SSL bridging is a process where a device, usually located at the edge of a network, decrypts SSL traffic and then re-encrypts it before sending it on to the Web server. SSL bridging can be useful when the edge device performs deep-packet inspection to verify that the contents of the SSL-encrypted transmission are safe, or if there are security concerns about unencrypted traffic traversing the internal network.

An alternative to SSL bridging is SSL Termination. SSL termination generally offers higher overall throughput for SSL Offloading. The F5 BIG-IP® product family with SSL Acceleration Feature Module performs SSL offloading.

F5 products that support SSL Bridging: BIG-IP product family, SSL Acceleration Feature Module