80 Gbps Deep Packet Inspection Hardware Announced

An anonymous reader writes to tell us that Procera Networks is launching a new weapon on the deep packet inspection (DPI) front. At $800,000 these 80 Gbps tanks aren't going to be sitting in everyone's closet, but it could mean that more traffic shaping is on the way. "The PL10000 can handle up to 5 million subscribers and can track 48 million real-time data flows. That's certainly a potent piece of hardware, but larger ISPs will need more. That's why Procera designed the new machines with full support for synchronizing traffic flows where return traffic might be routed to a different PacketLogic machine. The machine receiving the return traffic can make the machine monitoring the outbound traffic aware that it sees the other half of a TCP/IP conversation, for example, giving the devices more accuracy than those which might only have access to one side."

Comments

DPI - Encrypt

[Unlikely_Hero]

DPI has only one option when presented with encrypted information however (at least afaik). Give the packet a low priority or pass it through normally (of course, it could also drop it entirely but doing that as a rule would be problematic to say the least). So it would be possible to force a bet. Can the ISPs afford to give encrypted traffic a very low priority?

I've decided: this is evil.

[TheGratefulNet]

think about the original definition of ethernet and of IP, in general.

in general, it was setup to pass packets and ideally to keep them in the same order and not drop them. beyond that, the upper layers (tcp and udp) did any higher level functions.

this worked! for the longest (damned) time, it worked.

and now, ISPs (and large networks) are starting to try to break out the 'cable is a bunch of bits' into discrete 'services' and then try to re-order things, drop things, queue them differently or somehow treat things non-uniformly.

I think this is Evil(tm).

I've been in the networking field for a few decades (really) and I've seen traffic shaping (what a euphemism, btw!) try to argue its case over and over again. but I keep getting back to the basic design principles of ethernet (csma-c/d) and tcp/udp-ip and when you have large enough pipes, you don't NEED a 'fast lane' or diamond lane, so to speak. it just mucks up the works, makes things harder to design and manage and really isn't helpful since you still need large pipes and all the shaping in the world won't CURE that, it only DEFERs things. that's not a cure.

data should be 'opaque' and first-come first-served. equal access. standard layer (phys, dl, network) rules should still apply.

ISPs who employ shaping are simply RIPPING OFF customers from their rightful bandwidth and also passing along the COST of the packet snooping hardware to us, the users. (don't think they'll just spring for the hardware on their own; they'll pass the costs of this stuff to us, to be sure).

I think its evil. once you look at it from enough angles, you see that its not at all a good thing.

Re:Will be obsolete...

[evanbd]

Heck, to defeat this you could just use AES with a default key. Everyone can use the same key, and have it be publicly known. It's fine because this thing doesn't have the compute power to decrypt in real time, even if it knows what it needs to be decrypting and what the key is. Screw handshaking, key management, etc -- just make the CPU cost nonzero and you're done.

Re:$800,000?

[sgt scrub]

Better yet, force the telco's to put up the fiber networks they were awarded huge tax cuts to put up! They don't have bandwidth problems they have accountability problems created by the RIAA et el backed by people desperately trying to find a way to sensor the net.