Bigger broadband bucks require better broadband brains

“Right now, I think the equipment vendors are saying, ‘Here's a great tool,’ and the service providers are looking back at them with blank stares,” Vorhaus said.

One way broadband can immediately become brighter, however, is in offering more network-based security or managed security services, something network service providers already do for business customers. Companies such as Bivio Networks have been selling DPI to enterprise network operators for some time, but network service providers have a great opportunity to create managed services to protect different types of customers at different levels.

For the consumer market, for example, offering anti-virus and anti-spam services within the cloud and layering on parental-control options would be value-adds. Once a customer has signed up for parental controls, for example, any Web traffic to that customer would be redirected automatically through a content-filtering system, said Cam Cullen, director of product management and marketing for Allot Communications, which incorporates DPI into a service gateway.

Service providers also could capitalize on the popularity of Internet-based video by offering services that come with a special video option or channel that automatically allocates more bandwidth to video traffic, which can be detected in the network, for the duration of that download.

“The consumer would pay some fee above basic broadband,” said Kevin Walsh, vice president of marketing for Zeugma Systems, which uses deep session inspection, similar to DPI, in a broadband edge router. “But they don't have to pay for more bandwidth all the time when they only use it occasionally. It makes sense to consumers; they understand it, they know what they are paying for and what they get in return.”

That type of special treatment can be associated with any general kind of traffic — voice, video, gaming, etc. — or with specific applications with unique traffic signatures, or even with specific customers who have paid for a certain level of service.