Transcript Feasibility of inexpensive CALEA Compliance

Merit’s CALEA Compliance
Architecture and Platform,
“OpenCALEA”
Mary Eileen McLaughlin,
Merit - Director Technical Operations
Manish Karir,
Merit - Research and Development
Agenda
Merit’s CALEA decision
 Technical compliance experiment goals
 Merit’s approach
 Experiments to test software and
network functionality
 Results
 OpenCALEA Toolset description
 Case studies for data integrity
 Next steps

Merit’s CALEA Decision

Merit believes it will need to be “Gateway compliant” for
CALEA
– Will need to have a device at the ingress/egress points of our
network, to/from the public Internet
– In other words, where traffic enters or leaves AS-237
– About 9 sites including private peering points

Rationale for compliance at the gateways:
– Merit is interconnected to the public Internet at various places.
– Merit “supports its connection to the Internet” because it owns
connectivity equipment as well ;
– Merit purchases commodity Internet service from various public
Internet providers, that is delivered over its facilities .
– Merit’s interconnected network is a “private” network, however,
because Merit limits the availability of its services to only its
Members and Affiliate Members.
cont.
Merit’s CALEA Decision
cont.

LEAs can, under CALEA, request
surveillance of traffic where it connects
to public Internet
– Not within a private network, i.e., between
two universities on our network

