What is Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) and what does it have to do with Internet traffic management?
Deep packet inspection or DPI is a technology used in the industry to examine the types of traffic going across a network, but not the content. During peak periods, Bell uses DPI to identify peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing traffic which is less time sensitive than other real-time sensitive applications, such as web browsing or video streaming. Because P2P file sharing applications are less time sensitive, they can be slowed when Internet traffic becomes congested during peak periods without interrupting use of the service. When Bell uses DPI as part of its traffic management measures during peak periods of Internet usage, we do not examine the actual content of traffic and we only collect for a limited time your IP address. For example, we do not know the content of your communications nor your search activities. However, for traffic management to work properly, we use DPI technology to assess traffic data along with each IP address to determine what type of traffic it is so that we ca
