Re: [44net] netflow vs privacy

On May 22, 2017, at 6:11 PM, Brian Kantor <Brian(a)UCSD.Edu> wrote: (Please trim inclusions from previous messages) _______________________________________________ I was in the process of selecting a netflow viewer -- most of them are web-based -- when it occured to me that someone using it could discover every connection that someone has made through the amprgw router. The flow data records source and destination address and ports, how much traffic was transferred, the time of day, and how long the connection lasted. Every flow record is about 50 bytes of data, and there can easily be a hundred of them per second. In aggregate, it's a lot of data. And it has privacy implications. I was originally considering making an interactive netflow inquiry tool available on the gateways section of the gw.ampr.org website so gateway operators could see what traffic their AMPRNet router is handling. But because there's no way to restrict it so that someone could only view flows involving their own endpoint or subnet, I think it's too much information to be made freely available for people to browse. And there is the consideration that inquiries could wind up presenting a significant load on the system. I think that presenting anonymized aggregate data wouldn't be a problem, so I'm going to look into that. Probably some traffic density graphs would be ok. And I'm willing, once the tools are installed and working, to make extracts of the data for a gateway operator who is having a problem with his traffic flow. What's people's opinion of this? - Brian _________________________________________ 44Net mailing list 44Net(a)hamradio.ucsd.edu http://hamradio.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/44net