Internet traffic management likely to become more invasive: report

Internet traffic management could soon become more acute as some vendors adopt tougher inspection capabilities to overcome the limitations of deep packet inspection (DPI) technology, a new report released this week by the CRTC suggests. The report, prepared by Heavy Reading, is part of the commission's proceeding and public hearing on Internet traffic management practices. The hearing is scheduled to begin on July 6. And while the report was commissioned for that proceeding, it's likely to get referenced during the CRTC's New Media hearing set to begin next week. DPI allows ISPs to identify the types of applications associated with particular packets and then control the flow of those packets depending on set of principles. The technology is primarily used by ISPs looking to control the flow of peer-to-peer file sharing of videos and audio files so they don't hog the network. But according to the report, ISP Traffic Management Technologies: The State of the Art, DPI has limitations that can cause false negatives and false positives, meaning that some legitimate applications will get "shaped" while P2P applications an ISP is trying to control will get through unfettered. Dubbing the next stage as deep flow inspection (DFI), the Heavy Reading report says this new generation of traffic management technology complements current DPI services. "DFI can be thought of as a technique that complements DPI by more accurately identifying underlying applications and protocols. DFI infers the application (or threat) from the behavior of the flow of packets, instead of looking for protocol signatures or port usage in the packet itself," writes Graham Finnie, author of the report and chief analyst with Heavy Reading. While DFI isn't associated with a single technique, Heavy Reading says the goal of DFI is the same: "to infer the identity of applications that cannot otherwise be detected by DPI because they have been disguised in some way." Policy control is yet another technology that can be implemented to address bandwidth constraints or manage Internet traffic for ISPs. While DPI and DFI aren't standardized tools and are for the most part proprietary, there are standards for policy control within the various governing bodies such as 3GPP and 3GPP2 for mobile operators, ETSI for telcos and CableLabs for cable providers. Essentially policy control tells the network what a particular subscriber can do. "If customer A subscribes to the Gold Tier package, and if it is the weekend, then customer A may download unlimited numbers of music videos," the report highlights as a possible example. The extent of the control can be adjusted by adding other conditions to the phrase such as indicating the amount the subscriber has previously downloaded. Focusing on the subscriber in the future The report notes that while there are more sophisticated tools to manage the types of applications subscribers are using, the future of traffic management will turn to the individual subscriber. "Subscriber-oriented vendors envisage subscribers picking and choosing from a wide range of options and tuning applications to meet their specific needs - meaning that services are potentially more valued and therefore potentially more valuable. The emphasis shifts from controlling bandwidth costs to retaining and upgrading customers," notes the report. The move away from network and application management is in part being driven by development in the identity management area, according to Heavy Reading. It's based on the idea that once a subscriber is identified on one network, the subscriber's identity can be passed off onto third parties without the subscriber having to re-authenticate. This is called single sign-on. This concept has yet to be implemented, says Heavy Reading, but does provide some direction on where the industry is heading. Top recommendations from ISP Traffic Management Technologies: The State of the Art Traffic management technologies are becoming more intelligent, allowing relatively fine-grained discrimination among the applications running on IP networks, and allowing service providers if they wish to manage traffic at the level of the individual subscriber. The most important current technology for traffic management is deep packet inspection (DPI). DPI is becoming widely deployed because it allows ISPs to identify applications more accurately and because it has a broad range of potential applications, including handling security threats. Compared to other aspects of telecommunications, there are few industry standards for DPI, making it harder to judge what is possible in this area, but also creating a dynamic competitive environment where the range of options and capabilities available to service providers is growing. Though not yet widely deployed, there is growing interest in and demand for policy servers and architectures, especially among Tier 1 telcos. Policy servers can handle a broader range of management tasks more flexibly than DPI, and are mostly part of an internationally recognized and standardized architecture. Policy servers tend to focus more on the subscriber than the application. The most important current application for these technologies is management of peer to peer (P2P) traffic and applications. As well as this, technologies are also often used to give preferential treatment to an ISP's own applications or premium-tier subscribers, to manage the growing range of security threats, and for traffic monitoring and analysis, among other things. Technology development and market demand is shifting from applications management to subscriber management. Managing at the subscriber level gives service providers more options, and is linked to emerging concepts such as identity management. Development focus is also shifting to meeting the needs of mobile service providers. As cellular network operators launch flat-rate mobile broadband services, they are seeking more help in managing traffic, applications and subscribers, and vendors are responding. Technologies are continuing to evolve as new ideas such as deep flow inspection are added. Many of these emerging technologies are focused either on improving the ability to recognize applications, or improving the ability to respond to changes in the behavior of individual subscribers.

Internet traffic management likely to become more invasive: report

News | 02/11/2009 8:49 pm EST

To keep reading, get a free trial.

Already a Subscriber?

Reuse & Permissions

Inside The Wire Report

Information

Hill Times Publishing

Get in Touch With Us