To DPI or not to DPI

Few years ago term DPI (deep packet internet) was more connected to security than it was to Internet access. However as the products and market evolved i would say that the question is not any more "to do it, or not do it" but the question is rather when and how. DPI devices are showing increasing technology maturity, and Network Service Providers (especially mobile ones) are showing increasing degree of acceptance.

What we did so far (as a company which does technology enablement) is around 25 Service Provider implementations of DPI devices (atm we work only with Cisco Service Control Engine). Initial drive for DPI was throtling P2P traffic on the interconnection links, than the focus was shifted to fair usage policies, and nowadays DPI is mostly used for new services enablement in conjuction with different Policy Managment tools.

Which leads us to the questions of "all you can eat" quotas and net netrality but more on that on some other occasion!