On Fri, 25 February 2000, owen(a)exodus.net wrote:
> Except that for the most part, MAE connections are switched, not "shared"
> media. As such, they'll see Broadcasts, and packets destined for the
> monitoring equipment and little else. The aggregate bandwidth of the MAE
> makes them using a SPAN port virtually impossible. If memory serves, the
> MAE traffic is several times 100Mbps.
SPAN ports were not always infeasible and certainly are quite
feasible at a lot of smaller exchange points. And all kinds of
things could be happening inside an ATM exchange. And the
spooks are happy to get any traffic at all; they don't need
100% of it and cannot get 100% of it in today's Internet
structure. All they need is a little inside help to get great
piles of interesting traffic from taps within a large provider
or within an exchange point.
And there is still the possibility of tapping the fiber directly
at least two ways that I know of.
Governments spying on their citizenry is just a fact of life in the
modern age. The key thing is to make sure that they do not abuse
this power or this data but that is politics, not technology.
---
Michael Dillon Phone: +44 (20) 7769 8489
Mobile: +44 (79) 7099 2658
Director of Product Engineering, GTS IP Services
151 Shaftesbury Ave.
London WC2H 8AL
UK
