IP Sets Integration

The IP Sets Integration is a part of the Netify Flow Actions Plugin - a premium add-on to the Netify Agent.

IP Sets can be used to implement bandwidth, firewall, and QoS solutions on routers, firewalls, and gateways. The Netify DPI IP Sets integration provides a way to create high-speed IP sets based on any Netify deep packet inspection flow criteria. These sets can then be used to block, shape, mark, or perform other actions to network traffic.

The example below will use Netify DPI's IP Sets integration to identify BitTorrent, YouTube, and Social Media applications.

You can also review alternative options for taking actions on DPI flow data - see the nftables and connection tracking (CT) labels integrations for details.

Example Configuration

Introduction

The netify-proc-flow-actions.json JSON configuration file provides a starting point for implementing our solution. See sidebar for the configuration.

For this example, we use basic configurations to demonstrate a core feature. The Netify Integrators Kit provides more detailed reference documentation. Notably, the Flow Actions Plugin provides a very powerful expression language for pinpointing network traffic.

Actions

The actions block defines the traffic that needs to be identified. In our example, we have created three different actions:

• YouTube application traffic
• BitTorrent protocol traffic
• All Social Media applications, except Twitter

Target

The targets block defines which engine to use for the flow action. In our example, we are creating IP Sets.

Target Defaults

The target_defaults section in the configuration provides baseline settings for the IP Sets target. This parameter can be used to fine-tune various policies for the IP Sets engine.

{
  "version": 1,
  "actions": {
    "bittorrent": {
      "criteria": "protocol == 'bittorrent';",
      "targets": [
        "ipset.bittorrent"
      ]
    },
    "youtube": {
      "criteria": "app == 'youtube';",
      "targets": [
        "ipset.youtube"
      ]
    },
    "social": {
      "criteria": "category == 'social-media';",
      "targets": [
        "ipset.social"
      ],
      "exemptions": [
        "app == 'netify.twitter';"
      ]
    }
  },
  "targets": {
    "ipset.bittorrent": {
      "target_type": "ipset",
      "set_name": "nfa.bittorrent"
    },
    "ipset.youtube": {
      "target_type": "ipset",
      "set_name": "nfa.youtube"
    },
    "ipset.social": {
      "target_type": "ipset",
      "set_name": "nfa.social"
    }
  },
  "target_defaults": {
    "ipset": {
      "interface": "*",
      "type": "hash:ip,port,ip",
      "ttl": 120,
      "managed": true,
      "flush_on_create": true,
      "flush_on_destroy": true
    }
  },
  "exemptions": [
    "192.168.1.1",
    "protocol == 'dns';"
  ]
}

The ipset command can be used to view a list of active entries. In the adjacent sidebar, attempted BitTorrent connections are shown.

# ipset list
Name: nfa.bittorrent.v4
Type: hash:ip,port,ip
Revision: 5
Header: family inet hashsize 1024 maxelem 65536 timeout 120 skbinfo
Size in memory: 2696
References: 0
Number of entries: 13
Members:
101.100.139.138,udp:51413,192.168.55.140 timeout 117
60.115.123.115,udp:55753,192.168.55.140 timeout 115
62.210.124.230,udp:51413,192.168.55.140 timeout 119
71.150.226.54,udp:51413,192.168.55.140 timeout 115
37.221.197.43,udp:51413,192.168.55.140 timeout 115
45.76.32.64,tcp:51413,192.168.55.140 timeout 115