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This publication contains the procedures for configuring the Cisco Content Transformation Engine 1400 (Cisco CTE 1400).
For information on installing the Cisco CTE 1400, refer to the Cisco CTE 1400 Hardware Installation Guide.
This publication consists of these sections:
Improper configuration of the Cisco CTE 1400 can result in a security risk. Before you deploy the Cisco CTE 1400, verify the configuration as follows:
By default, the CTE proxies only the web pages it has transformed in order to prevent access to protected servers that are on the same subnet as the CTE. If you choose to override that default, as described in the "Configuring the Cisco CTE 1400 to Proxy All Web Pages" section, do not put the CTE on the same subnet as protected servers.
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Note If you configure the CTE to proxy all web pages, the CTE provides access to computers on the same subnet as the web servers configured to work with the CTE. For example, suppose a CTE has an external IP address of 24.221.1.1 and an internal IP address of 192.168.1.31. On the same subnet, you have an intranet server, protected from outside access, with an IP address of 192.168.1.20. It is possible to access all ports on the protected intranet server through the CTE by using the URL http://24.221.1.1/http://192.168.1.20. |
The CTE communicates with Design Studio through port 9001 using clear-text transmissions. To assure secure operations, you must block access to CTE port 9001 from outside of your firewall.
The Cisco CTE 1400 transforms and delivers back-end website content to a variety of mobile devices, including Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) phones, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), and the Cisco IP phone. The CTE is a 1U device that installs into any network infrastructure without requiring changes to the existing hardware or back-end software. The CTE sits in front of content servers and works with other networking products such as server load balancers, cache engines, web servers, firewall, Virtual Private Network (VPN) solutions, routers, and IEEE 802.11 broadband wireless devices.
Use the CTE Design Studio, a PC-based application, to create transformation rules for a set of content and to upload the rules to a CTE.
These sections describe the Cisco CTE 1400:
Table 1 summarizes the features of the Cisco CTE 1400.
Table 1 Cisco CTE 1400 Features
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1 WML = Wireless Markup Language. 2 RIM = Research in Motion. 3 cHTML = Compact HTML. 4 XSL = Extensible Stylesheet Language. 5 For more information, see the "Security" section. 6 PEM = Privacy Enhanced Mail. |
Internet, extranet, and intranet sites require different levels of security, all supported by the Cisco CTE 1400. As shown in Figure 1, those sites have the following characteristics:
The CTE terminates Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) sessions to provide an endpoint for a secure link. Some PDAs support SSL connections from the device to the CTE. However, WAP phones and the Palm 7 device do not support SSL. WAP phones use Wireless Transport Layer Security (WTLS) and Palm 7 devices use Elliptical Curve Cryptography (ECC). Carrier gateways usually convert WTLS and ECC to SSL; during the conversion, text is not secure.
The CTE uses rules supplied by Design Studio to fulfill requests for wireless content. A CTE is typically installed behind a server load balancer. When a wireless device requests a web page, the CTE accepts the request from the wireless device and requests the content from the back-end servers. Functioning as a reverse-proxy, the CTE acts like a web server to the client device and acts like a client device to the web servers.
Figure 2 shows the path that a wireless user request for a web page takes when the CTE is connected to a server load balancer. This configuration is best for sites where most of the network traffic intercepted by the CTE uses content supplied by servers directly connected to the server load balancer.
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Note The numbers in Figure 2 refer to the following process. |
The path the wireless user request takes is as follows:
1. A wireless user requests a URL. A wireless carrier transmits the request to a communications tower, through the WAP carrier gateway, and to the Internet.
2. The server load balancer that receives the request evaluates the request header. The server load balancer directs HTML/XML requests to the web server farm and directs requests from wireless devices to the Cisco CTE 1400.
3. The CTE terminates the request and then, acting as a proxy, sends a request to the server load balancer for the HTML/XML page.
4. When the CTE receives the page, it uses the rules in the configuration file to transform the content.
5. The CTE sends the transformed page to the server load balancer for forwarding to the wireless device.
A variation of the preceding configuration is to direct requests from the CTE through a router that sits in front of the server load balancer, as shown in Figure 3. This configuration is best for sites where most of the network traffic intercepted by the CTE uses content supplied by servers at other locations. For example, a results page served by a search engine portal contains links to content that resides outside of the domain of the search site.
You can connect a CTE to a web server that routes traffic to the CTE or to web servers based on browser detection, as shown in Figure 4.
