DPI pays for itself: Current Business Cases
DPI-systems, which were the result of the merger of several packet filtering systems, greatly simplified the processes of managing networks and sites, as well as increased their protection from attacks. This made it possible to expand the scope of applicability of the in-depth traffic analysis technology.
Analysts believe that by 2018 the DPI market will reach $ 3.81 billion. It should be borne in mind that in 2013 it was estimated at only 742 million dollars. Last but not least, this growth is due to the fact that DPI-solutions allow providers to get a certain economic benefit. What functions of in-depth analysis of traffic save money, and will be discussed in our today's material.
/ Flickr / Norlando Pobre / CC
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When a user downloads files using the same protocol, the data transfer rate over others (VOIP, HTTP, etc.) drops significantly. Pages of sites open more slowly, video buffering is carried out for a long time - with an increase in the quality of downloaded videos, the load on the operator’s channel increases. For example, in March 2015, Netflix video traffic through the Australian provider iiNet networks accounted for 25% of the total. Active traffic management solves the problem of network congestion by reducing the priority of the most “voracious” protocols.
BitTorrent traffic limit per channel hour at the channel level, resulting in 20% bandwidth savings (Source: SlideShare )
“In order not to reach the ceiling, the operator often has to overpay for the extra band in order to cope with the load peaks,” says Dmitry Moldavanov, technical director of VAS Experts. - Prioritization of traffic at such moments allows to cut low-priority traffic and free up traffic for higher priority traffic. I note that users at this moment will not notice any difference. ”
Thus, systems for in-depth analysis of traffic can reduce the cost of the band for the operator, while maintaining the quality of services provided to customers at the same level.
The cache server allows you to send interesting information to people directly. For example, it can cache content from video services (these are YouTube, RuTube, etc.), as well as updates for software, including updates for operating systems. This increases the speed of access to data.
“Thus, the quality of the provided service (QoS) improves - the video content is delivered quickly without lags even in HD quality,” explains Dmitry. “This stimulates the transition of customers to more marginal tariff plans, the average revenue (ARPU) from which is much higher.”
Categories of application of DPI according to Heavy Reading
And this is a very important point - the company Heavy Reading conducted a survey among telecom companies in order to identify the main areas of application of DPI. And the most popular area was precisely the quality of service.
Connecting the cache server (Source: SlideShare )
It is also worth noting that cache servers can save bandwidth - during peak hours, the return of popular videos can be done from the cache.
One of the tasks of the DPI systems is to estimate traffic consumption. This information for each subscriber allows the formation of an individual tariff depending on the type of traffic consumed in a larger volume (for example, for Skype and Viber via VoIP). Information about the contents of data streams and their directions allows you to make informed decisions about peering, assess the need for caching.
Moreover, analytical tools provide the ability to protect traffic - to organize the protection of subscribers from spam, distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) and malicious software.
Protection against SYN Flood attacks (Source: SlideShare )
As for protection against DDoS, it is often implemented using various behavioral strategies to identify the abnormal behavior of "users" in the network. DPI simplifies a task using the Turing test, or CAPTCHA. Also, in-depth traffic analysis systems protect against attacks such as TCP SYN Flood and Fragmented UDP Flood, which cause excessive consumption of system resources (up to failure).
URL filtering by the PKN and the Ministry of Justice registries is another option for the DPI applicability in order to save money. In this case, the operator gets rid of the need to hire a person for an independent analysis of all the lists published by these organizations. Another application is subscriber policing: the band is cut for subscribers in accordance with their tariff plans - the speed can be changed at least every second, which adds flexibility and allows you to adapt to current conditions.
“We have a client for 20 thousand subscribers who wanted to buy a Cisco fee for several million, but decided to use DPI resources and save money on this,” says Dmitry. Other examples and calculation of the overall ROI benefits, which can be obtained from DPI, can be found in this video from the conference of telecom operators KROS-2014.
In-depth traffic analysis systems allow the provider to send messages to the subscriber while working on the Internet. Typically, such alerts are used to notify the client about the status of his account. However, this function can also be used to disseminate information about technical work, changes in the cost of tariffs, and even special offers.
News message for the client about the possibility of connecting a new channel (Source: SlideShare )
When the user opens the browser and enters the address of the site, he first gets to the page with a message from the operator, which is replaced by the requested page in a few seconds. This approach allows you to reach a wide audience - at least 73% of adult citizens of Russia use the Internet (about half of them do it every day).
Finally, I would like to note that when choosing a system for in-depth analysis of traffic, integration costs play an important role. Many providers consider this a decisive factor for connecting a DPI device (for diagrams of connecting a device for in-depth analysis of traffic to operator equipment, read one of our previous materials ). Here is a small example of calculating ROI.
Suppose that the subscribers of the provider consume 20 Gbit per month. The cost of 1 Gbit equals 3 thousand dollars, and the cost of the DPI system is 75 thousand. Then, with an effective reduction of uplink by 35%, the system of in-depth traffic analysis will provide 7 Gbps of bandwidth savings. If you translate it into monetary units, then we get 21 thousand dollars a month. In this scenario, the DPI-solution will pay off in less than 4 months.
If we take into account that additional functions (protection against malware, blocking prohibited sites, etc.) do not have to be paid extra, then the implementation of DPI will pay off even faster. Again, we note that the quality of the services provided to customers will not decrease.
