DPI Coverage Getting it Wrong

Over the past two days news has trickled out that NebuAd's CEO has resigned and the company is now suspending their web-monitoring plans. Blogs and mainstream media are not only calling this a win for online privacy, but a few have talked about how this will kill off deep packet inspection (DPI) as a technology. ZDnet's "Between the Lines" more specifically wrote:

"...it doesn’t sound like there’s a long prosperous future ahead for deep packet inspection..."

As Dennis commented on the ZDnet post, this is a bit of 'throwing the baby out with the bathwater'. DPI capabilities go way beyond marketing uses, including enhancing network security and data leak prevention. To collectively dismiss DPI because of the NebuAd example is short-sighted and a bit irresponsible.

To elaborate on these points, here are the DPI slides we shared a few weeks ago from Dennis' portion of the DPI webinar. These should be helpful for folks who are only looking at one angle of this story.

Posted by Kyle Flaherty (2008/09/04 08:40:48.605 GMT-5)