DPI: The good, the bad, the stuff no one talks about

TelephonyOnline is running a three-part series on "deep packet inspection" (DPI). Few technologies get their own Congressional hearings, but deep packet inspection is proving to be no ordinary technology. And even if the July 17th House Telecommunications Subcommittee hearing on DPI included the occasional accidental reference to "deep pocket inspection" from elected officials, it was clear that DPI is squarely in the political crosshairs as a potentially dangerous tool for ISPs. The primary concern raised in Washington is user privacy, foreshadowing the possibility of unprecedented federal rules over how this technology can be used by ISPs. At the same time, however, vendors are still piling into the DPI arena, promising more and better ways for service providers to manage traffic, use their network resources more efficiently, protect latency-sensitive voice and video signals, and even develop new services that promise new revenues.