Load balancing TCP, UDP, and ICMP sessions with fragmented packets

If your FortiGate-7000E receives fragmented TCP, UDP, or ICMP packets, you can use the following configuration to make sure the Internal Switch Fabric (ISF) handles them correctly.

config load-balance setting

set dp-fragment-session enable

set sw-load-distribution-method src-dst-ip

end

With this configuration, when the DP processor receives a header fragment packet, if a matching session is found, the DP processor creates an additional fragment session matching the source-ip, destination-ip, and IP identifier (IPID) of the header fragment packet. Subsequent non-header fragments will match this fragment session and be forwarded to the same FPM as the header fragment.

If dp-fragment-session is disabled (the default), handling fragmented packets is less efficient because the DP processor broadcasts all non-header fragmented TCP, UDP, or ICMP packets to all FPMs. FPMs that also received the header fragments of these packets re-assemble the packets correctly. FPMs that did not receive the header fragments discard the non-header fragments.

If sw-load-distribution-method is set to src-dst-ip-sport-dport, fragmented packets may be dropped. Changing the load distribution method to src-dst-ip may lower performance because regular traffic may not be optimally load balanced. You can experiment with enabling and disabling dp-fragment-session and changing sw-load-distribution-method to determine the configuration that produces the best results for your network's traffic.

The age of the fragment session can be controlled using the following command:

config system global

set dp-fragment-timer <timer>

end

The default <timer> value is 120 seconds. The range is 1 to 65535 seconds.