we have the below architecture: F5 Load Balancer --> Iplanet Web Server --> Weblogic --> Web services(Backend)
The requests to load balancer are routed on port 443 and traffic is routed to Iplanet webserver on port 80. The Requests from Iplanet Web server are routed to Weblogic application server on port 7001. When a client(Browser) made a request for a jsp page say one.jsp and the response is displayed on browser. So the communication happened like this: LB:443--> Webserver:80 --> Weblogic:7001
Does weblogic communicate back to web server here to process the request? Do we need to open firewall from Weblogic-Iplanet-LoadBalancer(backwards) Or the web server just reads the content and displays it?
The firewall is opened from request source to destination.
In your case (and if required), request firewall opening from LB to Webserver to WebLogic server. You do not need to explicitly open the firewalls for the reply/response back from WebLogic. The response would flow back the same route (technically proxies).
Update The Webserver proxies the requests from the LB to the Weblogic server. Thus, the Webserver acts as a request source for Weblogic, and you would only need to open firewall from the Webserver. You do not need any firewall opened to get response from Weblogic to the Webserver.