To create a place where stakeholders can discuss one of the Internet’s most divisive topics and most quickly developing areas, a group of IT professionals this week launched a nonprofit organization dedicated to deep packet inspection.

 

The organization, an Internet-based group known as dPacket.org with a Web site at that address, is designed to foster discussion and collaboration on the sweeping topic of DPI, its founders said.

 

Generally speaking, DPI is a form of computer network filtering that examines data as it passes an inspection point, and can search for things such as spam, viruses or some type of pre-defined criteria. DPI is at the forefront of advanced network security functions – a hot topic – as well as Internet “eavesdropping,” censorship and data mining.

 

Kyle Rosenthal, the new organization’s executive director, said the technologies are being used for a multitude of reasons.

 

“The top two are network visibility and control,” Rosenthal told TMCnet. “And for those purposes, for network security and traffic optimization, technologies already are being widely deployed in environments that include government and educational networks.”

 

“The question is: what does this mean as technologies start to look past the packet header?” Rosenthal said.

 

For Rosenthal and other dPacket.org founders, DPI technology, in the traditional of many Internet phenomena, often outpaces government regulators and others, and there’s a dire need to create a place where people can collaborate, get “good” information and start working together toward a common framework.

 

“We need technological people to get more engaged with other types of questions on the legal and ethical side,” Rosenthal said. “There’s a need to include a broad group of people, academia, analysts, privacy and consumer rights advocates, and a lot of general public people interested in what the technologies do.”

 

Though DPI is often used by private businesses and governments in a wide range of applications, some advocates of so-called “net neutrality” say the technology could be used to reduce the openness of the Internet.

 

Rosenthal and his colleagues envision a user-driven community where industry leaders and others can talk about the improvement of DPI technologies as well as their impact on the Internet.

 

DPI plays a critical role in the convergence of increasingly popular network-based services such as Voice over Internet Protocol, they say.

 

For Axel Weichert, dPacket.org’s vice president, the new organization should lead to “a better Internet.”

 

“Clearly, DPI is going to be one key area to make the Internet experience better, and a better user experience, with more innovative services,” Weichert said.

 

Though it’s just a few days old, the www.dpacket.org Web site already has a functioning blog, articles section, video introductions and sub-groups. Registration is free. Sponsors for the new group include Allot Communications, Bivio Networks, Cloudshield Technologies, Ellacoya Networks, a part of Arbor Networks, LSI Corporation, nPulse Networks, Qosmos (News - Alert), Sandvine and Solera Networks.