SteelHead appliances typically work in pairs to accelerate network traffic between them. In a common setup, client-side appliances are placed at remote sites or branch offices, while server-side appliances are in the data center. The client-side appliances establish trusted connections with the server-side appliances. In cloud or SaaS deployments, client-side appliances peer with server-side appliances in the cloud or with the SaaS Accelerator service. These appliances optimize traffic between client systems and data centers, cloud services, or SaaS platforms.

Higher-capacity SteelHead models can support up to 20,000 peers per appliance. If you have more than 4,000 peers, we recommend you enable the extended peer table. After enabling this, you'll need to clear the appliance’s data store and restart the service.

Peering can be managed manually through peering rules, but autodiscovery offers an automated method. Peering rules (usually set on server-side appliances) work alongside in-path rules (typically set on client-side appliances).

In an in-path deployment, appliances are placed directly between client systems and data center resources. In-path rules control the appliance’s behavior when it receives initial connection requests (TCP SYN packets), allowing detailed management of traffic across in-path links.