One of the features packaged in the Snapt Framework is the “Interception Manager”. This provides plugins to the framework such as Snapt Squid or Snapt HAProxy to transparently intercept traffic.

In the Squid example, it makes it easy to pick up HTTP (port 80) traffic and cache it without interfering with user configuration, or with HAProxy you can roll out load balancing without changing IP addresses and the like. Typically, this can get confusing and complicated – so we introduced an interception manager.

Each plugin is assigned a “space” in which it can operate to intercept traffic. Each space can have subspaces. For example, each HAProxy group effectively has its own space which can have any number of ports or IP addresses to intercept traffic on and redirect it to HAProxy.

The interception manager automatically integrates with your firewall (currently it supports PF or IPTables) and intercepts the data. You can disable and enable interception spaces without losing their configuration – allowing maintenance without downtime, and you can disable the entire system without losing your setup.

You can see an example of some live HAProxy groups intercepting data below

Tags: Framework, HAProxy, interception, Squid, transparent

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 at 1:55 pm and is filed under Framework, HAProxy, Squid. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.