Overview of Aqsacom's Approach to Lawful Interception

Lawful Interception is our core business. With 11 years of experience in developing and deploying lawful interception systems for government law enforcement agencies and carriers in over 30 countries, AQSACOM has established a solid and reliable worldwide reputation for its lawful interception turn-key systems.

AQSACOM Lawful Interception Solutions

Public wireline and wireless telecommunications networks

• CALEA and other local law compliance
• Compatibility with all major switch vendors

IP Interception

• Deployed world's first lawful interception system to accommodate massive scale
• Now used by major telco operators and ISPs

Wireless roaming and tracking

• Track presence and usage of on-net and off-net roaming subscribers

Reference Clients

• Major public-switched telecom, wireless, and Internet operators throughout Europe and Asia.
• Local and national-level law enforcement agencies.

Scalable, Flexible, and Responsive systems for Lawful Interception

• AQSACOM's modular, standards-based approach supports scaling and service modifications.
• Single-platform lawful interception over a diversity of services and technologies
• All hardware derived from off-the-shelf equipment for easy servicing, replacement, cost reduction.

Standards and AQSACOM

AQSACOM actively participates in the ETSI/3GPP LI Group to promote systematic and consistent approaches to lawful interception in telecom and IP networks worldwide. Standards-based approaches ensure operator conformance to established and emerging LI regulations.

Not only do our solutions conform to international lawful interception standards, we have helped to develop these standards.

Lawful interception system comprises a) extraction of call information and content from the network entities (voice or IP network equipment) and b) management of the data for effective delivery to the law enforcement agencies. AQSACOM offers comprehensive solutions to complete lawful interception in conformance to J-STD-025 (CALEA), ETSI/3GPP and regional lawful interception standards and requirements. 

IP Lawful Interception Solutions

AQSACOM now offers the world's first comprehensive lawful interception solution for massive-scale public IP networks. Our IP interception systems are built upon AQSACOM's time and field-proven approach to lawful interception architecture, with:

• Applicability to ADSL, dial-up, cable modem, 802.11, fixed, and other access technologies.
• A highly modular design that can be readily integrated with AQSACOM voice interception solutions.
• Easy-to-use human interface requiring minimal training.
• Operation over off-the-shelf hardware for easy serviceability and low-cost parts replacement.
• Interoperability with all major IP networking equipment vendors.
• Conformance to current and emerging standards to effectively delivery interception data to law enforcement agencies.

A typical AQSACOM IP Lawful Interception Solution(*):

AQSACOM's Lawful Interception System (ALIS) comprises two components: ALIS-m for target provisioning and ALIS-d for data interception. ALIS-m operates in conjunction with the service provider's network access switching and servers (e.g., RADIUS) to determine the target's originating IP address (static or dynamic). Once this address is known, ALIS-d routes a secure replication all incoming/outgoing target IP traffic to the law enforcement agency for analysis. ALIS operates on standard Intel server platforms under Windows 2000.

Voice Telephony Interception: Lawful Interception Solutions for Wire line and Wireless Voice Systems

Ten years of successful experience in the lawful interception industry has enabled AQSACOM to earn its reputation as a solid and reliable provider of lawful interception solutions to law enforcement agencies and network operators worldwide. Our systems are built upon AQSACOM's time and field-proven approach to lawful interception architecture, with:

• A highly modular design that can be readily integrated with other AQSACOM products, including our massive-scale IP interception solutions.
• Conformance to current and emerging standards (e.g. J-STD-025 (CALEA), ETSI/3GPP) as well as to local law enforcement regulations.
• Operation over off-the-shelf hardware for easy serviceability and low-cost parts replacement.
• Interoperability with all major telecom networking equipment vendors.
• Easy-to-use human interface requiring minimal training.

A typical AQSACOM Lawful Interception Solution for Public Voice Telephony(*)

AQSACOM's Lawful Interception System (ALIS) forms the core platform to our lawful interception solutions. Here the ALIS provisions the operator's telco switches to produce CCC and CDC data streams, which are also formatted by the IMS for standardized delivery to law enforcement agencies. The ALIS operates on standard Intel server platforms under Windows 2000.

Customer Satisfaction

AQSACOM takes Customer Satisfaction seriously. Much of the Company's success to date is the result of our drive to not only meet, but exceed customer expectations. The design, implementation, and support of Lawful Interception systems is not a trivial matter, and requires extensive interaction with customers before and long after the systems sale. AQSACOM's current base of customers have come to rely on Aqsacom as always being on hand when problems arise or changes have to be made. They have also learned to depend on AQSACOM for supplying the latest Lawful Interception solutions to newly emerging network services.

ASP Solutions

AQSACOM provides a range of services and solutions to enable Applications Service Providers (ASPs) to rapidly get up and running as a third-party lawful interception service. Our offer is especially useful to:

• Trusted Third Party services that specialize in lawful interception services.
• Existing telecom and Internet services organizations that wish to add lawful interception to their services mix.
• Industry groups or regional CSPs desiring to operate their own lawful interception outsourcing services, especially where facilities can be shared to reduced costs.
• Government agencies that operate local and national lawful interception services.

