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It isn't often that a vendor or new technology catches me flat-footed, but P-Cube--a network QoS vendor that, like Packeteer and Allot, has applications that can characterize packets on the fly--has done just that. These products make decisions about which packets to forward and which to hold back or throw away based on Layer 5 content.

P-Cube says it can track a million sessions in real time at gigabit speeds. What's more, the company has invented an application-development language for service providers so they can create applications that distinguish packet priority.

P-Cube also says it can meter preconnection, with redirection, for applications, like what happens with prepaid phone cards. Presession determinations could yield an application that knows whether you bought that Dixie Chicks tune you're about to download. These products cost a couple of hundred thousand dollars at the most--but Kazaa is costing service providers much more. Last time I checked the traffic at Syracuse University, where I work, Kazaa represented some 40 percent of all packets on the WAN.

P-Cube's products are being marketed to service providers, which are desperate to find services to help them move beyond selling commodity bandwidth.

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