Magma Intelligence Support Solution

MAGMA is an open source Evolved Packet Core (EPC) offered by Facebook Connectivity (currently Meta) to provide low cost wireless internet and communication infrastructure to WISP, ISP, MVNO, MNO. MAGMA project mission is to bring unconnected and under-connected people to benefit from internet services through emerging wireless technologies.  MAGMA access technologies are Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) using 4G/LTE, 5G, and Carrier Wi-Fi (CWF).

Wireless Communication Service Providers (CSP) are required to comply with legal and regulatory requirements to support Law Enforcement Agencies (LEA) selectively examine and/or intercept individual subscribers communication. They are required to provide information on illegal activities of their infrastructure users. Only with court orders, a LEA can issue a Lawful Intercept (LI) request to CSP on a PLMN which the LAE has jurisdiction on. The intelligence provided assist Law Enforcement Agencies (LEA) in preempting and tracing acts of terrorism, criminal activities, fraud, money laundering, and other unlawful acts.

The intelligence information gathered could be related to past communication events or anticipated in future incidents. The former requires CSP to retain certain data related to all subscribers, as such it is called Data Retention (DR). Whereas the latter is associated with real-time interception of specific user activities, hence, it is called Lawful Intercept (LI).  The business case is for MAGMA to have a Data Retention solution to enable CSPs comply with regulatory requirements.

Subcontracted to Facebook Connectivity by a third party, our SME was tasked with two challenges. First, to find adequate Intelligence Support System vendors who can provide Data Retention and Lawful Intercept functions. The second is to write the technical specifications for MAGMA developers to provide the required records to the lawful intercept solution. Both sides have to integrate on standards-based interface definitions. He took the following actions:

  • Conducted market research, standards study, and vendor discovery meetings.
  • Lead CALEA vendor management process. Established terms for win-win partnership by collaborated to define the business case and engagement model.
  • Created vendor vetting process and bid evaluation criteria.
  • Authored access and service agnostic Architecture, Solution Requirements to use in vendor technical compliance and MAGMA integration.
  • Developed high level design specs, block diagrams, system interfaces, partitioned resources, compliances matrices, and used technical and economic trade-offs to establish best product selection.
  • Defined RFP specifications, along with the performance and capacity model for sizing scalable systems.
  • Coordinated technical activities when multidisciplinary teams were involved.
  • Authored Test Strategy and Plan for MAGMA Data Retention (DR), as well as 4G and 5G Lawful Intercept Solutions. The solutions integrate DR and LIMS platforms with MAGMA. Use cases addressed include IPDR DR in CWF, and LI in Fixed Wireless Access (FWA), as well as Mobile Broadband (MBB) Circuit Switched (CS) and IMS voice.
  • Performed tradeoff analysis to evaluate Lawful Intercept (LI) solution options and feasibility.
  • Recommended technically compliant, and the most cost and space saving options.
  • Attracted and on-boarded 3 key players in CALEA niche market.
  • Initiated technical alignment and architecture review meetings and drove teams to converge on ETSI standards-based LI solution.
  • Simplified and facilitated development team coding to standards by defining MAGMA LI Reference Model, capturing the design details of X1 (Management), X2 (IRI) and X3 (CC) interfaces, call flows, PDU details, ETSI X1 schema, and vendor LI sample traces. All adding up to smooth integration of MAGMA with LI vendors.
  • Collaborated to place WBS on ZenHub for team progress tracking.
  • Built trust relationships with teams. Synergized with lab team and convinced vendors to deliver offline PoC/Demo at no cost to FB or impact on lab resources.
  • Influenced vendors to allocate resources to meet aggressive delivery timeline, and obtained cost reduction in CALEA certification, down to 50%, and full credit refund in the first joint project.

“Ahmad’s attention to detail and subject matter expertise were clearly evident in his work supporting the open source Magma project at Facebook (now Meta). Ahmad was tasked with navigating the world of CALEA for the project. He delivered the end-to-end solution architecture and engineering requirements to drive Magma 4G and 5G Lawful Intercept — as well as Data Retention for Carrier WiFi use cases. This greatly reduced the schedule risk and made it easy for the software engineers tasked with implementation. Ahmad also handled supplier diversification with leading CALEA providers, and we achieved Interop certification agreement before the targeted dates. This all aided in Facebook’s goal of expanding adoption of Magma as an open-source core network platform capable of reducing network TCO and bringing more people online to a faster and better Internet.”

Brian Barritt, Founder & CTO at Aalyria