You can also connect a CTE directly to a web server, as shown in Figure 5. In this case, all web traffic goes through the CTE, which passes HTML/XML requests to the web server and handles requests from wireless devices. This configuration is best when you designate specific IP addresses for wireless traffic.
Figure 6 and the following procedure describe how URL requests from a wireless device are handled by the CTE and connected devices.
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Note The numbers in Figure 6 refer to the steps in the following procedure. |
When a wireless device sends a URL to a web server, the traffic flow is as follows.
Step 2 The server load balancer that receives the request looks at the header.
Step 3 The server load balancer directs HTML/XML requests to the web server farm.
Step 4 The server load balancer directs requests from wireless devices to the CTE. The CTE, acting as a proxy, sends a request to the server load balancer for the HTML/XML content. The server load balancer obtains the content from a web server and sends it to the CTE.
Step 5 The CTE uses the rules created by Design Studio to transform the content and then sends the transformed content to the server load balancer.
Step 6 The server load balancer forwards the content to the wireless device.
As shown in Figure 7, you can also route requests based on a URL so that requests from designated URLs (such as mobile.site.com) are passed directly to the CTE.
The configuration instructions in this publication assume the following setup:
The "Operation Modes" section covers typical network configurations for the CTE. Use Table 2 as a guide to determining the best location for a CTE, based on network topology and website characteristics.
Table 2 CTE Network Location Guidelines
The general process for configuring a CTE and connected devices is as follows:
1. Draw a diagram of the data flow for the CTE(s), including all IP addresses and VLAN numbers.
2. Physically connect the CTE to the network.
Depending on your network topology, you may need to use one or both of the CTE ports (NICs).
3. Verify that the server load balancer can ping the CTE(s).
4. If configuring multiple CTEs, associate the various CTE network connections with a CTE server farm.
5. Configure the server load balancer so that the CTE can access web content on the web servers.
6. Configure the server load balancer so that the CTE is accessible by clients requesting web content.
7. Verify that the data flow of the CTE is as planned.
8. If a client does not require in-line data transformation by the CTE, direct its traffic to the web servers if possible.
These sections describe how to configure the CTE and connected devices:
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Note Before you deploy the CTE, verify that port 9001 is not accessible from outside of your firewall. The CTE communicates with Design Studio through port 9001 using clear-text transmissions. Only ports 80 and 443 should be visible from outside of your firewall. |
To connect the CTE to a network, you need two network cables. Only one cable may be necessary if you connect the CTE directly to one web server. Before configuring the CTE and connected devices, plan the network information you want to use for the following, as appropriate:
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Note The CTE does not work with Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP). You must use static IP addresses for the CTE. |
The CTE console provides your only access to the Cisco CTE Server Software. Use the CTE console to configure network parameters, create logins for Design Studio users, and restart or shut down the CTE.
If you completed the installation procedures described in the Cisco CTE 1400 Hardware Installation Guide, you already have a CTE console open on a computer that has a serial connection to the CTE. If the CTE console has been closed, reopen the connection to the CTE console as follows.
To open a CTE console, perform these steps:
Step 2 If the CTE console does not open, check the following:
You can connect a CTE directly to a web server if your site has only one web server and you want all traffic destined for the web server to pass through the CTE. The CTE determines how to handle requests for web content based on the request header, which indicates the type of device making the request. The CTE intercepts requests from supported mobile devices and passes through other requests.
Connecting a CTE directly to a web server does not require any changes to the web server configuration.
The following sections describe how to connect a CTE to a web server and configure the CTE to work with the web server:
Connecting a CTE to a web server requires either one or two network cables as follows:
Figure 8 shows how to connect a CTE to a web server.
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Note The IP addresses used throughout this publication are example addresses, not actual ones. |
Use the CTE console to display and configure parameters for the CTE.
To display network parameters, perform this step:
Current parameters show any uncommitted changes made in the current session.
To configure network parameters, perform these steps:
Step 2 Answer the prompts as follows:
For example, for Figure 8, which shows different subnets, the network parameters are as follows:
Step 3 Type 5 (Set Default Web-Server/Web-Page), press Enter, and enter an IP address for the web server.
Step 4 Type 4 (Set Masquerade Host), press Enter, and enter an IP address for Network Address Translation (NAT).
NAT makes all requests appear to originate from the same client, so that the CTE sends its response to the request back on the correct network connection. If the NAT IP address is not defined, the CTE sends responses out through the NIC where the gateway is identified.
