Deep Packet Inspection and Bandwidth Management: Battles Over Bittorrent in Canada and the United States

21 Pages Posted: 24 Jan 2012

See all articles by Milton Mueller

Milton Mueller

Georgia Institute of Technology

Hadi Asghari

Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society

Date Written: 2011

Abstract

Two case studies explore the reciprocal influence between technological change and Internet governance. Both focus on the use by Internet service providers of a new capability known as deep packet inspection (DPI) to “throttle” or restrict the speed of BitTorrent uploads or downloads by their customers. We show that in both cases, these implementations led to public protests, litigation and major regulatory proceedings. In both cases, network neutrality norms were used to challenge DPI deployments. The paper’s descriptive comparison is supplemented by quantitative data drawn from the use of Glasnost, a network test that allows third parties to detect BitTorrent throttling via DPI.

Suggested Citation

Mueller, Milton and Asghari, Hadi, Deep Packet Inspection and Bandwidth Management: Battles Over Bittorrent in Canada and the United States (2011). TPRC 2011, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1989644

Milton Mueller (Contact Author)

Georgia Institute of Technology ( email )

School of Public Policy
Schhol of Cybersecurity and Privacy
Atlanta, GA 30332
United States
404-385-4281 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://www.spp.gatech.edu/faculty/milt

Hadi Asghari

Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society ( email )

Bebelplatz 1 | 10099
Berlin
Germany

Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?

Paper statistics

Downloads
262
Abstract Views
1,807
Rank
194,639
PlumX Metrics