing software on the Content Gateway node. In this case, Content Gateway is a software router and directs all traffic through the proxy machine. This solution can be useful in low-traffic situations, where the performance cost of using the proxy machine as a router is not high.

On Linux systems, you can use the routed and gated daemons as a software-based routing solution. The routed daemon is a bundled part of all normal Linux distributions. The gated daemon is an extensible commercial software package from the Merit GateD Consortium.

When you use routing software with Content Gateway:

All Internet traffic goes through Content Gateway from machines behind it in the network.

The routing software routes all non-transparent requests to the Internet; it routes port 80 HTTP requests to the proxy cache.

The ARM translates intercepted requests into proxy requests.

Translated requests are sent to the proxy.

Web objects to be served transparently are readdressed by the ARM on the return path to the client, so that the objects appear to have come from the origin server.


	Note Although Content Gateway machines can function as routers, they are not expressly designed to be routers. For reliability, you can use a Content Gateway cluster with the virtual IP failover option. If one node fails, another cluster node takes over. See Virtual IP failover.) The Content Gateway cluster failover mechanism is similar to the Hot Standby Router Protocol (HSRP).