What types of Value Added Services can L3WS WebFlowAdapter enable?

By providing an open and standard approach throug ICAP (Internet Content Adaptation Protocol) to delivering applications to users at the edge of the Internet and as such, there is no direct limitation on all of the services that will be enabled by L3WS. Edge delivery of Internet content has dramatically increased Web users Internet experience. In a similar fashion, when applications are delivered from an edge device, end users will find the applications execute more quickly and are more reliable. L3WS Webflow Adapter supports or is is envisioned to provide some of the following services:

• Language translation
• Virus checking
• Family ( PG/R/X ) content filtering
• Local real-time ad insertion
• Wireless protocol translation
• Anonymous Web usage profiling (perhaps for a dating service)
• Transcoding or image enhancement
• Image magnification for the elderly
• Digest production/batch download of Web content

Standard interface with proxies and security gateways

The Internet Content Adaptation Protocol (ICAP) enables enterprises to choose the best of breed applications and infrastructure. ICAP enables a new class of services by allowing site owners to offer Web applications closer to the user. ICAP is a lightweight and extensible point-to-point protocol that effectively adapts content for user needs. Since its introduction in 1999 ICAP became the standard protocol for communication between proxy servers and callout servers.

Is ICAP a complex protocol?

ICAP provides a very simple operation to vector content between caches and network-based applications servers. Because no proprietary APIs or software developer toolkits are required, ICAP will dramatically reduce implementation cost and time-to-market for software developers and service providers. By being standards-based, ICAP has the potential to be adopted by range of vendors, as indicated by the number of companies presently supporting its development. ICAP also leverages the latest Internet infrastructure developments including the cache and Internet content delivery convergence. The principal advantages of ICAP include:

• It is scalable, allowing several ICAP servers to service requests & responses from a single cache.
• It is open: anyone can implement, which extends a caching server to provide new services at the edge of the network.
• It is more efficient than adding one Web proxy per service.

WebFlowAdapter is a real-time solution allowing you to easily manipulate Web traffic on the fly. By providing an embedded development framework, WebFlowAdapter can be used for very simple usages up to extremely complex applications: HTTP anonymization, tracking, access control filters, mashup services, Web Application firewall, ... What makes WebFlowAdapter unique is that any code modification is applied in real time, while providing an excellent performance level. You can in that way easily build up, test and improve your services, then decide to use the result in a production environment. WebFlowAdapter supports various "scripting" languages, like Java, JavaScript, Python or Ruby. Interfaced with HTTP proxies like Squid, it runs transparently in the network and does not require any specific modification on end-user devices. In that way, it provides therefore multi-OS and cross-browser support. WebFlowAdapter supports Java/javascript language per default, but can be easily extended with other scripting languages: Ruby, Python, AWK, Groovy, etc. Providing a web based interface, it tries to be as user-friendly as possible, while keeping an eye on performance that makes it usable from early prototyping stages up to production environment. Fully developped in Java, WebFlowAdapter can be used on merely any platform and has already been successfully tested with several ICAP clients: Squid 3.0, Bluecoat ProxySG, Network Appliance Netcache and more. Want to see what it looks like ? Ask for a free Trial Version.

L3WS WebFlowAdapter Server aims at enabling fast and efficient services development within the network and over the HTTP flows. By using a white-box architecture and by hiding all the network stack complexity, WebFlowAdapter provides you a unique experience, offering you the capability to filter, modify, analyse and enrich Web Traffic with unlimited possibilities. The WebFlowAdapter product relies on a standardised protocol in order to intercept and modify Web traffic. This protocol, called ICAP (Internet Content Adaptation Protocol, RFC 3507), is a lightweight network API dedicated to content adaptation, and is available on both commercial products (Bluecoat, Cisco, F5,�) and open-source software (Squid). ICAP architecture is based on following concept: 1. Users' traffic is intercepted by a web proxy (proxy-cache, firewall, security gateway). 2. This web proxy acts as an ICAP client and forward web messages (either users' requests or servers' responses) to one or several WebFlowAdapter Servers. 3. On WebFlowAdapter(s), you have then the possibility to modify web messages to build up value-added services (content enrichment, parental/employers' control, antivirus, etc). Advantages of ICAP architecture are numerous: - Performances, by using specialized components for each task - Possibility to scale ICAP clients (proxies) and ICAP servers (services) independently - Possibility to add/remove/update ICAP servers without service interruption - Possibility to choice ICAP clients/servers based on the context requirements Several products exist on the market, providing you some specific features like anti-virus or URL filtering. What makes WebFlowAdapter unique is its real-time development API, which allows you to create extensions and custom services in real adequation with your needs and in an unlimited way. Using WebFlowAdapter, you can build up new services directly associated to your infrastructure, linking them to your authentication servers, content providers, monitoring system. The provided high-level API allows you to focus on your core business, leaving all the network side (connections handling, encoding and compression detection, network speed-up and errors control) up to WebFlowAdapter. The WebFlowAdapter product supports following languages to build up services: - Java 1.6 - EcmaScript (ECMA-262 Edition 3) - Ruby - Python Note that best performance will be achieved by using Java language.