4 ms·

I found this interesting insofar as it is somewhat rare for endpoint CPEs to have these features baked in, in particular with any sort of CALEA semantics. This

I found this interesting insofar as it is somewhat rare for endpoint CPEs to have these features baked in, in particular with any sort of CALEA semantics. This is almost always a burden pushed on the transitory service providers upstream from the device. Network device OEMs, in my experience running an ISP (in addition to both making routers and white-labeling them for our service), have never been held to the CALEA requirements historically. The wikipedia article you shared actually states this pretty clearly as well: >" The IP-based "soft switches" typically do not contain a built-in CALEA intercept feature; and other IP-transport elements (routers, switches, access multiplexers) almost always delegate the CALEA function to elements dedicated to inspecting and intercepting traffic. In such cases, hardware taps or switch/router mirror-ports are employed to deliver copies of all of a network's data to dedicated IP probes." (I realize that Microtik's RouterOS may end up on headend router devices and that is likely why this exists, but the implementation details here are just a little odd when you can just port mirror on a switch instead)

windexh8er 4y ago
> I found this interesting insofar as it is somewhat rare for endpoint CPEs to have these features baked in, in particular with any sort of CALEA semantics. This isn't targeting CPE equipment - MicroTik is baking into their unified OS. If you're a service provider you don't configure CALEA in the CPE, you configure it upstream in the headend where all traffic from your customers egress your network. It's much easier to grab it all at the bottleneck than to have data streaming over your expensive last mile twice for each customer, that doesn't make any network architecture or OpEx sense. It's just easier to make CALEA a function of RouterOS vs target specific models. There's nothing specific about the hardware that's required to implement the functionality.

windexh8er 4y ago

> I found this interesting insofar as it is somewhat rare for endpoint CPEs to have these features baked in, in particular with any sort of CALEA semantics. This isn't targeting CPE equipment - MicroTik is baking into their unified OS. If you're a service provider you don't configure CALEA in the CPE, you configure it upstream in the headend where all traffic from your customers egress your network. It's much easier to grab it all at the bottleneck than to have data streaming over your expensive last mile twice for each customer, that doesn't make any network architecture or OpEx sense. It's just easier to make CALEA a function of RouterOS vs target specific models. There's nothing specific about the hardware that's required to implement the functionality.