What Are the Advantages of Deep Packet Inspection Devices for Enterprises?

Enterprises around the world are innovating how they manage and operate their networks. The recent adoption of 5G private networks is introducing new opportunities for a range of sectors such as manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, and utilities. While 5G private networks increase levels of connectivity, they also increase complexity and traditional network monitoring solutions will not be sufficient to manage network traffic visibility, security and performance. DPI devices can add value by delivering the visibility and control needed for 5G private enterprise networks.

What Is Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) for Enterprises

Traditional network monitoring tools only examine packet headers such as source/destination IP addresses, ports, and protocol. Deep packet inspection (DPI) systems, however, examine the content — the payload — of a packet as it travels over the network. This is crucial for 5G private enterprise networks. For example, if an enterprise's manufacturing plant is running a 5G private network for managing its operations such as robotics control, sensors and video surveillance, then differentiating between highly time-critical control traffic and less time-critical file transfer traffic is vital. Unlike consumer-grade DPI which is appropriate for consumer networks, enterprise grade DPI systems are designed for higher throughput, increased reliability, and seamless integration into production networks, and therefore meet the requirements of a 5G private network.

Key Advantages of DPI Devices for Enterprises

Application Visibility: The ability to see and understand application traffic across a private 5G network. DPI can identify over 3,500 application sub-categories across 20+ major groups, including industrial IoT protocols, ERP systems, and video conferencing.

Quality of Experience (QoE) Monitoring: Performance and the quality of experience are directly linked. DPI devices monitor network performance statistics against application performance and will provide visibility into critical control traffic, such as robot control signaling and ensure latency and reliability requirements are met.

Security Detection: DPI devices are able to detect malware and suspicious attempts to transmit information from within the network, as well as prohibited applications running on the private 5G network.

Policy Enforcement: Businesses can implement custom rules on specific application traffic, whether to ensure it has high priority, limit bandwidth or be blocked entirely, depending on the business's requirements.

Forensic Analysis:DPI creates flow records which can be used for forensic analysis and regulatory compliance.

How DPI Simplifies Enterprise Network Management

The complexities of managing a private 5G network can be much higher than those of managing conventional wired and wireless networks. It involves managing multiple logical network segments(network slices), tracking roaming devices as they move between cells, and handling traffic fluctuations throughout the day due to varying user demand. DPI devices help reduce this complexity through a simplified view of the traffic across the private 5G network. A central management dashboard allows traffic to be viewed, broken down by device group, network slice, application or physical location. Standard reports display key performance indicators for common private 5G use cases, such as low latency ultra-reliable communications and enhanced mobile broadband. Alarms notify operators of potential network performance issues.

DPI Helps Enterprises Reduce Operational Costs

Lowering troubleshooting time: DPI allows network faults to be diagnosed down to the specific network slice, radio, core, transport, or external application.

Optimized management of network capacity: Planning network usage and rescheduling less time-critical traffic for off-peak hours postpones expensive hardware upgrades and the associated capital expenditure.

Lower cost of security incidents: Security detection and investigation times are reduced to hours instead of days or weeks.

Lower cost of data warehousing and storage: Only specific traffic meeting specified conditions is logged, and this minimizes storage and data warehousing costs.

DPI for Enterprise Network Security

A private 5G network combines mobile and enterprise technologies to connect unmanaged devices such as industrial sensors, third-party equipment, and personal devices. While the 5G RAN has fewer weaknesses than public 5G networks, it is not immune to threats. DPI devices help mitigate these threats through monitoring and enforcement capabilities on encrypted traffic, looking for patterns such as beaconing, communication with unusual destinations, or aberrant activity. Furthermore, the DPI system performs deep sample restoration to detect malware propagation (e.g., infected EXE/APK files) and blocks abnormal traffic targeting industrial control systems. Illegal or undesirable applications can be blocked, and signaling anomaly detection can be implemented for the private 5G control plane.

Practical Application of DPI in Enterprises

Smart Manufacturing: DPI distinguishes between time-critical robot control traffic and less time-critical sensor data. If network traffic exceeds defined limits, robot control is prioritized over machine sensors — allowing sensor data to be buffered while robot control meets its strict requirements.

Logistics and Warehousing: Tracking of AGV traffic can avoid accidents or deviations from intended routes.

Healthcare: Ensuring that required bandwidth for patient monitoring is met, while blocking all unauthorized traffic on hospital private 5G networks.

Utilities: Separating control traffic to the substation from general purpose traffic is done to ensure network segmentation policy is maintained.

Reliable DPI Solutions for Enterprise 5G Private Networks

Sino-Telecom’s deep packet inspection devices integrate seamlessly into private 5G enterprise networks, handling traffic at line speed while supporting multiple network slices and subscriber groups. The application signatures available have broad support for many enterprise and industrial applications plus commonly used consumer applications; these signatures are also regularly updated. Dashboards provide the required integration with private 5G orchestration and display data across the radio, core and transport networks.

Conclusion

DPI devices enhance private 5G enterprise networks with benefits beyond conventional network monitoring solutions such as application visibility, network performance management, security enforcement, and cost reduction. The implementation of DPI in industries such as manufacturing, logistics, healthcare and utilities is increasingly becoming a necessity rather than a choice for private 5G networks.

If you're ready to add DPI to your enterprise 5G private network, contact Sino-Telecom’s sales team to request a custom quote, download specifications, datasheets, and read what other enterprises have to say about using our DPI solutions for private 5G networks.