Step 5 If you are using DNS, type 3 (Set DNS Parameter), press Enter, and enter one or more IP addresses.
Step 6 Type 31 (Review and Commit Changes), press Enter, and review the settings.
Step 7 If the settings are correct, type yes and press Enter.
You can connect a CTE to a server load balancer such as the Cisco Content Services Switch (CSS) 11000 or the Catalyst 6000 Family Content Switching Module (CSM). Characteristics of this configuration include the following:
If multiple CTEs are in use, each CTE has a different masquerade host IP address. In addition, the CTE modifies all URLs embedded within a page to include the masquerade host IP address. This use of the masquerade host IP address ensures that the redirected client returns to the CTE it first encountered, providing session stickiness. The association between a particular request and CTE is broken only when the client makes a new connection on port 80.
The CTE farm and the web server farm are directly accessible through load-balanced virtual IP (VIP) addresses. This configuration enables you to direct traffic that originates from a wireless device to the CTE farm VIP address.
The procedures in this section are specific to the CSS, although CSM setup is similar. Figure 9 shows a CSM setup in which CTE requests go to the server load balancer, rather than the router.
This section uses the example configuration shown in Figure 10.
The following sections describe how to configure a CTE with a server load balancer:
To establish the physical connection, do the following:
Use the CTE console to display and configure parameters for the CTE.
To display network parameters, perform this step:
Current parameters show any uncommitted changes made in the current session.
To configure network parameters, perform these steps:
Step 2 Answer the prompts as follows:
For Figure 10, the network parameters for CTE1 are as follows:
Step 3 Type 5 (Set Default Web-Server/Web-Page), press Enter, and enter a virtual IP address for the web server or a URL for the CTE start page (such as a portal page).
Step 4 Type 4 (Set Masquerade Host), press Enter, and enter an IP address for NAT.
NAT makes all requests appear to originate from the same client, so that the CTE sends its response to the request back on the correct network connection. If the NAT IP address is not defined, the CTE sends responses out through the NIC where the gateway is identified.
Step 5 If you are using DNS, type 3 (Set DNS Parameter), press Enter, and enter one or more IP addresses.
Step 6 Type 31 (Review and Commit Changes), press Enter, and review the settings.
Step 7 If the settings are correct, type yes and press Enter.
To configure additional CTEs, repeat the above procedure for each CTE.
The basic process for configuring a server load balancer, such as the CSS, is as follows:
1. Establish a console port connection to the server load balancer.
2. Define the interfaces to the VLANs.
4. Define services, owners, and content rules.
5. Check network connectivity.
This section describes the general steps for configuring the CSS, based on the example configuration shown in Figure 10. For the CLI commands needed to complete this configuration, see the "Configuration Example" section.
To configure a server load balancer for operation with a CTE, perform these steps:
Step 2 Create links between the CTE ports and the server load balancer by adding the client-side and server-side VLANs and defining the interfaces to the VLANs.
In the example configuration in Figure 10, the e1 and e2 ports are the interfaces for VLAN2; e3 and e4 are the interfaces for VLAN3.
Step 3 Specify the IP addresses for the VLAN circuits.
In the sample configuration, the IP address for the VLAN2 circuit is 192.168.2.254. The IP address for the VLAN3 circuit is 192.168.3.254.
Step 4 Create services to identify the two CTEs.
In the sample configuration, the IP address for the CTE1 service is 192.168.2.1 and for the CTE2 service is 192.168.2.2.
Step 5 Create an owner so you can define content rules for the CTE1 and CTE2 services.
Step 6 Create a Layer 3 content rule for the services.
In the sample configuration, the content rule is configured with the virtual IP address 192.168.3.252 and is added to the CTE1 and CTE2 services.
Step 7 Check network connectivity.
The following sections describe proxy configuration:
By default, the CTE proxies only the web pages it has transformed in order to prevent access to protected servers that are on the same subnet as the CTE. You can use the CTE console to override the default behavior so that the CTE proxies all web pages. For more information, see the "Important Security Information" section.
To proxy all web pages, perform these steps:
Step 2 Enter yes to the prompt.
You can specify that CTE requests for web pages go through a proxy server or use a direct connection. For example, you can specify a proxy server for nonsecure requests and use a direct connection for secure requests.
To specify a proxy server for HTTP (nonsecure requests), perform these steps:
Step 2 Enter the HTTP proxy IP address and press Enter.
To specify a proxy server for HTTPS (secure requests), perform these steps:
Step 2 Enter the HTTPS proxy IP address and press Enter.
To disable a proxy server, perform these steps:
Step 2 Specify 0 as the IP address and press Enter.
This section contains the CTE console and CLI commands needed to configure two CTEs with a Cisco CSS 11000, as shown in Figure 11.
To configure network parameters for CTE1, perform these steps from the CTE console for CTE1:
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To configure network parameters for CTE2, perform these steps from the CTE console for CTE2:
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To configure the server load balancer, perform these steps from a computer that is connected to the console port of the server load balancer and logged into the CSS:
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Note The following steps are representative of what is required to configure a server load balancer. The specific commands that you need to use are based on your network topology. |
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Upon startup, Design Studio prompts for a username, password, CTE IP address, and server upload port. The username and password are created through the CTE console.
To create a login for a Design Studio user, perform these steps:
Step 2 Type a username of at least six characters and press Enter.
Step 3 Type a password of at least eight characters and press Enter.
Step 4 Type 31 (Review and Commit Changes) and press Enter.
Step 5 Type yes and press Enter.
Always use the CTE console to shut down the CTE Server Software. Never shut down the CTE Server Software by powering off the CTE.
To shut down the CTE Server Software, perform these steps:
Step 2 Type S and press Enter.
To restart the CTE Server Software, perform these steps:
Step 2 Type R and press Enter.
You can monitor the performance of the CTE by using the CTE console to enable and disable the logging of system performance information and view the information collected during the logging. By reviewing the information provided, you can track unusual changes that can affect the stability and performance of the CTE. The information provided includes the following:
To monitor and view performance information, perform these steps:
Step 2 Answer yes to the prompt to start the monitoring and press Enter.
Step 3 When you are ready to view performance information, type 21 (View System Performance Information) and press Enter.
To stop the monitoring, perform these steps:
Step 2 Answer no to the prompt to stop the monitoring and press Enter.
You can upload a digital certificate to the CTE in order to secure transactions. The certificate must have the following characteristics:
If the private key is encrypted, you must use the CTE console to start the CTE each time the appliance powers up.
To upload a certificate, perform these steps:
Step 2 In the Open dialog box, navigate to the certificate file and then click Open.
Step 3 Use the CTE console to restart the CTE.
You upload upgrades to the CTE Server Software from Design Studio.
To upgrade the CTE Server Software, perform these steps:
Step 2 Download the upgrade file for the CTE to your PC.
The download process copies the file CTEserver116 to your PC.
Step 3 Start the already installed version of Design Studio.
Step 4 From the Design Studio File menu, choose Upload CTE 1400 Upgrade.
Step 5 In the Open dialog box, navigate to CTEserver116 and click Open.
Design Studio uploads and installs the CTE upgrade file. The CTE drops all active sessions during the installation and resumes operation in one minute or less.
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Note When you upgrade a CTE, the Design Studio users who connect to that CTE must also upgrade Design Studio to the corresponding version, as described in Release Notes for Cisco CTE 1400 and Design Studio. |
If the CTE device fails, follow the instructions in the Cisco CTE 1400 Hardware Installation Guide for diagnosing and recovering from a hardware failure. Once the hardware is operational, reinstall the CTE Server Software from the CD provided with the device.
To reinstall the CTE Server Software, perform these steps:
Step 2 When the installation completes, power off the CTE.
Step 3 Power on the CTE. As the device starts, eject the CD.
The CTE console menu displays if the installation was successful.
The following information explains how to deal with problems you might encounter when setting up and using the Cisco CTE 1400.
Verify that the following are correctly set up:
Verify that the following are correctly set up:
If you are sure that the rules are correctly created and applied in Design Studio and that they have been uploaded to the Cisco CTE 1400, verify the CTE configuration as follows:
The Cisco CTE 1400 does not work with Microsoft integrated Windows authentication (formerly called Windows NT Challenge/Response authentication). To work around this limitation, set the affected portion of your web site to Basic Authentication.
The reboot function on the CTE is disabled. You must use the CTE console to start and stop the device.
By default, the CTE redirects traffic from HTTP to HTTPS. European-made phones do not support those secure redirects, so you must disable secure redirects for the CTE. To do that, choose option 6 in the CTE console (Enable Secure Redirects), enter no, and then choose option 31 to commit the change.
For more information about the Cisco CTE 1400, refer to the following publications:
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