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Citrix buys Bytemobile, targets mobile operators

Kevin Fitchard — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 12:53:03 +0000

Desktop virtualization and cloud computing vendor Citrix Systems is expanding into the mobile infrastructure market, announcing on Thursday it plans to acquire mobile traffic optimization company Bytemobile. The companies didn’t disclose the terms of the deal, but they expect it to close in the third quarter.

Bytemobile has two core products: Unison and the T-Series Adaptive Traffic Management System, both of which use a combination of content caching, deep packet inspection (DPI), policy management, analytics and video and web traffic optimization technologies to shape mobile data traffic as it traverses the operator’s network.

The platforms can be used to pare down payloads bound for the mobile phone – for instance scaling video to the resolution of each device’s screen– and manage congestion over an operator’s 3G and 4G data networks. Another key feature is the ability of Unison and T-Series to prioritize certain packets over others. Carriers already use traffic prioritization to throttle customers that exceed soft data caps. But the technology could become more significant in the future if carriers decide to give their own VoIP services preferential treatment and start favoring specific content partners’ video and Web services through “toll-free” traffic agreements.

Privately held and based in Santa Clara, Calif., Bytemobile isn’t the biggest infrastructure vendor in the wireless industry – it has 300 employees – but it certainly has a lot of reach. Bytemobile equipment is in 130 carriers’ core networks, which collectively serve 2 billion subscribers in 60 countries. The firm estimates that 20 petabytes of data pass through its networks daily.

Citrix and Bytemobile already have a relationship to build on. At Mobile World Congress, Bytemobile announced it would house its T-Series management platform on Citrix’s NetScaler cloud networking platform.

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Internet Observatory offers real-time IP traffic trends

Janko Roettgers — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 14:32:58 +0000

A new website dubbed the Internet Observatory, from German traffic management company Ipoque, offers real-time insights into what Internet users are doing online at any given time.

The idea behind the Internet Observatory, unveiled at the Broadband World Forum in Paris on Tuesday, is to show continent by continent how much traffic is caused by P2P; how Skype traffic fares against SIP traffic; and which Instant Messaging client generates the most traffic. The project is currently restricted to statistics from Europe, but real-time data for other continents as well as more in-depth statistics about each continent should to added soon, according to Ipoque.

Even with its limited geographic scope, the site already reveals some interesting trends. Did you know, for example, that P2P is still more popular than media streaming in Europe? And that 97 percent of that P2P traffic comes from BitTorrent?

The Internet Observatory is a follow-up project to Ipoque’s yearly Internet studies, and the data is compiled with the help of Ipoque’s partners and clients. Part of the data is contributed to a project sponsored by the European Commission.

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Is Mediacom Using Deep-Packet Inspection for Ads?

Stacey Higginbotham — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 23:18:49 +0000

Mediacom, a regional cable provider and ISP that serves about 838,000 broadband subscribers, appears to be using a controversial technology to insert advertisements on top of web sites its customers visit, according to a report from BroadbandReports. The report accuses Mediacom of using deep-packet inspection technology and DNS redirection, which persist even if someone uses third-party DNS services, to track users and show ads on top of existing sites.

The site shows images of Mediacom takeovers of the Google and Apple sites, and offers confirmation grabbed from the site’s user forums. While I’ve reached out to Mediacom for comment, I haven’t heard back yet. From BroadbandReports:

Mediacom is literally intercepting website data and injecting their own code into websites in order to deliver ads where they weren’t intended. The technology isn’t new; if you recall Rogers was doing this back in 2007 in order to deliver ISP-specific messages using technology from Perftech. However, few ISPs have had the nerve to employ this technology for their own ads, given the inevitable backlash from consumers, ad networks, lawyers and potentially regulators.

The Free Press has already condemned the practice and has called on the Federal Communications Commission to investigate. Are we about to revisit the Phorm and NebuAd debates of 2008 all over again? Given the rise of startups such as Kindsight and the return of Phorm, it seems DPI may be trying to stage a comeback with Mediacom’s help.

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Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user dirac3000

When It Comes to Net Neutrality, the Future of Filtering Is Up for Debate

Paul Sweeting — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 00:02:09 +0000

The FCC has yet to issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) formally kicking off the process of writing and promulgating net neutrality regulations, but the battle over the scope of the new rules is already well underway within media and technology circles in Washington, D.C. At the Future of Music Coalition Policy Summit on the campus of Georgetown University on Monday, for example, panelists clashed over whether the agency will or should allow, or even mandate, the use of deep packet inspection (DPI) and other invasive techniques to block the illegal transfer of copyrighted content over broadband networks.

“The devil is certainly going to be in the details,” Hal Ponder, director of government affairs for the American Federation of Musicians, said. “I don’t know if there’s a technical solution but I think everything needs to be explored, including filtering, because we do want to see artists’ work protected.” The AFM officially supports the principle of net neutrality, Ponder said, but insists that any new regulation permit the use of technical measures to protect copyright.

But there were numerous skeptics of filtering, the loudest being Harold Feld, legal director of Public Knowledge, a non-profit public interest group that has frequently sparred with copyright interests. The problem, he said, is that there’s a culture of user behavior and there’s a culture of regulatory behavior, and the two are completely disconnected. “If you introduce filtering, or require filtering, people will find a way around the filtering,” he explained. “They’ll start encrypting content so the filters can’t detect it, or they’ll find some other way. Then you’ll have people coming to Washington saying we need to make it illegal to find a way around the filters and that somehow that will solve the problem. That’s exactly what we did in 1998 when we passed the [Digital Millennium Copyright Act], which made it illegal to get around DRM. Does anyone think piracy disappeared in 1998?”

