DPI Deployments [195]: Mapping of Russian ISPs

A story by Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan (both pictured) to Wired covers, among other things, DPI deployments by the leading Russian ISPs:

“We got our first client in 2004, it was Transtelecom. But it was its security department, so DPI was intended for its internal network,” said Roman Ferster, CEO of RGRCom company, the main distributor of Allot DPI technologies in Russia .. They helped install Allot devices in the Tatarstan region, in the Far East, in VimpelCom’s ISP network in Moscow, in the Ural regional operator’s network, and so on .. Ferster’s company also offers Russia technology that can solve the technical problem of blocking a single video clip instead of YouTube as a whole".

".. DPI did not really arrive in Russia until the end of the 2000s, and now many of the biggest DPI technology vendors have a presence in Russia: Canada’s Sandvine, Israel’s Allot, America’s Cisco and Procera, and China’s Huawei".

"By the summer of 2012, all three national mobile operators in Russia already had DPI at their disposal: Procera was installed in VimpelCom [here], while Huawei’s DPI solutions are in use in Megafon [here], and MTS bought CISCO DPI technology".

"The ISPs turned out to be more hesitant in adopting DPI technologies. All the engineers we have interviewed, who deal with DPI in Russia, told us that most ISPs do not understand why they need to install this technology"

See "The Kremlin’s New Internet Surveillance Plan Goes Live Today" - here.