Fail-to-wire mode
For 4090 appliances, slot 0 paths (0-4) are non-bypass paths. Fail-to-wire, therefore, is not supported on those paths.
Most SteelHead models and in-path NICs support fail-to-wire (or bypass) mode. If there’s a failure or loss of power, the appliance switches to bypass mode, allowing traffic to pass through without acceleration. By default, this is the failure mode.
Some NICs also support fail-to-block mode, where the LAN and WAN interfaces shut down during a failure, stopping traffic.
Fail-to-wire mode prevents a single point of failure by letting traffic flow even if the appliance has issues or isn’t powered on. You’ll be notified in the following ways when the appliance enters bypass mode:
• The Intercept/Bypass status light on the bypass card
• A Critical status in the appliance Management Console
• SNMP traps (if configured)
• System log entries (syslogs)
• Email notifications (if configured)
Once the issue is fixed, new connections are accelerated automatically, but connections made during the failure are not. You can use the kickoff feature to reset those connections and optimize them, though this is usually not needed since most connections are short-lived.