Your View on DPI

[Paul Courchene]

Hi,

While I share the general view that Deep Packet Inspection (DPI)
is unfair in some regards, it may have legitimate use in Traffic Management,
Routing etc. 

I can't help but believe that Big Brother (National Security Agency)
has a lot of people dedicated to DPI, like it or not ... 


-paulc

Quoting Derek Martin <invalid-yPs96gJSFQo51KKgMmcfiw at public.gmane.org>:
> First off, for those of us not in the know, what's DPI?  The
> only meaning of that acronym I know is dots per inch.  A quick google
> search doesn't turn up anything obviously relevant. 
>
> On Wed, Jan 26, 2011 at 07:56:07PM -0500, Tom Martinson wrote:
> > 1.  As a user, I find them reprehensible.  In no way should anyone be
> > able to see my data traffic,
>
> That's just crazy.  Unless you're using encryption to prevent it. 
> Your analogy with the post office is a bad one... unless you want to
> extend it a bit.  Data that's not encrypted is like sending a post
> card.  Encryption is the equivalent of an envelope.  You don't have to
> agree, but in practical terms, that's just the way it is. 
>
> > and decide for me that my Hulu download should have a lower priority
> > than my email traffic, or vice versa. 
>
> While I agree in principle, that also is kind of crazy.  QoS and other
> schemes for throttling bandwidth are essential mechanisms for ensuring
> that end users get a reasonable internet experience.  Streaming video
> packets, in general, SHOULD have a higher priority than e-mail
> traffic, so that you don't experience skips and such just because your
> e-mail client is downloading an e-mail with a huge attachment while
> you're watching, etc. 
>
> > Also it is not right for someone to have the ability and the need to
> > "inspect" my packets and do with them as they wish, (I think that
> > everyone remembers all those ACK resets to fight P2P traffic). 
>
> I agree to an extent...  That is, I agree literally with your
> statement.  But, they should be able to inspect your packets, because
> the packets are going over their hardware to get to you... and they
> should be able to make decisions about how to forward those packets
> based on the contents, so long as it is for the benefit of their
> customers. 
>
> My understanding is that the post office can and does inspect and even
> x-ray packages it deems suspicious, or otherwise appropriate to
> inspect. 
>
> > DPI was also used by NebUadd to identify advertisements and then
> > substitute in what they want to put in.  This screams in the face of
> > privacy issues. 
>
> If this is true, it does seem pretty unacceptable.  But not for
> privacy reasons...  there's no personally identifying information in
> an ad (at least, not normally).  It's more unacceptable because
> someone paid for that traffic to get to the recipient, and the
> recipient may even have specifically wanted it (though, if it really
> was an ad, that seems unlikely). 
>
> -- Derek D. Martin    http://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
> -=-=-=-=-
> This message is posted from an invalid address.  Replying to it will 
> result in
> undeliverable mail due to spam prevention.  Sorry for the inconvenience. 
>



  --
  paulc