'DPI' by any name continues to climb in importance

Infonetics Research released its updated Service Provider Deep Packet Inspection Products Market Outlook, a market share and forecast report that tracks standalone DPI solutions and vendors. As in its previous report, Infonetics still thinks that the DPI product market will grow 6-fold to $1.5 billion by 2014 (previous estimates were for that to happen by 2013). The extended period for that growth could have something to do with lingering distrust around net neutrality and previous issues around DPI. Those issues still conjure up bad feelings in the mainstream as its abuse by some MSOs is still remembered; and therefore, telcos may pay the price for a while for being straightforward about its use. I even notice some vendors are coming up with fancier marketing names for what essentially equates to “DPI,” but perhaps they don't want any negative feelings about that label to hinder their ability to sell and deploy solutions, as some continue with a wait-and-see approach to DPI.

However, it does seem like we are moving into a different generation of DPI now, so infringement of net neutrality shouldn't be as big an issue as it was a couple years ago. Though “DPI” used to -- in some circles -- equate to “throttling” or “behavioral targeting,” DPI today really seems to be more an enabler to making networks more “visible” for the purposes of better predicting usage and peak congestion times. Therefore operators can devise better marketing and capacity management strategies -- tailored around the actual usage by different types of users at different times, and the availability of different elements on the network to support the peak periods.