F5 has idle timeout of 300 sec as default. Extending it is not best practice simply because idle timeout is used for idle connections that don't communicate for a period of time this considered dead. As wll as for events where a connection didnt tear down well. This also protects f5 or any other lb from consuming its connections table as it also might cause a denial of service. Kepalive makes the connection duration control on both sides. Network should be transparent to it.
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