Internet denial by higher-tier ISPs: A NAT-based solution
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Saudi Digital Library
Abstract
Internet is an interconnection of independent Autonomous Systems (ASes). Most of the large ASes are operated by Internet Service Providers (ISPs), which are classified into 3 tiers based on their size and interconnections. Most of the Internet traffic is routed through the Internet core, represented by higher-tier ISPs. Because of the security flaws of Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), the presence of one or more malicious ISPs among the higher-tier ISPs can lead to many security concerns. Internet denial is when a malicious ISP blocks some or all the traffic that belongs to a specific network. The impact of Internet denial can be very critical. Network Address Translation (NAT) is used to design a solution that is scalable. In the NAT-based solution, outgoing traffic is address-translated into a non-blocked IP address in order to hide its identity. However, NAT limits end-to- end connectivity, causing servers within the victim network to become unreachable by external users. Application-layer information is used to design solutions for web and email server reachability behind NAT. NAT also limits peer-to-peer (p2p) connectivity, preventing p2p applications from working properly. Existing solutions for NAT traversal are used to bypass this limitation. The impact of the proposed NAT-based solution on performance is negligibly small, and only a single NAT traversal technique, namely relaying, causes significant impact on the network performance.