F5 Access Guard Deprecated: ZTA APM
Since F5 Access Guard is deprecated and not supported on Win 11, newer browsers, and some versions of MacOS, what is the replacement for posture checking when implementing a ZeroTrust architecture using APM as an identify aware proxy? One major point of ZT is to do continuous posture checking of a client and the requests they are making--each and every one utilizing a per-request policiy. Without this component, it seems like APM is not a great candidate for use. What are others doing when using APM within their ZT network? Are they using 3rd part solutions with an HTTP connector to evaluate to client/request for each and every request?
Improve BIG-IP APM VPN speed with TLS dynamic record size
After successfully setting up BIG-IP APM network access, and running it for sometime, you may be looking for ways to optimize VPN speed for your users. This article discusses one way you can do that. Feature Description Beginning in BIG-IP 12.1.0, the Client SSL profile includes a feature that enables dynamic record size in TLS. When applied to a F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) network access VPN TLS virtual server, this can improve VPN speeds for your users. It has been found that certain protocols, notably HTTP, show better client response times using this method. For more information on the Allow Dynamic Record Sizing setting down to the packet level, refer to the following resources TheAbout dynamic record sizing section of the BIG-IP System: SSL Administration manual. Boosting TLS Performance with Dynamic Record Sizing on BIG-IP on DevCentral. SSL Profiles Part 11: TLS Optimizationon DevCentral. Important: Dynamic record size is a TLS enhancement and does not apply to BIG-IP APM network access DTLS virtual servers. Do not enable dynamic record size on DTLS. When you want to optimize network performance, you must allocate time to tune each configuration to match the requirements specific to your environment. Additionally, note that configuration changes that improve performance may increase BIG-IP system resource (CPU, memory) usage. Testing dynamic record size on VPN speeds Having discussed the theory behind the feature, we will now perform tests to see how it affects VPN speeds. Network bandwidth can vary depending on many factors, for instance, peak vs non-peak hours. When more users are connected to a VPN, download speeds can decrease significantly. It is therefore important to establish a baseline network bandwidth and download speed at the beginning: Baseline AWS environment Windows Client (Seattle) --VPN --> BIG-IP APM (Oregon) --local LAN-->Apache and iperf servers AWS environment: BIG-IP APM 17.1.0 VE on AWS (F5 BIG-IP VE - ALL modules, m5.xlarge, 1 Gbps, AWS) located in us-west-2 Oregon. Note: Ensure you use at least the recommended size (m5.xlarge) and at least 1Gbps on AWS to make sure there are no bandwidth and resource limits. Windows client in located in Seattle Using iperf3 to measure network bandwidth Using curl to download a 377MB apmclient.iso Optional: You can optionally test using the developer tools on your browser. I used firefox; as the results did not differ significantly from curl. They are not included in this article. Baseline test results These are measured with all default settings on BIG-IP APM and dynamic record sizing not enabled: curl download results Average download speed: 4950k C:\Windows\system32>curl -k -o null https://10.0.128.23/apmclient.iso % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed 100 377M 100 377M 0 0 4950k 0 0:01:18 0:01:18 --:--:-- 4988k iperf3 results Network bandwidth: 4873 KB/sec c:\Users\klau\Desktop\iperf-3.1.3-win64>iperf3.exe -c 10.0.128.24 --get-server-output -i 1 -f K -R Connecting to host 10.0.128.24, port 5201 Reverse mode, remote host 10.0.128.24 is sending [ 4] local 10.0.128.31 port 61284 connected to 10.0.128.24 port 5201 [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth [ 4] 0.00-1.00 sec 4.33 MBytes 4434 KBytes/sec [ 4] 1.00-2.00 sec 4.67 MBytes 4785 KBytes/sec [ 4] 2.00-3.00 sec 4.86 MBytes 4977 KBytes/sec [ 4] 3.00-4.00 sec 4.77 MBytes 4878 KBytes/sec [ 4] 4.00-5.00 sec 4.72 MBytes 4834 KBytes/sec [ 4] 5.00-6.00 sec 4.78 MBytes 4898 KBytes/sec [ 4] 6.00-7.00 sec 4.87 MBytes 4989 KBytes/sec [ 4] 7.00-8.00 sec 4.81 MBytes 4925 KBytes/sec [ 4] 8.00-9.00 sec 4.71 MBytes 4823 KBytes/sec [ 4] 9.00-10.00 sec 4.82 MBytes 4934 KBytes/sec - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth Retr [ 4] 0.00-10.00 sec 48.0 MBytes 4919 KBytes/sec 9 sender [ 4] 0.00-10.00 sec 47.6 MBytes 4873 KBytes/sec receiver Server output: [...] [ 5] 0.00-10.04 sec 48.0 MBytes 4900 KBytes/sec 9 sender Test 1: Enabling dynamic record size from baseline Comparing with baseline results after enabling dynamic record size Baseline: Dynamic record size disabled dynamic record size enabled Percentage improvement curl average download, k 4950 5272 6.51% iperf3 network bandwidth, KBytes/sec 4873 5138 5.44% While this may not appear to be too high on the AWS cloud, there is also received feedback from customers that they see greater improvements in environments, especially in cases where the end-to-end latencies increase. Implementation strategy and recommendations As you plan to introduce this in your environment, take note of the following recommendations: Every environment is unique Many factors can affect network performance. This can range from VLAN settings (For example. MTU), TCP settings, intermediate network device