This presentation isn’t about the legal
pros/cons, or the expectations of law, or
the challenges
– It’s about what are we doing relative to the
above conditions
Experimentation Goals
1. Develop an experimental reference architecture
as a model for CALEA compliance
2. Determine what level of compliance is possible
at a reasonable price point
3. Experiment with simple hardware/software in
order to determine suitability for compliance
4. How well will this solution scale (10G cards,
multiple sites) compared to price/performance of
commercial solutions
5. Gain a technical understanding of what is
required to be CALEA compliant
Approach
1. Build and deploy a packet capture platform
– Experimental Architecture 1 -- Dell Precision GX260
Workstation, 2 GIGE interfaces for management and
sampling, Pentium 4 3GHz, 1GB RAM, Linux
– Experimental Architecture 2 -- Dell PowerEdge860
1U server, Dual Pentium 2.8GHz, 1 GIGE
interface(mgmt), 1myricom 10GIGE adapter, 1GB
RAM, Linux
– Tcpdump/tethereal for packet capture -- both depend
on pcap library,
– Iperf as the traffic generator
2. Test ability to capture a single data stream in the
presence of varying amounts of live background
network traffic
3. Metrics: packet loss, cost
Experiment 1 Architecture
Experiment 1 Methodology
1. Background traffic for the duration of the test:
~ 190-225Mbps (Sunday evening load)
2. Repeat for higher traffic load ~400Mbps
(Monday afternoon)
3. Test
– Send data from source to sink using iperf
– Attempt to capture traffic stream at capture
device (full packet captures not just headers)
– Measure actual number of packets
transmitted at the source and compare with
number of full packets captured
– Measure for Small/Medium/Large UDP flow
Experiment 1 Results
Experiment
Network
Load
Avg Packet
Loss %
10 sec UDP390kbps
5 min UDP 390kbps
30 min UDP 390kbps
5 min UDP 390kbps
200Mbps
< 1.0
200Mbps
< 1.0
200Mbps
< 1.0
400Mbps
< 1.0
Experiment 1 Conclusions
1. Less than 1% (0.6 - 0.7%) of the packets are missing at
the capture device (at a load of roughly 200Mbps).
– This appears to hold at least to an aggregate load level of
400Mbps (bidirectional traffic mirrored onto a single port)
2. Losses are NOT in the packet capture process but in the
datapath itself.
– A UDP stream along the same path at 380Kbps
experienced roughly the same packet loss, implying that
the simple hardware/software solution holds promise for at
least the lower rate uplink capacities (definitely for OC-3,
sub-GIGE type rates) .
3. Total cost of hardware/software: ~$1000
Experiment 2 Architecture
Experiment 2 Methodology
1. Scale up experiment 1 architecture to links that
carry over 2Gbps of traffic
–
–
Use of better hardware platform: Dell 1U server
10GiGE Myricom Ethernet Adapter
2. Test ability to deliver the captured packets to LEA
–
Simple custom software which operates similar to
tcpdump but additionally can transmit packets to LEA
3. Test ability to operate in the presence of
complications. (Such as VLANS ~40vlans
mirrored on single interface)
4. Measure ability to capture higher bitrate streams
in presence of higher background traffic
Experiment 2 Results
UDP stream with average background network
load of 2.3-2.4 Gbps
Experiment
Stream
Bitrate
Avg Packet
Loss %
5min UDP 25K packets
5 min UDP 127K packets
5 min UDP 255K packets
5 min UDP 636K packets
1Mbps
~0.0
5 Mbps
~0.0
10Mbps
< 1.0
25 Mbps
< 1.0
Experiment 2 Results
UDP stream with average background network load of >
2.5Gbps
Experiment
5min UDP 100kbps
5min UDP 200kbps
5min UDP 400kbps
5 min UDP 1Mbps
Packet Loss Packet Loss
at Tap
at LEA
< 1%
< 1%
< 1%
< 1%
< 1%
< 1%
< 1%
< 1%
Experiment 2 Conclusions
1. Return Path Characteristics are Important otherwise there can be packet loss on path
to LEA.
2. Check for MTU -- Encapsulation can lead to
packet size > 1,500Bytes. (MTU should be
able to support jumbo frames on the path to
LEA).
3. Packet capture at > 2Gbps network load
appears to be feasible.
4. Hardware/software cost: ~ $2,500
(server $1300 + 10Gige I/F card, $1200)
5. Need to Verify: Is there any data impairment
during the capture/transfer/writing process?
(See final slides for partial answer.)
OpenCALEA Software Toolset
Tap Tool:
1. Tap: Perform packet capture
– Receive packets via libpcap interface
– Create new UDP packet in appropriate format
– Encapsulate captured packet into new packet
– Timestamp information to UDP packet
– Send to LEA collection IP address
– Send the packet header information on
separate UDP port
2. Example Usage:
./tap -d 198.108.62.77 -i any -c -f "host
198.108.62.77 and port 5001"
OpenCALEA Software Toolset
LEA Receiver Tool (Consistent with standard):
3. Example of LEA collection function
implementation: lea_collect
– Receive UDP packets sent by tap
– Remove encapsulation
– Create standard libpcap packet based on
timestamps and encapsulated packet
– Write packet to file
– Write packet header information sent by
tap
4. Example Usage:
./lea_collect -f capture-file.pcap
OpenCALEA Software Toolset
User Front End (in development):
5. calea_controller:
Responsible for initiating a tap on
remote tap devices but issuing the
appropriate command
6. calea_collector:
Responsible for listening for
commands from calea_controller
and initiating the tap with the
appropriate filters
Case Study: Capturing Web Browsing Traffic
Question: Is there any data impairment during
the capture/transfer/writing process?
1. Web Browsing:
– http://www.opencalea.org
– Google search example
2.
3.
4.
5.
Capture traffic to/from IP address
Background network traffic load ~2.4Gbps
Tap is to filter IP-address and port 80
Tap forwards stream to LEA Collector where it
is saved to disk
6. Analyze saved file using tools, e.g., tcpxtract in
order to examine accessed web pages
Capturing Web Browsing Traffic
Test performed to validate integrity of packets captured.
Web Page Reconstructed
from Intercepted Packets
Capturing Web Browsing Traffic
Test performed to validate integrity of packets captured.
Web Page Reconstructed
from Intercepted Packets
Case Study:
Capturing Instant Messenger Conversations
1. Capture traffic to/from IP address
2. Background network traffic load > 2.5
Gbps
3. Tap is to filter IP-address and AIM port
4. Tap forwards stream to LEA Collector
where it is saved to disk
5. This saved file is then analyzed using
tcpdump in order to extract the ASCII
text within
Case Study:
Capturing Instant Messenger Traffic
Case Study:
Capturing Instant Messenger Traffic
Conclusions
1. A cost-effective CALEA solution was
developed and tested
2. The solution has performed well in
initial testing
3. The solution appears to be
-
Consistent with technical requirements
Cost effective
Practical
4. Merit plans to use this solution for
CALEA compliance
Next Steps
Merit will file its Compliance document by
February 12th
 Continue to fine-tune “OpenCALEA”
software, and develop user interface
– Software release in mid-February
 Draft SSI document March 1 and release
to community (Quilt, StateNets, etc.)
– Commentary welcomed
 SSI to be filed by March 14th
 Compliance by May 14th
