Redirections HTTP to HTTPS (for login) to HTTP (for usage)

Hello all,

 

 

We use BigIPs for many applications used over a WAN. Our WAN has some boxes to compress/accelerate HTTP traffic, but they can't do it with HTTPS. We don't want to send the login/password in clear text over the network, so we want to use HTTPS for this.

 

 

So we would like to use the BigIPs like this :

 

- if someone use http (and is not logged in), redirect him to https

 

- each time someone has to authenticate, https is compulsory.

 

- once the authentication is done, use HTTP

 

 

What is the best way to do this ?

 

 

Is it this one :

 

- irule to redirect http to https when the application shows the login page (it shows it each time the user wants to load a protected page : this is handled by the application itself)

 

- irule to redirect https to http when it's not the login page (meaning the user is already authenticated from an application point of view)

 

 

Is there a smarter way ? Is it ok or the BigIP session mechanism ?

 

 

And second question : some applications just change the content to ask for the credentials, but the page name can be anything: is it possible to check in the content of the page for some strings and are the ressources used to do this acceptable ?

 

 

Thanks !

 

--

 

LB