AAM Dynamic Policy Updates And Removal of SPDY in BIG-IP v13

February 22nd marked the downloadable release of F5 BIG-IP v13.  With any major release, our user community wants to know what changes and features will present themselves post upgrade. For BIG-IP Application Acceleration Manager (AAM) users, there are two changes users can expect. Under-the-hood, users will enjoy improved performance in Bandwidth Controller updates for Dynamic Policies. For those who deployed SPDY services, keep reading.

Dynamic Policy Updates

Maybe you implemented dynamic bandwidth policies and maaaayyybeeee you saw policies not always metering "fairly" causing throttling prior to peak utilization. We saw it too. The algorithms behind the fairness policies within Bandwidth Controller and their surrounding policy management are updated to properly maximize your available bandwidth. BIG-IP v13 modifies existing static and common token bucket algorithms. For you this means:

• Better tracking of slow flows
• Better utilize assigned max rates in all conditions
• Better control of max rate and token distributions across TMM instances and blades

These updates require no user intervention to implement. If you have existing policies already in use, you should see performance improvements immediately. There are two mechanisms for assigning policy-based flow rates in AAM, Policy Enforcement Manager and Access Policy Manager (and iRules if you're splitting hairs) but actual changes for these improvements reside within Bandwidth Controller.

Say Goodby to SPDY

Google announced removal of SPDY support in favor of HTTP/2 Februrary 2015.  SPDY (and NPN) support were removed from Chrome in February 2016.  All other major browsers followed suit or are planning to drop support shortly.  F5 introduced HTTP/2 support in 11.6 and with version 13 we complete SPDY's removal as a functioning service.

 

If for some reason you had a SPDY-only virtual server/application, kudo's for being that one person and let's start making plans to migrate your SPDY gateway/services to HTTP/2 before your upgrade.  SPDY functionality exists in LTM and AAM and GUI removal applies to both.  We don't want you to be surprised.

 

SPDY removal and Bandwidth Controller fairness algorithm updates are the two changes you'll see affect AAM (and other modules) in BIG-IP v13. One requires no intervention and will provide performance increases, the other is a deprecated web standard who should already have both feet out your infrastructure door.  Let us know your experiences with BIG-IP v13 keep on IT'ing