The real issue, Feld insisted, is not whether copyrighted works should be protected against piracy, but whether users of digital networks should be subjected to the sort of intimate and intrusive monitoring of their behavior that filtering would require. “How comfortable would you being having someone listen in to all of your phone conversations?” he asked. “Because that’s really what you’re talking about with DPI: someone listening in on everything you do online and monitoring your behavior.”

In a brief keynote address, FCC chairman Julius Genachowski himself shed little light on how — or even if — the agency will address the use of DPI or filtering. “Openness and respect for copyright can and must coexist,” he said, reiterating comments he made to the Brookings Institution two weeks ago. But he said nothing about how the FCC will seek to balance those priorities.

Daniel Klein, media accounts director for London-based cyber-security firm the Detica Group, cautioned that banning the use of DPI would be counterproductive, arguing there are parts of the technology that are incredibly useful. Ultimately, Klein said, the question of filtering isn’t technological, but behavorial. “The day we start blocking [content] people will change their behavior. They’ll start encrypting or whatever. Encryption is a very real fear. If you want to affect piracy you really have to focus on the behavior.”

According to Klein, less is known about aggregate online behavior than could or should be, in part because firms such as Detica Group that could measure it fear being drawn into a dispute over filtering. “Nobody in the world is measuring what is actually going down the pipe because they’re terrified of the filtering side of the debate,” he said. “The truth is that could provide very valuable information to the industry and to artists about what people are really doing with the content so that they might be able to respond in some way other than filtering. You really need to separate the question of measurement from the question of how you respond.”

Whether the FCC will be able to keep those issues separate in setting net neutrality rules no one yet knows. The agency plans to publish its NPRM in the Federal Register later this month.

Paul Sweeting writes The Media Wonk blog and is author of an upcoming report on the e-book market for GigaOM Pro.

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FTC to Take a Deep Look at DPI?

Stacey Higginbotham — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:00:41 +0000

In the battle over consumer privacy, it looks like information gleaned from deep packet inspection may be under fire, according to a post on Perkins Coie’s law blog. Deep packet inspection tools can review the content of each packet of information traversing the web. The post, written by Barry Reingold, a partner with the law firm, notes that the Bureau of Consumer Protection director at the Federal Trade Commission has indicated how unhappy he is with the status of online privacy, and posits that DPI may be the next aspect of data collection that will be regulated.

This is a sentiment that’s filtered through Congress in the last year, as consumers and Capitol Hill are made aware of invasive practices such as search firms storing your search data for months and ISPs trying to sell your surfing habits to advertisers. From the post:

Although Vladeck didn’t say more on the subject (this was only his third day on the job!) his deputy, Eileen Harrington, hinted at the agency’s proposed approach. She said that Internet communication of consumer data runs along two continuums, consisting of the consumer’s (a) conscious provision of data (like using a charge card to make a purchase) versus unconscious provision (like generating click stream data), and (b) control over the dissemination and use of that data (like an email I send to a single person with a “private” designation that prevents the recipient from retransmitting it, versus my lack of control over my ISP’s deep packet inspection of my emails). Consumers need the most protection from practices that generate large amounts of information about them and use it freely.

So deep packet inspection, in her view the most dangerous form of data collection, should be the most carefully regulated.

DPI has been used as a technology to invade privacy, and now as a tool to censor protesters in Iran. While it does provide a useful way to track security threats on ISPs’ networks, filter out spam, and meet quality-of-service agreements, it looks like regulators may view DPI as a technology that causes more problems than it solves.

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DPI: It's Going to Be About More Than Ads

Stacey Higginbotham — Fri, 01 May 2009 04:00:58 +0000

The practice of deep packet inspection has raised privacy concerns among several organizations, including The Free Press and Center for Democracy and Technology. Congress recently heard testimony about ISPs using the technology to target advertising at web surfers. But DPI vendors reveal that advertising is a blunt instrument when it comes to generating revenue. It’s likely most carriers will use DPI, which can determine the details of packets traveling over the web, to boost sales in far more subtle ways.

Kurt Dobbins, chief technology officer of IP services with Arbor Networks, which purchased DPI vendor Ellacoya in January 2008, talked to me last year about the likelihood of using DPI to provide a form of consumption-based broadband. Instead of a flat-out metering program, such packages might offer subscribers an emphasis on voice or gaming services and prioritize packets accordingly. Kevin Walsh, vice president of marketing at Zeugma Systems, has a similar vision. Zeugma, which provides equipment to telecoms, doesn’t do DPI but can track some information on packets in order to prioritize certain content.

Operators could let consumers subscribe to a broad video package that would include prioritization for a service such as online video. Walsh was quick to point out that such an offering wouldn’t degrade normal Internet traffic, but it’s still an effort that could raise a few eyebrows. Aside from using DPI as a way to offer different broadband packages, Dobbins says it can and will be used as a way to foster security. He stressed that by monitoring network traffic for spam or for computers that are being used in attacks, DPI can alert ISPs and even help them alert affected customers. This is less about spam filtering on a machine for an individual consumer, and more about offering clean pipes, Dobbins said.

However, security does come at the expense of privacy, which is the underlying issue that led to the hearings in Congress in the first place. And so far, DPI has been used by companies such as NebuAd to track surfing habits in order to serve up ads, and Comcast in order to block P2P packets. The technology isn’t evil, but its implementations have been questionable.

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