Configure DDoS Detection

Published April 5, 2023 | Last modified October 15, 2026

Objective

This document provides instructions on how to enable anomaly detection using time series analysis on the metrics of your application. The F5® Distributed Cloud DDoS detection is supported for the Request Rate, Error Rate, Latency, and Throughput (RELT) metrics. The DDoS detection is performed using advanced machine learning upon enabling through configuration.

The DDoS detection monitors and alerts about the following types of abnormal traffic patterns:

Unusually large spikes (DoS attack and genuinely high traffic)
Sudden drops — may indicate reachability issues
Seasonality patterns — these are periodic patterns
Missing periodic peaks — may indicate problems with client application
Unexpected peaks or drops

Note: The DDoS detection includes learning time of day usage patterns.

Using the instructions provided in this document, you can enable the DDoS detection for metrics of your application and monitor the related detected anomalies in the Distributed Cloud service mesh.

Prerequisites

F5 Distributed Cloud Account. If you do not have an account, see Getting Started with Console.
One or more applications deployed on Distributed Cloud site and services configured. See App Management for more information. See Customer Edge Deployment for site creation instructions.

Configuration

The following image describes the configuration work-flow for enabling DDoS detection for your application metrics:

Figure: Work-flow for Enabling DDoS

Configuration Sequence

The following table presents the sequence of activities in enabling the DDoS detection:

Activity	Description
Create App Type	Create app type and configure the DDoS detection features.
Create App Settings	Select metrics and components such as nodes, edges, or load balancers for DDoS detection and associate them with the app type.
Monitor Anomalies and Alerts	Monitor the service mesh or load balancer to check for anomalies detected and reported by DDoS detection.

Create App Type

To enable anomaly detection for your application services, it is required to first enable DDoS detection for those services using the app type object.

The app type object is created in the shared namespace. The load balancers of that app type in different namespaces need to be assigned with the label of the app type object.

Perform the following to create app type and enable generating the anomaly model.

Step 1: Navigate to the App Types page.

Select the Shared Configuration service.
Navigate to Security > AI & ML > App Types.

Figure: Navigate to App Type Configuration

Step 2: Configure app type object settings.

Select + Add App Type and enter the configuration in the app type object creation form using the following guidelines:

Figure: App Type Feature Configuration

Enter Name for the app type. This is the value for the app type label to be assigned to the load balancers for which the DDoS detection needs to be enabled.
Select + Add item in the Application Type Features section and select a type for the AI/ML Feature Type from the drop-down list using the following guidelines:
- Select API Discovery for enabling analysis on interactions between the services.
- Select DDoS Detection for enabling analysis on RELT metrics.
- Select Per API Request Analysis for enabling detection per API request.
- Select Malicious User Detection for enabling user behavior analysis.

Note: You can add all the features using the + Add item option.

Optionally, select Enable learning from redirect traffic option for the Learn from Traffic with Redirect Response field in the Business Logic Markup Setting section.
Select Save and Exit to complete creating the app type object.

Assign App Type Label to Load Balancers

After creating the app type, it is required to assign the app type label to the load balancers for which you want to enable DDoS detection.

Note: Enabling DDoS detection for all load balancers in a namespace requires you to apply the app type label to all load balancers in that namespace.

Perform the following to assign the app type label to your load balancers.

Step 1: Navigate to load balancer management.

Select the Multi-Cloud App Connect service.
Select the desired namespace from the Namespace drop-down menu.
Navigate to Manage > Load Balancers > HTTP Load Balancers.
Select ... > Manage Configuration > Edit Configuration for the load balancer for which the app type label needs to be assigned.

Figure: Navigate to load balancer Edit Configuration

Step 2: Assign the app type label.

Select ves.io/app_type for the Labels field and type.
Type the name of the app type object created in the previous step, and select Assign a Custom Value to add the app type label.
Select Save and Exit button to apply the label to the load balancer.

Create App Settings

After creating an app type with the DDoS detection feature enabled, it is required to associate it with the metrics and sources for which the anomaly detection is required. This is done by configuring the app settings object.

The metrics are RELT metrics and sources are of the following types:

Services
Service interactions
load balancers

Perform the following to create the app type object.

Step 1: Navigate to the App Settings page.

Select the Multi-Cloud App Connect service.
Select the desired namespace from the Namespace drop-down menu.
Navigate to Security > AI & ML > App Settings.
Select Add App setting for the load balancer for which the app type label needs to be assigned.

Figure: Navigate to load balancer Edit Configuration

Step 2: Enter configuration for the app settings object.

Enter a name for the app setting.
Go to Application Type Feature Configuration section and Select + Add Item to configure an AppType.
In the AppType field, select the created app type object from the drop-down list.
Select Configure under the DDoS Detection field. Select + Add item in the Metric Selectors section of the time series analysis setting page.
Select an option for the Metrics Source drop-down menu from the list of options.

Note: You can add multiple Metrics in the drop-down menu.

Select All Services for enabling metric analysis for all services.
Select All Service Interactions for enabling analysis for all service interactions between source and destination services.
Select All Virtual Hosts for enabling metric analysis for all virtual hosts.
Select a RELT metric for the Metrics field from the list of options.
Select Apply button to complete the Metric Selector.
Select Apply to finish adding Metric Selectors.

Note: You can add multiple metric selectors by using the + Add Item button in the Metric Selectors list.

Figure: Time Series Configuration for App Settings

Select Apply to complete the AppType Setting.

Step 3: Complete app settings object creation.

Select Save and Exit to complete adding the Application Type Feature.

Figure: App Settings Object Creation

Note: You can add multiple app settings using the Add item option.

Monitor Anomalies and Alerts

DDoS detection happens based on your selection of sources in app settings and app type configuration. You can monitor the anomalies using the metrics or alerts or both. The DDoS gets detected and displayed for service mesh or load balancer or both depending on your DDoS configuration.

