DPI Deployments [97]: U. of Exeter Deployed Allot "to throttle or block undesirable or illegal activity"

  

I mentioned few times the universities as a significant market for DPI products (here and here), as in many of them, the IT services are actually very similar to other public ISP services. Nevertheless, universities' IT also has some enterprise-like needs, such as protecting the university assets and preventing illegal activities.
 

Ron Condon reports to SearchSecurity (UK) the story of the University of Exeter ("16,500 full-time students, 40,000 active ports, traffic is doubling about every 18 months"): 

"Exeter had been trying to solve a content piracy problem that had been gradually growing over the years. Some students were visiting piracy sites and downloading material in breach of copyright laws, something the music and film industries are starting to police more effectively ..  So as part of a major network security upgrade this year installed the Allot Sigma-E traffic-shaping software .. product from Allot Communications"

According to Roger Snelling (picture), head of networks - "It allows us to provide bandwidth for legitimate purposes and to throttle or block undesirable or illegal activity .. The system went live just before the start of the new academic year, and it is already paying for itself .. It’s helping us to police the situation very rigorously ..  We have an eclectic mix of services, from researchers moving huge data sets, to the ability to support delay-sensitive traffic, such as VoIP, which we have included as part of our upgrade project"

See "University IT security pros thwart content piracy with traffic shaping" - here.



Source: Allot Communications