About transparency modes
You configure the Discovery Agent transparency modes under Configure > Optimization > General Service Settings in the In-Path Settings section (Enable Agent-Intercept option).
The Discovery Agent provides three transparency modes for connections between the client or server and the corresponding appliance. You configure the transparency mode you choose in the Cloud Accelerator and it is transmitted to the Discovery Agent.
The transparency mode you select does not affect the packets of the connection on the network. When you view the packets on the network, they are still addressed between the client or the server and the appliance. The Discovery Agent performs network address translation (NAT) for these packets before sending them up the stack. Therefore, the transparency mode affects what IP address is visible to the application and the client or server machine’s network stack. Select a transparency mode:
• Safe transparent—If the client is behind a NAT device, the client connection to the application server is nontransparent; that is, the application server detects the connection as a connection from the Cloud Accelerator IP address, not the client IP address. All connections from a client that is not behind a NAT device are transparent, which means that the server detects the connections from the client IP address instead of the Cloud Accelerator IP address.
• Restricted transparent—All client connections are transparent with these restrictions:
– If the client connection is from a NAT network, the application server detects the private IP address of the client.
– You can use this mode only if there is no conflict between the private IP address ranges (there are no duplicate IP addresses) and ports.
This mode is the default setting.
• Nontransparent—All client connections are nontransparent; that is, the application server detects the connections from the server-side SteelHead IP address, not the client IP address. We recommend that you use this mode only if you cannot use one of the other two modes.