Big Brother is on the Internet

The days of viewing the Internet as a communal, educational forum are long over. The Internet is the network for business communications now and with that comes business style monitoring.

And that's exactly what Narus, a Redwood City, Calif. start-up is rolling out. The company has developed Narus Semantic Traffic Analysis, which is a database server application that monitors users sessions by what type of application they deploy and how long they are on the network.

Long distance service providers gather information about their customers that lets them know how long you stay on the phone, where you typically call and what time of day you usually make long distance calls. ISPs on the other hand, have only had crude tools available to them to gather information on their users.

Semantic Traffic Analysis, currently being used by Frontier Global Center and a regional ISP called Voyager, lets ISPs find out information about their customers, such as how much bandwidth they typically use or if they are accessing real-time gaming Web sites. This information is stored on a Semantic Traffic Analysis data center that Narus manages. This allows Frontier Global Center for example to simply go to a Narus Web page to access information on its customers.

ISPs and service providers can also deploy the Semantic Traffic Analysis database on their own site, but Narus says most ISPs are opting for a Narus managed approach initially.

ISPs can use this information to target new services to customers that might really want or need them and they can also use the information for billing purposes.

Currently, Narus monitoring tools will only allow an ISP to view their customers habits, however, the company is developing applications that will make it easier for ISPs to charge users for services that are today free over the Internet.

Narus is developing an application that will integrate with popular billing systems so an ISP can charge customers a certain price if they access real-time gaming sites, use video conferencing or IP telephony services. So before you deploy a new IP telephony gateway, you might want to ask your ISP if they have any plans on changing their pricing structure.

Denise Pappalardo is a senior editor for Network World, covering ISPs, VPNs and related topics. Reach her at denisep@nww.com.