Recommended cable length for HA

[tommyluke]

I'm unable to determine from the tech-docs if PAN has a recommended (or suggested) cable length for those cases where the HA ports are directly connected via crossover cable. Does anyone have any intel on this topic? I've set-up many HA pairs and when using directly-connected HA ports via crossover I typically use a 6' cable. I'm working at a place that uses 1' crossover cables for other out-of-band communications and their standard would dictatate that I use "their" cables on the firewalls. This is probably an old Check Point ghost of mine but "back then" the crossover cables between firewalls were to be at least 3'.

Any insight would be appreciated, thank you.

Tommy

[hshah]

HA Cable should not be greater than 100 meter.

[ajbool · Accepted solution]

I have 30 pairs of PA-500 firewalls running with 0.3M straight-through cables between the two ports elected for HA (eth1/4 & eth1/5).  I've not had any issues so far with this during their year of deployment.

[pulukas]

There is no PA length requirements on the cable.  Only the standard Ethernet limits for the applicable media apply.

[hshah]

Hi Steven, Normal Ethernet standard should not be applied exactly to HA cables because HA is delay sensitive.

If cables are lengthier than, you are supposed to play with timers.

[pulukas]

As long as you are within the latency needs you are fine.  And you certainly don't need the minimum length cable standard mentioned from Checkpoint.

My point is this is not a custom standard but an ethernet connection.