Step 1: Navigate to service mesh.

Select the Multi-Cloud App Connect service.
Select the desired namespace from the Namespace drop-down menu.
Navigate to Overview > Applications to see the applications dashboard.
Select the Service Mesh tab
Select on your application tile from the displayed list to load its service mesh monitoring.

Figure: Navigate to Service Mesh

Step 2: Load the service mesh metrics view.

Select Metrics tab to load the metrics view.

The metrics view presents trend information for your service metrics for a default or configured time period.

When the DDoS detection is enabled for metrics, a shadow is shown over the metrics bars. This is called a Confidence interval. The confidence interval indicates that the metric value crossing this interval is treated as an anomaly. Such instances are marked in red color bars. Hover over or click on any bar to display the metric and confidence interval values.

Figure: DDoS Detection Enabled Service Mesh Metrics

Step 3: Load the service mesh alerts view.

The service mesh loads service graph by default. Select Alerts tab to load the alerts view.

Active alerts are displayed by default. Select the All Alerts option to display all alerts for default interval of an hour. You can also change time interval using the Last 1 hour drop down. The value Timeseries-Anomaly for the Group field indicates that the alert is an anomaly. The DDoS alerts are generated for sustained anomalies.

Select > for any alert entry to load details in the JSON format.

Figure: Service Mesh DDoS Alerts

Note: See TSA Severity vs Anomaly Scores for information on time-series related alerts.

Step 4: Navigate to the load balancer monitoring.

In the Multi-Cloud App Connect service, select Overview > Performance. Scroll down to the Load Balancers section and select your load balancer from the displayed list to load its performance monitoring view. The load balancer dashboard is loaded by default.

Step 5: Load the load balancer metrics view.

The load balancer dashboard is loaded by default. Select Metrics tab to load the metrics view.

The metrics view presents trend for your load balancer metrics for a default or configured time period.

Figure: Load Balancer Metrics with DDoS Detection Enabled

Step 6: Load the load balancer alerts view.

Select Alerts tab to load the alerts view.

Active alerts are displayed by default. Select the All Alerts option to display all alerts for default interval of an hour. You can also change time interval using the Last 1 hour drop down. The value Timeseries-Anomaly for the Group field indicates that the alert is an anomaly. Select > for any alert entry to load details in the JSON format.

Figure: load balancer DDoS Alerts

Note: See TSA Severity vs Anomaly Scores for information on time-series related alerts.

Step 7: Tuning L7 DDoS mitigation

L7 DDoS mitigation can be tuned by configuring either a Client-side Challenge or a Service Policy to specify ASNs, source IP addresses or Geolocations, IP Reputation categories, TLS Fingerprints, or other HTTP request criteria which can be allowed. The configured Service Policy is only applied during attack detection and is automatically removed after the attack has ended.

To Configure DoS Protection, follow these steps:

Step 7.1: Configure Mitigation Settings

Figure: Configure Mitigation Settings

From the Mitigation Action menu, select an option:
- Default: This option blocks traffic from suspicious sources. No JavaScript challenge is returned.
- Block: This option blocks traffic from suspicious sources. No JavaScript challenge is returned.
- JavaScript Challenge: This option serves a JavaScript challenge to all traffic from suspicious sources. Click View Configuration to change the default settings and message for the JavaScript challenge.
Figure: Configure JavaScript Challenge Parameters
- Captcha Challenge: This option serves a Captcha challenge to all traffic from suspicious sources. Click View Configuration to change the default settings and message for the Captcha challenge.
Figure: Configure Captcha Challenge Parameters
Configure the Requests Per Second (RPS) threshold for L7 DDoS detection. The default value is 10000. DDoS Mitigation and Protection actions will be applied when the threshold RPS is exceeded, and origin server health degradation is detected.
Figure: Configure RPS Threshold

Step 7.2: Configure Protection Settings

Figure: Configure Mitigation Settings

Follow these steps to apply a client-side challenge for L7 DDos protection:

From the Client-side Challenge menu, select an option:
- Default: This option blocks traffic from suspicious sources. No JavaScript challenge is returned.
- Block: This option blocks traffic from suspicious sources. No JavaScript challenge is returned.
- JavaScript Challenge: This option serves a JavaScript challenge to all traffic from suspicious sources. Click View Configuration to change the default settings and message for the JavaScript challenge.
Figure: Configure JavaScript Challenge Parameters
- Captcha Challenge: This option serves a Captcha challenge to all traffic from suspicious sources. Click View Configuration to change the default settings and message for the Captcha challenge.
Figure: Configure Captcha Challenge Parameters

Follow these steps to apply a Custom Service Policy for automatic L7 DDoS mitigation:

In DoS settings, under the Protection Settings define the Custom Service Policy. Select Custom to define the Custom Service Policy.

Figure: Select Custom Option

Figure: Define Custom Policy Name

Step 7.3: Configure Mitigation Rules

Under DDoS Mitigation Rules, select Configure to open the rules list page. Use Add Item to add a rule:

In the DDoS Mitigation Rule page, set a name for the rule.
Select a choice for the Mitigation Choice menu. The mitigation choice can be either a list of IP addresses or combination of ASN, Region, and TLS Fingerprinting.
Click Apply to add the rule to the list of rules.
Click Apply to add the rules list to the DDoS protection configuration.

Step 7.4: Configure Slow DDos Mitigation

From the Slow DDoS Mitigation menu, select an option:

For the Custom option, enter Request Headers Timeout and Total Request Timeout values.

Note: See the Explore Security Monitoring section in the Monitor HTTP Load balancer guide to learn more about observing and reacting to an active DDoS attack.

Concepts

API References

Service Graph