PS Our DPI-digest: Analysis of traffic, locks, platforms and manufacturers of DPI systems .
Analysts believe that by 2018 the DPI market will reach $ 3.81 billion. It should be borne in mind that in 2013 it was estimated at only 742 million dollars. Last but not least, this growth is due to the fact that DPI-solutions allow providers to get a certain economic benefit. What functions of in-depth analysis of traffic save money, and will be discussed in our today's material.
/ Flickr / Norlando Pobre / CC')
Traffic prioritization
When a user downloads files using the same protocol, the data transfer rate over others (VOIP, HTTP, etc.) drops significantly. Pages of sites open more slowly, video buffering is carried out for a long time - with an increase in the quality of downloaded videos, the load on the operator’s channel increases. For example, in March 2015, Netflix video traffic through the Australian provider iiNet networks accounted for 25% of the total. Active traffic management solves the problem of network congestion by reducing the priority of the most “voracious” protocols.
BitTorrent traffic limit per channel hour at the channel level, resulting in 20% bandwidth savings (Source: SlideShare )
“In order not to reach the ceiling, the operator often has to overpay for the extra band in order to cope with the load peaks,” says Dmitry Moldavanov, technical director of VAS Experts. - Prioritization of traffic at such moments allows to cut low-priority traffic and free up traffic for higher priority traffic. I note that users at this moment will not notice any difference. ”
Thus, systems for in-depth analysis of traffic can reduce the cost of the band for the operator, while maintaining the quality of services provided to customers at the same level.
Caching
The cache server allows you to send interesting information to people directly. For example, it can cache content from video services (these are YouTube, RuTube, etc.), as well as updates for software, including updates for operating systems. This increases the speed of access to data.
“Thus, the quality of the provided service (QoS) improves - the video content is delivered quickly without lags even in HD quality,” explains Dmitry. “This stimulates the transition of customers to more marginal tariff plans, the average revenue (ARPU) from which is much higher.”
Categories of application of DPI according to Heavy Reading
And this is a very important point - the company Heavy Reading conducted a survey among telecom companies in order to identify the main areas of application of DPI. And the most popular area was precisely the quality of service.
Connecting the cache server (Source: SlideShare )
It is also worth noting that cache servers can save bandwidth - during peak hours, the return of popular videos can be done from the cache.
Analytics and DDoS Protection
One of the tasks of the DPI systems is to estimate traffic consumption. This information for each subscriber allows the formation of an individual tariff depending on the type of traffic consumed in a larger volume (for example, for Skype and Viber via VoIP). Information about the contents of data streams and their directions allows you to make informed decisions about peering, assess the need for caching.
Moreover, analytical tools provide the ability to protect traffic - to organize the protection of subscribers from spam, distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) and malicious software.
Protection against SYN Flood attacks (Source: SlideShare )
As for protection against DDoS, it is often implemented using various behavioral strategies to identify the abnormal behavior of "users" in the network. DPI simplifies a task using the Turing test, or CAPTCHA. Also, in-depth traffic analysis systems protect against attacks such as TCP SYN Flood and Fragmented UDP Flood, which cause excessive consumption of system resources (up to failure).
Solving technical problems
URL filtering by the PKN and the Ministry of Justice registries is another option for the DPI applicability in order to save money. In this case, the operator gets rid of the need to hire a person for an independent analysis of all the lists published by these organizations. Another application is subscriber policing: the band is cut for subscribers in accordance with their tariff plans - the speed can be changed at least every second, which adds flexibility and allows you to adapt to current conditions.
“We have a client for 20 thousand subscribers who wanted to buy a Cisco fee for several million, but decided to use DPI resources and save money on this,” says Dmitry. Other examples and calculation of the overall ROI benefits, which can be obtained from DPI, can be found in this video from the conference of telecom operators KROS-2014.
Alert subscribers
In-depth traffic analysis systems allow the provider to send messages to the subscriber while working on the Internet. Typically, such alerts are used to notify the client about the status of his account. However, this function can also be used to disseminate information about technical work, changes in the cost of tariffs, and even special offers.
News message for the client about the possibility of connecting a new channel (Source: SlideShare )
When the user opens the browser and enters the address of the site, he first gets to the page with a message from the operator, which is replaced by the requested page in a few seconds. This approach allows you to reach a wide audience - at least 73% of adult citizens of Russia use the Internet (about half of them do it every day).
Few calculations
Finally, I would like to note that when choosing a system for in-depth analysis of traffic, integration costs play an important role. Many providers consider this a decisive factor for connecting a DPI device (for diagrams of connecting a device for in-depth analysis of traffic to operator equipment, read one of our previous materials ). Here is a small example of calculating ROI.
Suppose that the subscribers of the provider consume 20 Gbit per month. The cost of 1 Gbit equals 3 thousand dollars, and the cost of the DPI system is 75 thousand. Then, with an effective reduction of uplink by 35%, the system of in-depth traffic analysis will provide 7 Gbps of bandwidth savings. If you translate it into monetary units, then we get 21 thousand dollars a month. In this scenario, the DPI-solution will pay off in less than 4 months.
If we take into account that additional functions (protection against malware, blocking prohibited sites, etc.) do not have to be paid extra, then the implementation of DPI will pay off even faster. Again, we note that the quality of the services provided to customers will not decrease.
PS Our DPI-digest: Analysis of traffic, locks, platforms and manufacturers of DPI systems .
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/319624/
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