Deep packet inspection: An inside look into evolving IT security technology

Bandwidth monitoring is no longer confined to just analyzing network traffic—it has turned into an extensive solution to protect the network from slowness, outages, or potential security threats. One important technique that network admins use to make their bandwidth monitoring effective in all the mentioned aspects is deep packet inspection (DPI).

According to ReportLinker, the global market for DPI is set to reach a size of $13.1 billion by 2026. There are many aspects to consider when it comes to bandwidth requirements, including growth in IP traffic volume, an increase in smartphones and wireless devices, and competition between high-speed broadband connections.

This in turn has created opportunities for deep packet inspection. From promising a reliable connection to making sure that the allowed traffic is monitored and processed for security with packet filtering, deep packet inspection (DPI) is helping businesses in many ways.

Deep packet inspection (DPI), in a nutshell

Deep packet inspection, also known as information extraction, is a technique that analyzes both the header and the data parts of the data packets passing through a checkpoint. While traditional packet inspection only analyzes the header, i.e., the source and destination IP addresses, deep packet inspection locates, detects, categorizes, and restricts certain packets.

Use case

A software organization with over 15,000 employees has branch offices distributed globally. The organization's critical applications have to be maintained at their best performance, and the network administration team needs to ensure that the apps' backend, response times, server performance, and security are all functional for the best user experience.

The users of one of their benchmark applications one day suddenly face difficulty just accessing the app's home page. Since it's the organization's revenue-driving application, the team needs to rectify it before it affects the company's reputation and revenue. When the team checked the app's backend, performance, and availability, they concluded there was no major issue on the application's side. Similarly, there was no issue from the ISP's side either since the network's speed was fair.

When the admin implemented a tool that supports deep packet inspection, they discovered that the organization had enough bandwidth and that the problem was with only the app's server, which couldn't push any information to clients due to lag caused by too much data.

Without end-to-end visibility into the traffic passing through the network, the admin automatically assumed that the slowness was because of lower bandwidth; this resulted in them continuously upgrading the network bandwidth. With a deep packet inspection software, they were able to enhance the user experience, reduce expenditure on extra bandwidth, and prevent their organization's ROI from declining.

Back your network's performance and security with NetFlow Analyzer's Network Packet Sensor

NetFlow Analyzer is a flow-based bandwidth monitoring tool that provides you with real-time visibility into the network traffic of applications, interfaces, and devices. With flow data, you can find the applications, ports or protocols, and IP addresses that may be hogging bandwidth. For optimal and accurate bandwidth monitoring, NetFlow Analyzer offers a Network Packet Sensor.

The Network Packet Sensor is an agent-based installation that combines the functionalities of NetFlow Analyzer's NetFlow Generator and DPI engine. While the NetFlow Generator allows you to monitor traffic from non-flow-exporting devices, the deep packet inspection tool enables you to identify the origin of a network issue.

With the NetFlow DPI software, you can measure both application response time (ART) and network response time (NRT), and minimize the troubleshooting time by finding the root cause of a bandwidth bottleneck, whether it's application- or network-side.

Advantages of using the NetFlow Deep Packet Inspection (DPI)

• With visibility into ART and NRT data, you can avoid expensive investments in upgrading bandwidth and allocate available resources to streamline operations.
• Identify possible attacks and isolate threats before they affect the entire network.
Shield your vulnerable network systems by filtering non-compliant data.
• Detect source and destination IP addresses, which helps you to identify and prohibit traffic in your organization.

NetFlow Analyzer can streamline and optimize bandwidth management for industries as well as businesses of any size at an affordable price. Get a personalized quote suitable for your organization's requirements now.

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