A pool is a group of external connections, and each pool has its own rules and ratios for failover and dividing bandwidth. An LLB pool identifies the level of bandwidth needed to avoid creating a bottleneck. You allocate those interfaces that you need to fulfill the targeted bandwidth to the pool. The total bandwidth from all allocated interfaces can be more than the targeted bandwidth to allow for high availability.
The Smoothwall Filter and Firewall balances the traffic load according to the number of interfaces assigned, and the bandwidth allocated and available on each interface. For example, a pool with two interfaces assigned, where one interface has twice the allocated bandwidth, balances the traffic using a 2:1 weighting ratio.
Connections must be listed in the order they're to be applied, so that if the first connection isn't equal to or greater than the target bandwidth, the next connection is also used to fulfill the pool’s targeted bandwidth, even if that results in exceeding the target.
Provided pools
If you have you have upgraded your Smoothwall Filter and Firewall from an earlier version, you might have some load balancing pools already configured. These use the maximum available bandwidth for that interface. However, you can change this to suit your organizational needs.
| Forwarded | For load balanced outgoing traffic. |
| Migrated primaries | For load balanced traffic, originating from the previous primary interface, or interfaces. |
| Web filter | For load balanced, traffic that uses a proxy server. This pool is only created if you install the Smoothwall Filter. |
Note: New installations of the Smoothwall Filter and Firewall don't have predefined pools. You can create load balancing pools to suit your organizational needs.