throttling, and so on. You must perform testing in your own environment before enabling the feature. Implement the feature incrementally for a selected group of users. There are different ways to do this. For example, use an iRule to redirect users based on a URL, to a separate virtual server using a different Client SSL profile that has the feature enabled. Refer to SSL::allow_dynamic_record_sizing on Clouddocs. Monitor BIG-IP system logs and resource usage After you enable dynamic record size, make sure that your BIG-IP system continues to function as expected by monitoring the following monitor /var/log/ltm and /var/log/apm log files monitor BIG-IP CPU and memory usage. For example, you can select Dashboard on the Configuration utility, generating a QKview and analyze it in iHealth and so on. For more information, refer to K71764661: Understanding BIG-IP CPU usage and K16419: Overview of BIG-IP memory usage Verify and analyze SSL statistics Use the tmsh command inK41057430: Enhanced SSL profile statistics and check for failures. The SSL Dynamic Record Sizes section should also indicate use of large record sizes. Boosting TLS Performance with Dynamic Record Sizing on BIG-IP Conclusion There are a variety of different ways to improve VPN speeds, and this article describes just one. For other options and considerations, refer to K31143831: VPN for business continuity | Chapter 5: Optimizing Network Access VPN.
Cannot login to Avaya wanx using f5 apm network access
Hi we are facing some issues related to APM network access, we cannot login to our avaya wanx ip phone communicator using network access, but we can ping the call server we are using, but still no luck on login. Is there something we need to adjust on APM network access setup?
(How) can I get two client certificates in one APM session?
I have a customer with iPads that need to authenticate to APM with a user certificate. This has been working fine, but there is also now need to read a field from a per-device certificate on each iPad and make use of this within the access policy. The two certificates are issued by different authorities. Maybe I am wrong, but it seems impossible to change the client SSL profile by renegotiating SSL during the session, so as to let me check the user cert and then the device cert. Does anyone know of a way? TMOS V16.1
Need help in automating BigIQ session summary reports
I have been asked to work out a way of automating the CSV report from BigIQ Monitoring Access Dashboard. Under Access > Sessions > Session Summary I have been filtering Network_Access as the AP result and then manually exporting the CSV there. Our security who does not have a Splunk server is asking for this every 24 hours. Therefore I am looking to see if there is a way I can have a scheduled job run for this. Only things I am finding are configuration automation or automation dealing with ASM. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
F5 APM Syslog-NG parser
Hello everybody, I use the VPN big-ip Edge client F5 and I would like to generate a log with all theses session variables "session.ldap.last.attr.userPrincipalName + session.check_machinecert.last.cert.subject + session.assigned.clientip". My problem is that the "session.assigned.clientip" isn't populate in the session variable so I can't use a log message to make a custom log with all of theses values. So my question is , is it possible to parse theses logs with syslog-ng and concatenate all the syslog trame with the session ID ? and forward the log concatenated to an another syslog instance ? Don't know if my question is very undertandable ? Regards, MiguelF5 APM DHCP instead of leasepool
Hello, I'm looking to configure the APM to use an upstream DHCP server instead of the locally defined leasepool. I have seen in other posts a link to an article for just this, but the link is no longer around and I cannot find the iapps template associated. iApp, documentation, and example APM Policy to get IP addresses from DHCP for APM VPN clients Can someone point me to the correct link, or can someone tell me the proper way to do this? When i remove the leasepool from the APM policy it says no leasepool assigned and the connections fail. Thank you.APM with EntraID as idP / request signed
Hi experts. I need your help to solve an issue. I'm configuring a new enviroment with BIG-IP version 15.1.8.2 Build 0.0.17 Point Release 2. I have the APM works fine with SSO using EntraID (AzureAD) as idP. Now, I need to enable the request signed (Enforce signed SAML authentication requests - Microsoft Entra ID | Microsoft Learn). I generated the self signed certificate and import it on my app at Azure and my BIG-IP. I changed my config in Access > Federation > SAML Identity Provider and assigned my self signed certificate (pk included) to assign the request. But, I've received the below error by EntraID: Sign-in error code: 76021 Failure reason: The request sent by client is not signed while the application requires signed requests All attemps was made by browser (SSL VPN). Thank you.
[APM] The F5 API returned the error BadRequest(400)
Hello Team , We use a tool for whitelisting the URL and IP's and push the configuration to F5 everyday . We have below error on the tool . Can we check anything on the F5 . I did not find any error message on the audit logs . Error : F5 synchronization batch reported an error while managing F5 : SendRequest: The F5 API returned the error BadRequest(400) received from the API: request failed with null exception
