net neutrality

So, this is it? When I saw the news after the net neutrality discussion in Brussels the week before last, I was immensely relieved. Compared with the US – they are still in the middle of the net neutrality debate – Europe managed to find an acceptable compromise within a few months.

Last week I participated in a meeting of the German Association of Telecommunications and Value-Added Service Providers (VATM), which got together to establish a net neutrality working group. The discussion pretty much reiterated the arguments that have been exchanged in the United States for quite some time now. So far this has not been a big topic in Germany or Europe outside of some expert and activist circles. To my knowledge, operators have pretty much ignored the net neutrality debate so far. And I am not entirely sure why that is — maybe because we are just lagging behind the US as in so many other cases, or because of a different attitude toward civil liberties. Either way, I certainly welcome a debate provided it involves all stakeholders: legislators, operators, civil rights activists and technology experts.

Many Internet users worry about net neutrality and online privacy these days. And they see deep packet inspection (DPI) as their arch enemy. Common claims are that DPI reads the content of all packets and then decides based on the nature of the content whether to forward, slow down or drop that packet. This is a misconception based on poor understanding how today’s DPI for Internet traffic management works.

DPI is only the core technology of traffic management systems that is used for application classification. This is done by scanning the first few packets — including their payload — of each network flow for certain patterns out of a predefined list. DPI does not ‘read’ or even ‘understand’ any communication content. As soon as the communicating application of a network flow is identified, DPI stops for that flow. Then, bandwidth management rules determine how this flow is treated. Possible rules are: