Deep packet inspection (DPI) is a controversial technology and has become a red flag for privacy protection activists. Particularly the debate between US cable operator Comcast and the government regulator FCC has attracted much media attention and contributed to the discredit of DPI. The FCC says in its Memorandum Opinion and Order against Comcast:

“[…] Comcast opens its customers’ mail because it wants to deliver mail not based on the address or type of stamp on the envelope but on the type of letter contained therein.”

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Admittedly, “X percent of the Internet is P2P” makes for a great headline and is an effective way to generate publicity. It would be dishonest to deny this was the reason ipoque started its Internet studies in 2006. It is, at the same time, a great opportunity to demonstrate the own capabilities. If the equipment can detect and measure it, it is able to control it. Other equipment vendors have released similar studies, and analyst companies even try to make money with such studies. In the past two months only, three Internet studies with a particular focus on P2P traffic have been published, and ipoque’s Internet Study 2008 will be released by the end of the year.

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Technically, the latest encryption and obfuscation enhancements of BitTorrent, the currently most popular peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing network, deserve respect. They come in the form of extensions to certain BitTorrent clients such as Vuze and BitComet, and they make life for deep packet inspection (DPI) vendors like us more difficult. Detection signatures have become more complex thus requiring more processing power.

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