Virgin Media are starting to inspect the traffic that goes through their fibre broadband network to see how much of it could be illegal.
The Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) is being provided by Detica and currently does not take note of the IP address of the users it monitors and those who are downloading files illegally and so won’t be used at present to target offenders.
The technology is reportedly able to see what type of files are being downloaded by users and file sharers and able to match them up to a database if they are illegal downloads for example of music or films or if they are just personal photo albums exchanged between family members.
At this stage it is just being used so Virgin Media can see how much illegal traffic is going through it’s Virgin Broadband fibre network, although there is nothing ruling out that in future it being used to target those guilty of Internet piracy.