AQSACOM delivers decisive advantages to ASPs by:

• Leveraging AQSACOM's 14 years of worldwide experience in the lawful interception business.
• Enabling rapid deployment and regulatory compliance of lawful interception services thanks to our systematic and highly flexible approach to lawful interception.
• Providing highly scalable solutions that grow with an ASPýs customer base and services scope.
• Supporting a mix of additional services as they become required in an ASP's portfolio of services, such as data retention, fraud detection / prevention, and other services that address regulatory-imposed requirements.
• A common legal intercept approach to all revenue generating services in the triple and quadruple play consumer and enterprise service offerings, including IP, VOIP, traditional voice telephony, wireline and wireless services, and newly emerging services.

The keystone to AQSACOM's ASP offering is the AQSACOM Lawful Interception System (ALIS). ALIS' architecture, from its inception and through years of proven field use, well supports the needs of ASPs thanks to:

• Support for lawful interception over multiple carriers and multiple services, with secure isolation of all provisioning and data flows among carriers and law enforcement agencies.
• A highly flexible architecture that supports centralized and/or client-based interception provisioning.
• An extensible architecture that interoperates with common network equipment and most major equipment vendors; interoperability with new vendor equipment can readily be supported.
• Standards-based delivery functions (e.g., conforming to ETSI, 3GPP, TIA, etc.) for interoperability with monitoring centers worldwide.
• Extensive alarm, logging, statistical, and operator management functions to ensure proper administration and maintenance of the ASP's lawful interception capabilities across its client base.

All CSP and Law Enforcement Agency networks are different! AQSACOM well understands this challenge facing ASPs and addresses it through ALIS' Service Oriented Architecture. The following figure shows application of ALIS where the internal and interception capabilities of a CSP customer's network are applied. Here ALIS provisions the interception functions of the CSP customer's voice switches, routers, softswitches, bandwidth management devices, Session Border Controllers, and other network components. Also shown is the use of external interception. This makes use of probes that monitor the CSP traffic at specially chosen network points. In both external and internal interception, intercepted data are captured and formatted by ALIS and delivered to law enforcement in a standards-compliant manner. Note that one or more ALIS platforms can be operated by the ASP, depending on the size of their operation. Likewise, the ALIS platforms can be geographically distributed to best accommodate regional traffic loading and for support of redundancy. Interception provisioning may be centralized (as in a Trusted Third Party) or handled locally by the CSP customer. Equally important, because the ALIS platforms are shared among the ASP's client base, considerable cost reductions are realized for CSP customers and the ASP alike.

This configuration is only one example of the many ways ALIS can be adapted to meet the technical, commercial, and legal requirements of the ASP. Contact an AQSACOM representative today to further discuss your ASP needs towards lawfully compliant lawful interception services.

Voice-Over-IP (VOIP) Solutions

AQSACOMýs time and field-proven approach to lawful interception architecture addresses the interception of VOIP networks through:

• A highly modular design that can be readily integrated with other AQSACOM products, including our massive-scale IP interception solutions.
• Conformance to current and emerging standards (e.g. CALEA J-STD-025, T1.678, ETSI ES 201 671, ETSI TS 102 232-1, ETSI TS 102 232-5, and upcoming IMS standards) as well as to local law enforcement regulations.
• Support for SIP, MGCP, and other VOIP networking technologies and protocols.
• Operation on off-the-shelf hardware for easy serviceability and parts management.
• Interoperability with major VOIP equipment and router vendors.
• Optional interoperation with legacy voice telephony monitoring systems.
• Easy-to-use human interface requiring minimal training.

AQSACOM delivers a ýfuture proofý approach to VOIP interception, adaptable to newly emerging standards and the best practices on how these standards will be implemented. This means that AQSACOM customers avoid costly upgrades to their lawful interception infrastructure every time standards change or emerge, or when the service provider enlarges its network, introduces new services, or changes network components. The flexibility of our software-based architecture makes our system readily adaptable to the wide range of VOIP architectures, service offers, and network sizes in place now and in the future.

Technical Description

AQSACOM bases its VOIP interception solutions on the widely deployed AQSACOM Lawful Interception System (ALIS) platform. ALIS comprises two components: 1) ALIS-M for target provisioning and interception management; and 2) ALIS-D for intercepted data collection, formatting and delivery to the Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs). In certain configurations, ALIS-M directly provisions call agents, SIP servers, and similar network components to extract pertinent target information, such as the mapping between a target subscriberýs phone number and IP address at the time of the interception. Once this address is known, ALIS-M instructs ALIS-D to capture and format media traffic associated with the call. The point of capture is typically a router with built-in interception capability, or a probe. This router (or probe) is also provisioned by ALIS-M. Once the intercepted traffic is captured by ALIS-D, ALIS-D then formats and delivers both the call content (CC/CCC) and call data (CDC/IRI/CII) to the LEA. Delivery may utilize traditional TDM channels (e.g., ISDN) thanks to ALISý optional TDM gateway feature, or apply packetized formats conforming to the newly emerging standards (e.g., T1. 678). The following figure shows an ALIS configuration that performes active interception of the targeted network VOIP traffic. This solution applies the internal interception functions that are built into the call agent, media gateway, and other components.

The next figure shows a typical ALIS probe-based passive solution that detects and formats VOIP-related packets. Here Aqsacom-supplied probes extract the call data from the overall bulk traffic in the vicinity of the call agent/server; likewise, probes are used to extract the targeted media traffic from the bulk traffic to/from the media gateway.

These configurations are only two examples of the many ways ALIS can be adapted to a VOIP provider's specific lawful interception requirements. Configurations may call for hybrid approaches that combine active and probe-based passive methods. Contact an AQSACOM representative today to further discuss your VOIP networkýs unique needs towards lawfully compliant interception.