Compression of Modified Data Captures for Encrypted Packets
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing data capture systems face inefficiencies when troubleshooting network issues, particularly with encrypted and uninteresting content, as conventional compression algorithms yield little to no compression gain due to high entropy, leading to unnecessary data transfer and processing burdens.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a system that removes encrypted and uninteresting content from captured data and replaces it with 'tags' or 'hints', allowing for efficient compression and reducing bandwidth usage, while maintaining essential information for analysis.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of substance
If conventional compression algorithms are applied to encrypted content, then compression is attempted, but compression gain is minimal due to high entropy
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts and removes encrypted content and uninteresting payload data from captured packets before compression. By taking out the high-entropy portions that resist compression (encrypted payloads), the system achieves significant compression gains on the remaining compressible data while avoiding the inefficiency of attempting to compress already-compressed or high-entropy content.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent segments captured data into different portions: encrypted content, uninteresting payload data, and potentially interesting data. Each segment is handled differently - encrypted and uninteresting segments are removed or replaced with tags, while other segments may be compressed normally. This segmentation allows the system to avoid wasting compression resources on incompressible segments.
2Loss of information
If all captured data including encrypted content is transmitted for analysis, then complete data is available, but bandwidth usage and processing resources are wasted
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts and removes encrypted content and uninteresting payload data from captured packets before transmission. By taking out the portions of data that cannot be decrypted or are not useful for troubleshooting analysis, the system reduces bandwidth consumption and processing requirements while preserving all potentially useful troubleshooting information in a compressed form.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes the representation of encrypted content by replacing actual encrypted payloads with compact tags or hints that indicate the presence and basic characteristics of the removed content. This parameter change from full data representation to metadata representation significantly reduces data size while maintaining the ability to analyze packet structure and identify issues.
3Productivity
If encrypted content is compressed using normal algorithms, then compression is performed, but no reasonable compression gain is achieved
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts encrypted content from captured packets and removes it before applying compression algorithms. By taking out the encrypted portions that would resist compression, the system achieves actual data size reduction on the remaining compressible data while avoiding the waste of computational effort compressing already-high-entropy content.
Solution Approach 2:
Instead of attempting to compress encrypted content directly (the conventional approach), the patent inverts the approach by first removing the encrypted content and then compressing what remains. This inversion recognizes that encrypted content is already in a high-entropy state and focuses compression efforts only on the portions of data that can actually be compressed.
Data Source
AI summary
Various methods, systems, and apparatuses can be used to remove uninteresting data from captured data prior to transmission of the captured data for analysis. In some implementations, a compression module is operable to modify capture data by replacing encrypted content with tags, and to compress the resulting modified data using various compression algorithms.