Honestly, I am surprised by the great response to OpenDPI. Two weeks after releasing version 1.0 we have counted 1000 downloads. This is much more than we expected for this very special piece of software.

Making the own intellectual property public is an interesting experience. Of course we had a long internal discussion about that irreversible step beforehand. What do we give away and what will we get back?  What will other people say about our software? But all responses showed that it was the right step. (more…)

Last week, I participated in a workshop session called “Deep Packet Inspection: Technology, Promise & Controversy. What You Need to Know.” at the Broadband World Forum Europe 2009 in Paris. The panel discussion with participants from DPI vendors, Internet service providers and net neutrality activists was meant to “foster an open, balanced and rigorous discussion of DPI’s capabilities, benefits, limits and concerns”.

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Many Internet users worry about net neutrality and online privacy these days. And they see deep packet inspection (DPI) as their arch enemy. Common claims are that DPI reads the content of all packets and then decides based on the nature of the content whether to forward, slow down or drop that packet. This is a misconception based on poor understanding how today’s DPI for Internet traffic management works. (more…)

Finally!! We have been waiting for these test results for quite some time yet. The actual measurements were conducted back in January. So what happened then? As noted in the Internet Evolution test report published last Thursday, “Vendors got the right to review their results and our interpretations related to their results“. Apparently, some vendors took longer for this process to finish than others. Let’s not speculate about the reasons here. (more…)

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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