IC2 Deep packet inspection (DPI) reports and everything you need to know about it

Knowledgebase Tips and Tricks
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What are Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) Reports?

With Deep Packet Inspection reports, you can now have clear classification of the traffic type that passes through your router, how big a percentage of the bandwidth they occupy and during what time.
For example, in the above pie chart, you can identify that “HTML5 video” accounts for 20.8% of the total bandwidth used.

Deep Packet Inspection reports are only available on InControl 2, on supported devices.

Pre-requisites: Firmware version 7.0.1; InControl 2
Supported devices:
Balance: ​30 LTE HW3, One, 210 HW4, 310 HW4, 305 HW2, 380 HW6, 580 HW2, 710 HW3, 1350 HW2, 2500
MAX:​ HD4, Transit, HD2 Mini, 700 HW3, HD2 HW5, BR1 ENT
MediaFast: ​200, 500, 750, HD2, HD4

What is Deep Packet Inspection?

Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) is the act of inspecting the data part of a packet (packet payload) at an inspection point. Payload inspection is performed for various reasons including application protocol identification, traffic pattern identification and metadata extraction.

So how do you use it?

For devices that support DPI reports, there’s nothing to configure as it is always on.
Just enable the feature in your device dashboard on InControl 2.
Click Edit,

Then flip the Enable DPI switch to ON, save changes.

To access the DPI Reports on InControl 2, navigate to device level in your organization:

Mouse over Reports, then click on DPI Reports.

3 Likes
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Hi Erik, i upgrade our Balance 380 HW6 to 7.0.1, but under the edit tab of Balance 380 i can’t find this function .

the s/n of this device is : 1825-15F6-2C9D

thanks
Antonio

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So, Peplink has a good DPI engine after all.

However, only for expensive models and only for their paid service.

Shame on you Peplink. Asus has the same feature on routers that costs half the price of Balance One.

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It’s there antonio, just make sure you click Edit in the Dashboard

5

IC2 comes free with warranty.
A straight price comparison is hardly fair… If those are the values that matter to you then it’s perfectly understandable.

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The point is, there is a DPI engine. Why not use it to provide us decent QoS? Why not a smart queue management?

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And I really don’t like this “router as service” approach. I paid for the hardware and after a year I’ll lose features because they are on a online service even though the hardware is capable of generating it on its own.

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We’re just bringing DPI online for the first time so I’m sure there’s lot of room for improvement.

I know engineering will be most happy to consider your requests. If you don’t mind, could you please put them up on our Feature Requests thread?

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Hi Eric, yes sure , see my screen shot

700×614 101 KB

As you can see there is no entry to enable DPI .

thanks
Antonio

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Could you please try a different browser?

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Please find the release note below. Ensure you are using v7.0.1 and device that listed in the release note.

Thanks.

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Hi Tk, the firmware of the balance is : 7.0.1 build 2059

thanks
Antonio

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did you manage to try a different browser? was the result the same?

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I Eric, via chrome browser don’t see this Features, via Firefox yes .

thanks
Antonio

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probably just a browser cache issue then :slight_smile:

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Do you plan to eventually provide DPI per client because that is what is really needed?

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I have the exact same issue but I have tried a different browser, in Chrome and Firefox neither shows this enable DPI switch, devices are on the latest 7.0.1 firmware but it doesn’t appear, our incontrol instance does have the “real-time monitoring” option under clients but it only seems to appear on certain devices, eg: I have a max transit duo on 7.0.1 and it appears, in another group I have an HD4 on 7.0.1 and it doesn’t?

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Please clear the browser cache to confirm this will help. If not, please open ticket for us to take closer look.

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Hello Peplink Team,
We have been using the new DPI feature to help our clients in understanding there data usage, a small request with the InControl2 DPI Reports is to make the colours on the Pie Chart the Same as on the Line Chart to improve visual cross referencing, here is an example

1849×453 57.7 KB

In this image you can see the html5video is an aqua blue colour in the pie chart while it is represented in Purple on the matching line chart.
We are continuing to explore how the DPI can be used as a value added feature for our clients, we are interested in being able to see also the top 10/20/30/50/100 domains being used too.
One area this will become particularly useful is with equipment like the Peplink MediaFast routers.
Appreciate your assistance,
Marcus :slight_smile:

1 Like
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Thanks for suggestion. We will match the colors on the two charts.

1 Like