Deep packet inspection vs accounting

Deep packet inspection vs accounting

Posted Jul 25, 2008 16:12 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954)
Parent article: Deep packet inspection

The traffic shaping side of deep packet inspection/processing just points out the need for better accounting. We have packet carriers sticking their noses where they don't belong -- inside packets -- to try to determine the value of giving service to those packets. We know this is bad because the packet carriers are in no position to make that judgement. But the folks who are in that position, e.g. the Bittorent program and the person who uses it, aren't given the ability to make the traffic shaping decision.

If we paid by the packet, we could make our own decision as to whether our song download is as urgent as our neighbor's web browsing. Especially if we could choose different service levels at different prices.

As it stands, Comcast's reprehensible packet rewriting does benefit large numbers of Internet users. Taking that ability away from Comcast hurts them.

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