The SSL port forwarding feature terminates and decrypts a SSL connection and forwards the decrypted traffic to the configured destination. In this sense it is SSL acceleration. SSL port forwarding can be used with any TCPS protocol including HTTPS, however no L7 HTTP processing (e.g. enforcement of ACLs, etc) will be done on traffic handled by SSL port forwarding.

 

      Similar functionality is available with the clientapp feature. The main differences are

 

     (a) Clientapp traffic is authenticated to ensure that the user has a valid session on the SP,

           whereas port forwarded traffic is not

 

     (b) Clientapp requires Java support on the client, whereas port forwarding does not

 

     (c) Clientapp requires the client machine to resolve the server's hostname to localhost

          (by automatic host mapping, or by reconfiguring external DNS). This does not apply  with SSL port forwarding.

 

Each SSL port forwarding service is defined by <local IP, local port> and <remote IP, remote port>. Note that one or more SSL port forwarding services may share a single SSL virtual host.