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The network technology called “deep packet inspection” looks at the information in a single data packet moving through a network, to determine how important it is and how best to handle it. While that helps your digital phone call go through without a hitch, it has also been tied to Iran’s efforts to spy on citizens that have been protesting the recent elections.
The market for DPI products is not a small one — the global market will reach $1 billion by 2010, according to a report from Light Reading Insider. New England has been on the forefront of development and commercialization of DPI. One of the earliest players in that field was Ellacoya Networks Inc. of New Hampshire. The company was acquired in 2008 by Lexington-based Arbor Networks Inc., itself a DPI technology company.
One of Ellacoya’s founders, Kurt Dobbins, joined Arbor and is now chief technology officer for IP services. In Arbor’s version of DPI, the “inspection” aspect of deep-packet inspection ends at what is termed the “envelope” level.
“It is used to classify applications: It is not used to read or reply or look into the actual data in the packet,” Dobbins said.
Security is one of the areas in which few people question the value of DPI. Service providers can use DPI to identify suspicious data packets and squash them, helping to keep e-mail spam out of inboxes and denial-of-service attacks from bringing down Internet connections. But that need for security also opens up the service providers to possible privacy abuses, says John Palfrey, faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.
“I think DPI is a reality in today’s technical world,” Palfrey said. “If you want to find certain patterns, that is a great way to do it.”
Palfrey noted that one of the issues that plagues DPI is the lack of transparency as much as any possible privacy abuse. Being able to make the decision that you are willing to lose a little privacy for enhanced security should be the consumer’s to make. But discovering your service provider has dropped a mysterious black box on its network after the fact isn’t the way to do it.
In Westborough, Top Layer Networks Inc. puts such DPI-enabled boxes on the network for its clients, but solely for enhancing network security, it says. The company has to look deep into each data packet to identify a network attack, such as a virus. But that is all it looks at, said Mike Paquette, chief strategy officer.
“It isn’t so much the depth,” Paquette said. “It really is what are you looking for when you inspect it.”
Jon Morgan, senior director of product marketing at Tewksbury-based Starent Networks Inc., echoed that sentiment, but touted the value of being able to selectively filter out not only content harmful to your network, but unwanted content, such as pornographic material. “Maybe we don’t want our kids to look at certain X-rated sites,” Morgan said.
Starent, which is focusing on one of the areas in which DPI has yet to be widely adopted, wireless communications, also provides a DPI-based service that will help advertisers better target ads across a mobile network.
For Paquette, one of the major issues facing consumers and companies is how best to ensure that private communications stay private, and service providers or governments don’t see what they shouldn’t be seeing.
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