Load balancing McAfee Web Gateway

Updated on November 20, 2025
Published on March 8, 2023

Benefits of load balancing McAfee Web Gateway

Implementing a load balancer enables multiple McAfee Web Gateways to be deployed in a cluster. This provides the following key benefits:

  • Performance: For additional performance simply add more Web Gateways to the cluster
  • High Availability (HA): If a Web Gateway fails, service is not interrupted
  • Maintenance: Web Gateways can easily be taken out of the cluster for maintenance

About McAfee Web Gateway

McAfee Web Gateway analyzes the nature and intent of all content and code entering the network from requested web pages, providing immediate protection against malware and other hidden threats. Powered by layered security that combines local and cloud-based protection, you can count on Web Gateway for instant, advanced protection to stop zero-day threats, spyware, and targeted attacks — without a signature. Learn more about Web Gateway’s latest threat protection enhancements that provide state-of-the-art behavior-based emulation and detection techniques.

Why Loadbalancer.org for McAfee Web Gateway?

Loadbalancer’s intuitive Enterprise Application Delivery Controller (ADC) is designed to save time and money with a clever, not complex, WebUI. 

Easily configure, deploy, manage, and maintain our Enterprise load balancer, reducing complexity and the risk of human error. For a difference you can see in just minutes.

And with WAF and GSLB included straight out-of-the-box, there’s no hidden costs, so the prices you see on our website are fully transparent.

More on what’s possible with Loadbalancer.org.

How to load balance McAfee Web Gateway

We recommend deploying in Layer 4 DR Mode – Direct Server Return Mode. In this mode, traffic from the client to the Web Gateway passes via the load balancer, return traffic passes directly back to the client which maximizes performance.

Direct routing works by changing the destination MAC address of the incoming packet on the fly which is very fast. This mode is transparent by default meaning that the Web Gateway sees the real client IP address and not the IP address of the load balancer. Due to its speed, overall simplicity and effectiveness, Direct Routing (DR) mode with source IP persistence is our recommended method and can be used in both Explicit Proxy Mode & Transparent Routed Proxy Mode.