The LAN and WAN ports on the Edge bypass cards act like host interfaces during normal operation. During fail-to-wire mode, the LAN and WAN ports act as the ends of a crossover cable. Using the correct cable to connect these ports to other network equipment ensures proper operation during fail-to-wire mode and normal operating conditions. This cabling is especially important when you are configuring two Edge appliances in a serial in-path deployment for HA.

We recommend that you do not rely on automatic MDI/MDI-X to automatically sense the cable type. The installation might be successful when the Edge is optimizing traffic, but it might not be successful if the in-path bypass card transitions to fail-to-wire mode.

One way to help ensure that you use the correct cables during an installation is to connect the LAN and WAN interfaces of the bypass card while the Edge is powered off. This configuration proves that the devices on either side of the appliance can communicate correctly without any errors or other problems.

In the most common in-path configuration, an Edge LAN port is connected to a switch and the Edge WAN port is connected to a router. In this configuration, a straight-through Ethernet cable can connect the LAN port to the switch, and you must use a crossover cable to connect the WAN port to the router.

When you configure Edge in HA, it is likely that you have one or more additional data NICs installed into the appliance to provide extra interfaces. You can use the interfaces for blockstore synchronization.

This list summarizes the correct cable usage in the Edge when you are connecting LAN and WAN ports or when you are connecting data ports.