Every packet contains the address of its destination and is individually routed through the network.

ECONOMIST: Internet telephony

Born as an IPS solution NetASQ rapidly leveraged their ability to do deep packet inspection, (or, as IDC terms it, complete content inspection) to apply policies based not just on source-destination-port, but on content of assembled packet streams.

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When a packet is received the router reads its intended destination, looks it up in a big table and forwards it to the next router.

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Satellite, surprisingly, came out as having the best throughput although before you rush out to get satellite service remember that the roundtrip latency (the time it takes a data packet to go from your PC to its destination and for an acknowledgement to come back) over a satellite connection is often in the range of 900 milliseconds to 1, 400 milliseconds.

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Cisco's newest gear is designed to effortlessly cross back and forth over those seams, innately sensing whether a digital packet is video, e-mail or an order and routing it only to the destination that can best use it.

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