Which is an advantage of terminating SSL communication at the BIGIP rather than the ultimate web server?

By terminating SSL/TLS connections at the BIG-IP, the BIG-IP performs the demanding cryptographic operations (encryption and decryption), thereby freeing the backend web servers from this processing burden. The BIG-IP can then forward unencrypted traffic (or re-encrypt it) to the web servers, allowing them to focus solely on application logic, which improves their performance and capacity.

Terminating SSL at the BIG-IP typically means traffic between the BIG-IP and the backend servers can be unencrypted, meaning there would be unencrypted traffic on the internal network. While it can be re-encrypted, it does not eliminate all unencrypted traffic by default.

Terminating SSL at the BIG-IP still requires valid SSL certificates to establish trust with clients; these certificates must still be purchased or acquired from a certificate authority.

While the BIG-IP itself might contain SSL acceleration hardware, terminating SSL at the BIG-IP does not inherently eliminate the need for such hardware, as the BIG-IP's own SSL processing benefits greatly from it.