[governance] DPI technology and regulatory move

[Ralf Bendrath]

Izumi AIZU schrieb:

> I got involved in a study group on DPI (Deep Packet Inspection)
> and behavioral targeting advertising (and its policy issues) with ISP,
> Ad agency layers, and our government as observer in Japan.

Interesting. I thought DPI-based advertizing was almost dead after Phorm
ceased its operations in the US and the UK.

> Do you know how current DPI technology works in some detail?
> One target is, of course, Phorm, 

There is a detailed analysis of the Phorm system from FIPR:
Clayton, Richard. 2008. "The Phorm "Webwise" System." Cambridge:
Cambridge University Computer Lab,
http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2008/04/04/the-phorm-webwise-system/.

In general, DPI normally works with "configurable computing" (FPGA or
CPLD) instead of von-Neumann-machines, because of the high speeds
required for processing the data.

The interesting parameters are:
1) speed of throughput (bandwidth to be inspected)
2) number of policy rules (malware patterns, prohibited protocols, ...)
3) search algorithm
4) depth of inspection (newer DPI gear allows for about 35 bytes depth,
cheaper machines only look at layer-7 headers)
5) policy decisions (dropping, copying, re-directing, inserting,
throttling, ... packets).

While DPI has mostly been an extra box ISPs had to put into their
network, it is nowadays converging with routers and switches. Search for
"layer-7-switches" or "application-based routing".

Further reading:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_packet_inspection> gives a fairly
good bibliography.
Other sources are at https://www.dpacket.org/ and in my ISA conference
paper from last year:
<http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~bendrath/Paper_Ralf-Bendrath_DPI_v1-5.pdf>.

For the geeks: German DPI vendor ipoque has recently open-sourced its
PACE DPI engine: <http://www.opendpi.org/>
Xilinx also offers a full traffic management suite for their FPGA
machines:
<http://www.xilinx.com/support/documentation/white_papers/wp244.pdf>

Hope this helps,

Ralf
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, send any message to:
     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org

For all list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance