7.2. Traffic is blocked when the Steelhead appliance goes in by-pass.

Under normal operational circumstances when the Steelhead appliance is fully operational, the LAN and WAN interfaces each have an Ethernet links negotiated towards the devices they it connected to: From the LAN interface to the LAN switch and from the WAN interface to the WAN router.

When an in-path interface goes in by-pass, due to the termination of the optimization service or when the appliance gets turned off, it will connect the cables of the LAN switch and the WAN router directly to each other and these two device should negotiate an Ethernet link together.

Ethernet link negotiation failure could happen when: