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[LDM #QJP-576803]: LDM data transfer integrity



Hi Joe,

re:
> I received your contact information from Art Cayette (Spawar Office
> Charleston).

I redirected your question into our inquiry tracking system so that your
questions can be seen/responded to by multiple people here at Unidata...

re:
> I am currently working a project for him and was wondering
> if you could provide some insight in regards to the LDM software. There
> is currently a requirement to verify the integrity of data received via
> LDM's services. Is there any kind of checksum within the software that
> verifies whether or not data has been modified?

No.  The LDM code does nothing with the contents of products it transfers,
so we never saw the need for an end-to-end check of the data's integrity.
In principle, the data products should either arrive at the receiving
site without modification of any sort.  In practice, however, we have seen
instances where network-related problems (e.g., faulty routers, problems
on the receiving machine's Ethernet interface, etc.) have cause corruption
of products.  We are aware of this kind of corruption of data in only a
handful of cases over the some 15+ years the LDM has been in use at Unidata
member institutions.  Not bad given the volume/number of products that is
being routinely moved using the LDM/IDD :-)

> I am aware that the
> software uses MD5 to perform the checking of duplicate products in the
> product-queue.

Correct.

> Does the software allow for encryption of data products?

No.

Any encryption would need to be done to a product before it is inserted
into an LDM queue.  The corresponding decryption would be the duty of
a process running on the downstream machine.

> I'm aware that these question may be out of the blue (my apologies),

No worries.

> but I really wanted to gain a better insight as to how LDM performs.
> Any suggestion or comments would be greatly appreciated.

The LDM does not know or care what is in a data product it transfers.
We view securing the contents of products the duty of the LDM users.

> Thank you in advance,

No worries.

Please direct all LDM-related inquiries to address@hidden.
This will insure that they get answered as soon as possible and by the
most expert of authority.

Cheers,

Tom
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Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: QJP-576803
Department: Support LDM
Priority: Normal
Status: Closed