---
title: beresp.used_alternate_path_to_origin
summary: null
url: >-
  https://www.fastly.com/documentation/reference/vcl/variables/backend-connection/beresp-used-alternate-path-to-origin
---

**Type:** BOOL  
**Access:** read-only

**Available in:** fetch

This value indicates whether or not the request to origin was made over an alternate route selected by the origin connection rerouting mechanism, part of our [Precison Path](https://docs.fastly.com/en/guides/precision-path) product, in response to poor connection setup performance on the primary route.

Fastly monitors all outbound connections from our servers, both to other Fastly POPs as part of services with [shielding](https://www.fastly.com/documentation/guides/concepts/shielding) enabled, and to customer origin servers.  When a degradation in performance is observed and an alternative route is available, we will switch to the alternate route automatically.

This route optimization is applied only to connections over TLS.