ipoque may be new to the U.S. market, but it's an established company in Europe and is worth looking at.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [October 31, 2008]

ISP-Planet always advises readers to take a close look at companies like ipoque, the Leipzig, Germany-based maker of carrier-class DPI appliances that is opening offices in the U.S. for the first time. This company may not be interested in working with regular-sized independent ISPs in the future, but it is interested in doing so now.

Many companies assume that the only companies buying expensive equipment are the top telcos, and they're wrong. There are many local companies that have a data center or a statewide VoIP offering or are offering video, and could use a carrier class piece of machinery to manage growing demands on bandwidth and an increasing demand for low latency as well.

The person who is in charge of the new office is Jim Peschek, vice president of sales for North America. "We're new here, but we have good growth projections," he says. "The markets we'll attack here are similar to the ones we already have in Germany. We will also go after the university market. There's lots of competition, but I think that ISPs are fairly price sensitive—ISPs are looking for a product with a good price that also delivers performance equal to the competition."

Background
The company's product is based on research at the University of Leipzig, says Klaus Mochalski, ipoque's CEO. It was deployed at several universities, but the demand for bandwidth analysis became clear as bandwidth usage surged in 2004.

"They approached us and asked us to help them classify their network traffic," says Mochalski. "We implemented the first version of our DPI engine for universities (we classify applications based on signatures and traffic patterns, not port number). We found out that universities had high P2P usage, 60 to 70 percent of total traffic."

So the universities asked ipoque to help solve the problem. ipoque built faster and faster boxes. It started with gigabit links in 2004, and switched to 10 gigabit links in late 2006 and early 2007.

The ISP demand for DPI
Now, Mochalski says, the focus of the company is the ISP market.

In a white paper called "Bandwidth Management Solutions for Network Operators," the company notes that most ISPs are offering flat rate service because that's what customers expect, and would like to switch to usage-based pricing. The white paper notes that ISPs purchase DPI solutions to prioritize high value applications such as voice, video, and gaming, and says that ISPs should consider tiered pricing, in which regular usage is offered at the flat rate, but customers pay extra to use applications that hog bandwidth.

Of course, if you're going to implement tiered pricing, you'll need an appliance such as those offered by ipoque.

The product
The ipoque traffic manager comes in a wide variety of sizes, from a blade server capable of handling up to six 10 Gbps links (the PRX-10G) to a small appliance designed to handle 20 Mbps (the PRX-20).

If P2P is your problem, even the smallest box from ipoque comes capable of tracking a significant number of protocols. The company's protocol list [.pdf] shows almost 150 P2P protocols that the box can identify and throttle.

Mochalski returns to price, saying the company focuses on developing its software and uses off-the-shelf hardware, minimizing costs.

Peschek says the company is eager for ISPs to test its box, especially against appliances from ipoque's competitors. Although no specific formal promotion has been announced, expect to talk to an aggressive sales force when you talk to ipoque, if you talk to the company soon.

The future
At some point in every interview, I ask the question, "so all of this is interesting, but what will you be doing next?"

Mochalski says that he proud of the company's detailed statistics engine, but that the company plans to improve on this strength with a "comprehensive reporting solution."

The goal is to allow ISPs to see everything that's going on in the network in real time. Of course, if you already use a network management system, the appliance comes with all the software hooks you need to plug it into the statistical engine of your choice.

Pricing and availability
ipoque's PRX series of appliances are available now. Pricing runs from $1,100 for the PRX-20 to $13,700 for the PRX-5G.

Up to seven additional modules can be purchased, with price depending on features and bandwidth requirements. A fully loaded box runs from $630 at 2 Mbps to over $30,000 for the PRX-5G.

The modules are:

• Module 1: P2P, VoIP, IM, and Skype
• Module 2: standard protocols such as http, smtp, etc.
• Module 3: advanced reporting
• Module 4: bandwidth management
• Module 5: detect and block or throttle streaming protocols such as flash video, mpeg, and quicktime
• Module 6: detect and block or throttle tunnel protocols such as SSH and VPN-X
• Module 7: detect and block or throttle gaming protocols such as XBOX, Half Life 2, World of Warcraft, and Steam

This wide variety of options should allow ISPs of all sizes to consider this product, no matter their budget, if they are interested in using DPI to control bandwidth usage.

—End