In order to further accelerate applications, the external router can direct subsequent client traffic to bypass LTM and communicate directly with the server.

An external router cannot and should not bypass the LTM for subsequent traffic - doing so would break load balancing, session persistence, SSL termination, and all other stateful application delivery functions that depend on every packet passing through the BIG-IP.

The BIG-IP LTM functions as an inline full proxy, meaning every packet in a managed application flow must traverse it for load balancing, SSL offload, persistence, and health monitoring to operate correctly. If an external router directed subsequent client packets directly to a back-end server, that session would bypass the virtual server and pool entirely, breaking all stateful processing the LTM performs. Keeping the LTM in the complete traffic path for every connection is a fundamental architectural requirement of the BIG-IP platform.