LACP and LLDP Pre-Negotiation for Active/Passive HA
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LACP and LLDP Pre-Negotiation for Active/Passive HA

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LACP and LLDP Pre-Negotiation for Active/Passive HA

If a firewall uses LACP or LLDP, negotiation of those protocols upon failover prevents sub-second failover. However, you can enable an interface on a passive firewall to negotiate LACP and LLDP prior to failover. Thus, a firewall in Passive or Non-functional HA state can communicate with neighboring devices using LACP or LLDP. Such pre-negotiation speeds up failover.
All firewall models except VM-Series firewalls support a pre-negotiation configuration, which depends on whether the Ethernet or AE interface is in a Layer 2, Layer 3, or virtual wire deployment. An HA passive firewall handles LACP and LLDP packets in one of two ways:
  • Active—The firewall has LACP or LLDP configured on the interface and actively participates in LACP or LLDP pre-negotiation, respectively.
  • Passive—LACP or LLDP is not configured on the interface and the firewall does not participate in the protocol, but allows the peers on either side of the firewall to pre-negotiate LACP or LLDP, respectively.
The following table displays which deployments are supported on Aggregate Ethernet (AE) and Ethernet interfaces.
Interface DeploymentAE InterfaceEthernet Interface
LACP in Layer 2
Active
Not supported
LACP in Layer 3
Active
Not supported
LACP in Virtual Wire
Not supported
Passive
LLDP in Layer 2
Active
Active
LLDP in Layer 3
Active
Active
LLDP in Virtual Wire
Active
  • Active if LLDP itself is configured.
  • Passive if LLDP itself is not configured.
Pre-negotiation is not supported on subinterfaces or tunnel interfaces.