A surveillance specialist releases a powerful appliance with proprietary technology priced to be within reach of a rural telco or ISP.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [April 20, 2007]

Beaverton, Ore.-based IP Fabrics is offering ISPs a powerful, all-in-one CALEA box called DeepSweep-1 for CALEA.

The new box is a modification of an older product, DeepSweep, sold to government agencies. "Building a box for CALEA is (to simplify) like dumbing down the systems to throw out the types of surveillance that aren't allowed, but we also have to implement CALEA standards on what is allowed," explains Kevin Graves, CTO.

The company's been around for about five years, he says, and came to market with specific technology for packet processing. That technology is a key part of the DeepSweep-1 for CALEA product and appears on the spec sheet as "packet inspection accelerators".

"That's the jewel of the company," says Graves. "We have packet inspection technology that runs on multicore processors. It's our proprietary technology that provides performance that only we can deliver."

The spec sheet says that 2 to 4 packet inspection accelerators running with dual 3.6 GHz Xeon host processors can track "up to 1,000,000 flows, 5,000 signatures, 8 Gbps wire-speed surveillance."

Graves says that the gigabit number is often the most important for surveillance. "You don't have an individual subscriber line to tap. So you need to scan a whole line [serving many subscribers] and filter out the user's traffic. We weed through it all and throw out the stuff that isn't traffic to or from the subject of the warrant."

Responsible for CALEA
Like other responsible CALEA product vendors, Graves notes that buying the box doesn't make you compliant. The box provides safe harbor for the equipment requirements of CALEA, but CALEA also requires that ISPs follow procedures and tell the FCC how they are CALEA compliant. The box does not, for example, plug itself in or contact the FCC for you.

Graves is clear about what safe harbor means. "The FCC has said they aren't going to run compliance tests or certify vendors. They're relying on the industry to develop standards. If someone implements to the standards, the FCC won't fine them or hold them in contempt. We followed the T.1IAS standard for broadband ISPs, so if you install it correctly, you have a standards-based solution."

Graves believes that the FCC is not worried about small ISPs that are sincerely trying to help law enforcement catch bad people. "I believe (but I don't know this for a fact) that what will happen is that if an ISP gets a warrant from the FBI and tries to get the data, but that it finds its cannot figure out how to do it, the FBI will want to come in and get the data, but that's just my opinion. I think that the fear the FBI has is that a big ISP will say it doesn't want the FBI to come in, and will supply the FBI with data it cannot use. At that point, the FBI wants to have a recourse."

Pricing and availability
IP Fabrics' DeepSweep for CALEA series of products is available now starting at $18,900. Hardware upgrades include additional 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports and packet inspection accelerators. The software is modular, allowing a wide variety of upgrades.

Graves says the product is neither PC-based nor ASIC-based. The software is upgradeable like a PC-based product, but the company's proprietary technology resides on specially designed processors that deliver ASIC-like performance.

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