Parental Control with Cisco SCE and an External Database: How it works?

[g.paz]

I saw different documents mentioning some function of "Parental Control" (Web/URL Filtering) using Cisco SCE and an external URL Database.

However, I can't find any technical document describing how the interaction between Cisco SCE and The External Database is.

Does anyone knows how this interaction works? Are the SCE and External Database talking any kind of protocol? Is that an standard?

Thanks in advance.

[Giuseppe Larosa]

Hello Gustavo,

I've found this sentence

Broadhop Service Management Engine (SME) and other third-party policy management solutions: The Broadhop SME is a policy server that is used to implement centralized policy-management function for the Cisco Personalized Subscriber Management solution. The SME receives policy events or triggers from network elements or applications, makes policy decisions governing each subscriber's service, and dynamically applies these policies to policy enforcement points in the network (such as the Cisco ISG or SCE). The Personalized Subscriber Management solution integrates Broadhop SME, however, the solution may be implemented with other third-party policy servers.

see

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns341/ns525/ns537/ns549/net_implementation_white_paper0900aecd80745870.html

It is not clear what protocol(s)is/are used but Cisco declares support of third party policy server.

Hope to help

Giuseppe

[g.paz]

Thanks Giuseppe for your answer.

This information is a useful description of the service, but I was looking for a deeper detail about how parental control works (protocol used to communicate with external URL database, etc.).

I would be great if you or anyone else can help me with this kind of information.

Regards,

Gustavo.

[Giuseppe Larosa]

Hello Gustavo,

I have seen scenarios where there were policy servers and routers as Policy enforcement points PEP.

the name of the protocol is COPS and provides a framework to implement QoS in the flow based Integrated Services (RSVP) with centralized servers.

see

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/ios/12_1t/12_1t1/feature/guide/CopsRSVP.html

My guess is that this could be used or be the part of the communication also between the policy server and SCE and it is standard so open to third party servers

OK, there is no RSVP signalling end to end in internet browsing.

Hope to help

Giuseppe