NP7 processors and redundant interfaces

NP7 processors can offload sessions received by interfaces that are part of a redundant interface. You can combine two or more physical interfaces into a redundant interface to provide link redundancy. Redundant interfaces ensure connectivity if one physical interface, or the equipment on that interface, fails. In a redundant interface, traffic travels over one interface at a time. This differs from an aggregated interface where traffic is distributed over all of the interfaces in the group.

All offloaded traffic types are supported by redundant interfaces. Just like with normal interfaces, traffic accepted by a redundant interface is offloaded by the NP7 processor connected to the interfaces in the redundant interface.

If all interfaces in a redundant interface are connected to the same NP7 processor, traffic received by that redundant interface is offloaded by that NP7 processor. The amount of traffic that can be offloaded is limited by the capacity of the NP7 processor.

If a FortiGate has two or more NP7 processors connected by an integrated switch fabric (ISF), you can create redundant interfaces that include physical interfaces connected to different NP7 processors. However, with a redundant interface, only one of the physical interfaces is processing traffic at any given time. So you cannot use redundant interfaces to increase performance in the same way as you can with aggregate interfaces.

The ability to add redundant interfaces connected to multiple NP7s is supported by the integrated switch fabric (ISF) that allows multiple NP7 processors to share session information.