Despite the very public black eye given to deep packet inspection (DPI) technology following its use to block peer-to-peer traffic and to target ads to unsuspecting Web surfers based on their browsing habits, a growing number of technology companies are incorporating DPI or similar technology into their products.

While this may seem like contrary behavior to those outside the telecom industry, the truth is that DPI is simply too valuable a technology to be set aside. Instead, telecom companies are pursuing ways to make it more palatable.

“This is another situation where the technology is advancing faster than the understanding of how to apply it,” said Mike Coward, chief technology officer of Continuous Computing, which provides components to DPI vendors. “All the things we can do with the technology would scare the average consumer. The dance at this point is to figure out exactly the right set of controls and constraints to put on the network that consumers will accept.”

“What we have been evangelizing is treating DPI as a fundamental technology that has a role in the creation of security, content-based billing, interception, advertising infrastructure, and the list goes on,” said Elan Amir, CEO of Bivio Networks. “It is a fundamental underlying technology for next-generation networking stores.”


What DPI does is allow a network operator to determine exactly what kind of traffic is traversing the network by examining each packet. That is why it’s possible to detect P2P traffic such as BitTorrent’s and to determine exactly what a Web surfer is viewing at a given point in time. Here are some of the things DPI can enable:

Parental Internet controls: “Customers are asking for solutions here, and this isn’t something you can put on the PC, because kids will figure out how to turn it off,” said Cam Cullen, director of product management and marketing for Allot Communications, which incorporates DPI into a service gateway. “As the subscriber’s traffic comes through, you can determine that they have subscribed to the service and redirect that traffic through a content filtering system that blocks or allows sites, depending on what the parent has signed up for.”