Data Streams

Cybersecurity engines, QoE managers, performance analytics solutions, and other third party applications can connect to the Netify DPI Agent to interact with the network flow metadata. The Netify Agent's socket interface (TCP/IP and UNIX sockets) provides near real-time agent status and flow/DPI detection data via JSON encoded payloads.

With the Netify DPI Data Stream, you can develop and create your own integrations: open source, proprietary, in-house... it's up to you. You can find links to a couple of example open source applications that consume Netify data streams at the end of this document.

Let's take a look at some sample data (see adjacent JSON data). This particular flow comes from a mobile phone that started up the WhatsApp app. You can see the usual network data in the JSON structure: IP version, MAC addresses, IPs, ports, network interfaces, and timestamps. In addition, you can see the additional DPI data. Read on.

Application: WhatsApp

The detected_application_name shows that it was a flow generated by WhatsApp. In this particular case, this detection was made using the TLS/SSL SNI hostname and certificate common name. Other heuristics are also used to detect applications.

Protocol: HTTPS

The DPI engine detected the HTTPS protocol (detected_protocol). This is more than just mapping port 443 to HTTPS, the engine did a full deep packet inspection. In fact, Netify will detect SSL/SNI over any port.

DPI: HTTPS Details

Detecting the protocol is just the start. The Netify Agent also breaks down the details of the SSL/TLS connection:

• SNI hostname: static.whatsapp.net
• Certificate CN: *.whatsapp.net
• TLS version: 0x0303 (TLS 1.2)
• Encryption cipher: 0xc02b info
• JA3/TLS fingerprint: details

Other protocols will have different metadata attached. For example, HTTP traffic also includes the URL and user agent.

{
  "type": "flow",
  "interface": "ens34",
  "internal": true,
  "established": false,
  "flow": {
    "digest": "09c9e2b73d68fef245c09141cb63dad8d9001a6c",
    "ip_nat": false,
    "ip_version": 4,
    "ip_protocol": 6,
    "vlan_id": 0,
    "other_type": "remote",
    "local_origin": true,
    "other_mac": "00:90:fb:29:ca:ba",
    "local_mac": "a0:c9:a0:e5:2c:eb",
    "other_ip": "31.13.80.53",
    "local_ip": "192.168.4.105",
    "other_port": 443,
    "local_port": 38972,
    "detected_protocol": 196,
    "detected_protocol_name": "HTTPS",
    "detected_application": 544,
    "detected_application_name": "142.netify.whatsapp",
    "detection_guessed": 0,
    "ssl": {
      "version": "0x0303",
      "cipher_suite": "0xc02b",
      "client_sni": "static.whatsapp.net",
      "server_cn": "*.whatsapp.net",
      "client_ja3": "d8c87b9bfde38897979e41242626c2f3",
      "server_ja3": "6e15a5bf660856fa03186247ca41d059"
    },
    "first_seen_at": 1574786068665,
    "first_update_at": 1574786068665,
    "last_seen_at": 1574786068715
  }
}

Description

When a network flow is either closed or becomes idle, the Netify Agent publishes a flow_purge record to the Data Stream. Today, this stream provides network statistics: byte counters, traffic counters, timestamps, etc. Later in 2021, we will be adding performance information to the payload, for example:

• Statistics on DNS response times
• HTTP response codes and times
• Network performance statistics
• and more.

Description

Some network flows are long-lived, for example, audio/video streams and VPN connections. The Netify Agent will periodically publish a flow_status record to the Data Stream. The network status on active flows provides real-time insights into the network.

Example Use Cases

• Live bandwidth statistics
• QoE based on live data usage

The agent_hello data type provides versioning and feature information. This makes it possible for third-party applications to manage upgrades and changes to the Netify Agent data stream.

"type": "agent_hello",
"agent_version": 3.06,
"build_version": "Netify Agent/3.06 (debian; x86_64; netlink; dns-cache; plugins; tcmalloc; inotify; regex) nDPI/2.9.0 JSON/1.90",
"json_version": 1.9

The agent_status data type provides agent and system status information. This makes it possible to monitor and manage the performance of the underlying DPI engine.

"type": "agent_status",
"cpu_cores": 1,
"cpu_system": 0.157217,
"cpu_system_prev": 0.103613,
"cpu_user": 0.117912,
"cpu_user_prev": 0.103613,
"dhc_size": 0,
"dhc_status": true,
"flows": 25,
"flows_prev": 22,
"maxrss_kb": 42352,
"maxrss_kb_prev": 42292,
"sink_status": false,
"sink_uploads": false,
"tcm_kb": 22825,
"tcm_kb_prev": 22838,
"timestamp": 1606274389,
"update_imf": 1,
"update_interval": 15,
"uptime": 30