When we have a virus like the flu infecting the country, we don’t let it spread and lie in wait at hospitals for the sick to show up, we try and stay ahead of it and keep the population healthy and infected.  Likewise, when gangs grow and get out of hand, we don’t wait for their attacks, we try and introduce youth counselors, come up with better activities for them to do like midnight basketball and re-introduce them back into society as productive members.  So while we wait for operating system vendors to patch holes and users to buy and update security products many botnets are growing to the tens of millions in size.  So why is that that we avoid one of the most efficient means to restore a civilized Internet?  If we can understand how the botnets work, and what systems a botnet has exploited based upon a vulnerability, why can we not simply spread the antidote in much the same way? Years ago doctors introduced the concept of kids playing tag to pass germs to build up immune systems, isn’t this the Internet equivalent?

A recent BBC team used a botnet for some research and the backlash was large (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/7932816.stm). To some this sounds like becoming part of the problem and just another way to make the problems worse.  As I sit here and watch the threats on the Internet over the last decade, I can’t help but see a trend that shows it getting worse at the speed of innovation by the malcontents and the anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-whatever is next software distribution to clients has already ensured a war for supremacy is raging on.  Last time I checked, those who didn’t realize their systems were getting infecting haven’t been spending much time to fix it, just like those whom are happy being social renegades don’t spend a lot of time pro-actively reforming.  At some point, we need to reach out more than just suggesting that broadband customers download free anti-virus. 

Too bold for us to consider?  Will this always be the demise of the security?  Is there a better way?

For years we saw the growth of web traffic being the key focus prior to the rapid turn to P2P as consumers surveyed the Internet for content of interest.  As content appeared the migration to P2P protocols surged and the race to control the usage of upstream bandwidth became a key concern in the telecom and cable environments.  As privacy and copyright owners battled heavily in the P2P space, it is particularly interesting to see how fast these new forms of direct download and streaming delivery are growing in usage.  Just a couple months after hulu (www.hulu.com) launched reports from service providers like AT&T (http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/ATT-Backbone-Sees-20-P2P-Drop-96602) began showing changes in the usage patterns.  In addition, new network management tools like DOCSIS 3.0 are able control upstream usage without digging into privacy waters.

At CloudShield, we understand the importance of helping service providers consider ways to deal with increases in network traffic stemming from multimedia, full-HTML Web browsing, P2P file sharing, streaming videos and Internet video services. The most effective way of handling the traffic from these services is to ensure that smarter, scalable technology is in place. What has become interesting to watch is how fast the market has turned from one of being able identify protocols (such as Skype, BitTorrent and eDonkey) to hunt out hidden offenders to being more concerned about how to help drive customer experience.  As legal and high quality content is being pushed into the Internet, migrating from finding the content owners to being able to be aware of them and focusing on how to actually increase benefits through the use of cache technology, boosting QoS priorities and enabling peering relationships between content owners and the service providers delivering content to end users is a very different world for DPI and controlling services from what was raging just a few years ago.  In addition, service providers are starting to migrate to billing models (think mobile style billing in broadband) and content delivery agents (think IPTV) that seem to actually enable to continued growth for consumers in a viable model.  It feels like the rise of the CDN’s all over again and this time with the aid of an intelligent network ushering traffic through to end users.  The traffic mix is changing rapidly again, and this time the new source of growth doesn’t seem to have a lot of enemies!