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The value of network monitoring in an encrypted world

This rise of encryption The last decade has seen encryption applied to vast portions of internet traffic. Services offered by Google, Meta and Microsoft are all encrypted indeed around 80% of all web traffic uses TLS encryption (the padlock at the top of your browser next to the website address) compared to just 58% 5 years ago and 26% in 2014 (1) . There are at least two drivers behind this change. Firstly various revelations into the monitoring performed by governments has raised public awareness to the vulnerability their otherwise private activity has to being intercepted. Secondly the processing power required to implement encryption on a universal basis has become readily available driven by the inclusion of functions within processors that vastly improve the efficiency with which encryption can be performed. Historically network monitoring was able to provide an insight into users online activity by analysing the data they sent across the internet. Much of this can no longer be
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All for one and one for all - the three musketeers of network processing

Switching ASIC vs CPU vs FPGA At A6Labs we’ve adopted the philosophy of using the best technology for the task rather than making the task fit the technology we already use. There are plenty of counter arguments to having multiple technologies in a product but we believe that to work at the forefront of what is possible we must use the best solution for the problem. Athos Programmable Switching Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC). Lightning fast, fairly quick to catch on, specialising in the elite art of packet processing the ASIC is a microchip that can be programmed to perform all kinds of manipulations on packet data (see day in the life of a packet). It can alter the contents of a packet, adding, removing and translating portions before sending the packet on its way, steering it towards its next destination. It speaks the language of P4, a programming language developed specifically for network processing. Programmable switch chips are a comparatively recent deve
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A day in the life of a packet

Packets have a short life (although its all a matter of perspective really), in general a packet that lasts much more than a few tens of  milliseconds is doing well. Some packets have been known to live for as long as 700ms and travel into space but in generally most exist for a far shorter period of time and never make it out of the ground. Despite their short lifetime they have an important purpose without which the Internet would cease to exist. They carry the messages we send to friends, orders we send to online shops, directions to help us through traffic, films, weather, everything! What are these packets? Well really they're more of a concept than a substantial physical being, manifesting as strings of electrons or photons but little more. Their purpose, to convey little messages across the Internet. Created by many things, computers, phones, TV's anything that needs to talk to anything else over a network they come into being at the push of a button and cease to exist o
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Contention ratio, who's go is it anyway?

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In a previous blog,  How much data does the UK consume in a second , we eluded to the fact that although a broadband connection is sold as X megabits per second achieving this will depend on what else is happening on the network at the time. The Internet works in much the same way as the household mains water system. Growing up I remember switching on all the taps in the house for the amusement of the one highest and furthest from the source drying up (poking cowpats with a stick was another game to while away the hours!). The point is that the ability to deliver the advertised data-rate (think water pressure) depends on the competition for the network or contention to use the correct term. Another analogy is that of cars using a road. When traffic is light they can all use the road simultaneously and drive at the speed limit. Come rush-hour this starts to break down because to many cars are trying to use the same road simultaneously. Eventually they all get from A to B but it takes lo
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How much data does the UK consume in a second?

Whilst sat browsing the Internet, streaming a catch up show on the TV, I wondered, if you add up all the ones and zeros being consumed and produced by every Internet connection in the country, what number does that come to? Ofcom (the UK telecoms regulator) reports that in 2020 the average speed of a broadband connection in the UK was 80.2Mb/s. Also reported was the total number of broadband connections at 27.49 million. So therefor the speed of the UK Internet is 27.49 million multiplied by 80.2Mb/s right? Well that sum comes out at 2,204,698,000,000,000 bits/s or 2,205 Terabits/second or 'a lot' in simple terms. In truth the reality is a little more complicated. In the same way that the roads aren't designed for everyone who owns a car to travel at the same time the Internet isn't factored to allow everyone to use their Internet connection at its maximum speed all of the time (see a future blog on 'Contention Ratio'). Also reported is that the average data usa
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What is a trillion?

Simply put, a million million. Well if you're British its a million million million but being somewhat out numbered by the rest of the world and with a nod to pragmatism we'll stick to the international definition. Long strings of zero's don't really allow most of us to comprehend the true scale of this number (one with 12 zero's after it). Perhaps those who work in Astrophysics or nanotechnology will have a good comprehension but to most of us we need a contextualisation. Finding a context that conveys the magnitude of this number is tricky. For example the number of Homo-sapiens  to have ever existed in a meagre 110 billion, just 11% of a trillion. Obvious analogies such as piles of coins are readily available through Internet searches but are still tricky to conceive.  Think  Brewster's Millions , that was only $300million, 0.03% of the figure we're talking about and look how hard that was for Monty to get rid of! As a human analogy, workers building road
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