Sandvine
| Sandvine Logo | |
| Company type | Public TSX: SVC AIM: SAND |
|---|---|
| Industry | Intelligent Broadband Networks |
| Founded | Waterloo, Ontario (2001) |
| Headquarters | Waterloo, Ontario |
Key people | Dave Caputo, Co-Founder, President and CEO Scott Hamilton, CFO Tom Donnelly, Co-Founder, EVP Marketing & Sales Brad Siim, Co-Founder, COO and VP Engineering Marc Morin, Co-Founder, CTO Don Bowman, Co-Founder, VP Consulting Systems Engineering |
Number of employees | 200+ (Q2 2007) |
| Website | www.sandvine.com |
Sandvine Incorporated (TSX: SVC, AIM: SAND), is a networking equipment company based in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Sandvine products implement network traffic shaping and policing, and include support for both blocking new and forcefully terminating established network connections. The company targets its product line at Internet Service Providers and states that it helps ISPs save on bandwidth costs by controlling connection quality of high-bandwidth users, e.g. the users of P2P file-sharing applications. Comcast is a high-profile customer of Sandvine who has come under fire from many subscribers experiencing degraded connection performance.
Company history
Sandvine Incorporated claims that their devices reduce operational costs and improve subscriber satisfaction. Broadband ISP Comcast's implementation of Sandvine products has re-ignited the Network Neutrality debate in the US due to subscriber complaints that the product interferes with their desired use of the internet[1][2].
The approach Sandvine uses to accomplish these goals with regards to p2p traffic uses what they call "Stateful Policy Management" [3] which works by using stateful deep-packet inspection and packet spoofing. This technique allows the networking device to determine the details of the p2p conversation, including the hash requested. The device can then alter the traffic to augment the algorithms the protocol uses to determine the optimal peer to use, and instead substitute a more optimal peer that is preferable by L3 routing distance. In addition, the device can be used to introduce a network bias in the p2p traffic by allowing internal users to make requests to an external network, but "[turn] away requests from external users"[3], making the entire network a leech.
Sandvine claims to have more than 80 customers in over 30 countries, deployed in networks representing millions of customer connections[citation needed].
Controversy
Sandvine is reportedly [who?] used by Comcast to reduce the impact of BitTorrent and other P2P traffic, but does so by sending RST packets rather than traffic shaping. This may interfere with other network protocols if so configured. Recently, Comcast customers have also reported an inability to use Google because of peering network mismatches with DNS (and also possibly because forged RST packets are interfering with HTTP access to google.com) [4].
Previously Lotus Notes had been blocked inadvertently by Comcast but after customer outcry[5] they later apologized for their error and corrected it.[6]
References
- ^ Comcast is using Sandvine to manage P2P Connections
- ^ http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r19311500-NEWS-COMCAST-BLOCKS-NET-TRAFFIC
- ^ a b "Meeting the Challenge of Today's Evasive P2P Traffic"
- ^ "Problems loading Google (DSL Reports Forums)"
- ^ "Lotus Notes TCP packet analysis"
- ^ This may or may not have been caused by Sandvine equipment but Notes seems to work really good now.[1], ipdemocracy, retrieved 1 November 2007
Sandvine prospectus http://www.buchanan.uk.com/cgi-bin/viewannounce.pl?dir=Sandvine_Corporation&file=preliminary_prospectus-sept%2018-bcweb.htm