When using “shopping cart”-like services where a user selects items and adds them to a list, any of the previous types of persistency can be used. When the user then decides to pay for the items, this is normally performed using a secure SSL (https) service. When port following is turned on, the Real Server where the “shopping cart” connection is active will be selected for the SSL session. This selection will only occur when a connection is still open from the same client (as determined by the source IP address), and if the SSL service has the same IP address as the “shopping cart” service.

For example, if a connection is made to the HTTP service of www.somewebsite.com, and then a new SSL connection is made to the same address, then the SSL session will be directed to the same Real Server as the original HTTP service.

Port following can be done between UDP and TCP connections if desired.