: Objects > SD-WAN Link Management > Traffic Distribution
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Objects > SD-WAN Link Management > Traffic Distribution

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Objects > SD-WAN Link Management > Traffic Distribution

Create an SD-WAN traffic distribution profile to define how the firewall distributes sessions and fails over to a better path.
For this Traffic Distribution profile, select the method the firewall uses to distribute sessions and to fail over to a better path when path quality deteriorates. Add the Link Tags that the firewall considers when determining the link over which it forwards SD-WAN traffic. You apply a Traffic Distribution profile to each SD-WAN policy rule you create.
Traffic Distribution Profile
Name
Enter a Name for the Traffic Distribution Profile using a combination and maximum of 31 alphanumeric characters, hyphens, spaces, underscores, and periods.
Best Available Path
If cost is not a factor and you will allow applications to use any path out of the branch, select Best Available Path. The firewall distributes traffic and fails over to a link from among the links belonging to all the link tags in the list based on path quality metrics to provide the best application experience to users.
Top Down Priority
If you have expensive or low capacity links that you want to use only as a last resort or as backup links, select the Top Down Priority method and place the tags that include those links last in the list of Link Tags for this profile. The firewall first uses the top link tag in the list to determine which links over which it will session load traffic and to which it will fail over. If none of the links in the top link tag are qualified, the firewall selects a link from the second link tag in the list. If none of the links in the second link tag are qualified, the process continues as necessary until the firewall finds a qualified link. If all associated links are overloaded and no link meets quality thresholds, the firewall uses the Best Available Path method to select a link over which to forward traffic.
If the jitter, latency, or packet loss for an application exceeds the configured threshold, the firewall starts at the top of the Top Down list of link tags to find a link to which it fails over.
Weighted Session Distribution
Select Weighted Session Distribution if you want to manually load traffic (that matches the rule) onto your ISP and WAN links and you don’t require failover during brownout conditions. You manually specify the load for the link when you apply a static percentage of new sessions that interfaces grouped with a single tag will get. For example, select this method for applications that aren’t sensitive to latency and that require a lot of the bandwidth capacity of the link, such as large branch backups and large file transfers. However, if the link experiences brownout, the firewall doesn’t redirect the matching traffic to a different link.
Link Tags
Add the Link Tags you want the firewall to consider during the link selection process you chose for this profile. The order of tags matters if you chose the Top Down Priority method; you can Move Up or Move Down tags to change the order.
Weight
If you chose the Weighted Session Distribution method, enter a percentage for each link tag you added. The sum of the percentage values must equal 100%.