@inproceedings {Ede2015a, title = {Towards a Middlebox Policy Taxonomy: Path Impairments}, booktitle = {International Workshop on Network Science for Communication Networks (NetSciCom)}, year = {2015}, month = {04/2015}, abstract = {

Recent years have seen the rise of middleboxes, such as firewalls, NATs, proxies,\ or Deep Packet Inspectors. Those middleboxes play an important role in today{\textquoteright}s\ Internet, including enterprise networks and cellular networks. However, despite\ their huge success in modern network architecture, they have a negative impact\ on the Internet evolution as they can slow down the TCP protocol evolution and its\ extensions. Making available a summary of the potential middlebox network\ interferences is of the highest importance as it could allow researchers to\ confront their new transport protocol to potential issues caused by middleboxes.\ And, consequently, allowing again innovation in the Internet.

This is exactly what we tackle in this paper. We propose a path impairment\ oriented middlebox taxonomy that aims at categorizing the initial purpose of a\ middlebox policy as well as its potential unexpected complications. Based on a\ measurement campaign on IPv4 and IPv6 networks, we confront our taxonomy to the\ real world. Our dataset is freely available.

}, keywords = {classification, IPv6, middleboxes, path impairment, tracebox}, author = {Korian Edeline and Benoit Donnet} } @inproceedings {Thi2015a, title = {Tracking Middleboxes in the Mobile World with TraceboxAndroid}, booktitle = {7th International Workshop on Traffic Monitoring and Analysis (TMA)}, year = {2015}, month = {04/2015}, abstract = {

Middleboxes are largely deployed over cellular networks. It is known that they\ might disrupt network performance, expose users to security issues, and harm\ protocols deployability. Further, hardly any network measurements tools for\ smartphones are able to infer middlebox behaviors, specially if one cannot\ control both ends of a path. In this paper, we present TraceboxAndroid a
proof-of-concept measurement application for Android mobile devices\ implementing the tracebox algorithm. It aims at diagnosing middlebox-impaired\ paths by detecting and locating rewriting middleboxes. We analyze a dataset\ sample to highlight the range of opportunities offered by TraceboxAndroid. We\ show that TraceboxAndroid can be useful for mobile users as well as for the
research community.

}, keywords = {Android, tracebox}, author = {Valentin Thirion and Korian Edeline and Benoit Donnet} } @inproceedings {Det2013, title = {Revealing Middlebox Interference with Tracebox}, booktitle = {ACM/USENIX Internet Measurement Conference (IMC)}, year = {2013}, month = {10/2013}, abstract = {

Middleboxes such as firewalls, NAT, proxies, or Deep Pack-et Inspection play an\ increasingly important role in various types of IP networks, including\ enterprise and cellular networks. Recent studies have shed the light on their\ impact on real traffic and the complexity of managing them. Network operators\ and researchers have few tools to understand the impact of those boxes on any
path. In this paper, we propose tracebox, an extension to the widely used\ traceroute tool, that is capable of detecting various types of middlebox\ interference over almost any path. \ tracebox sends IP packets containing TCP\ segments with different TTL values and analyses the packet encapsulated in the\ returned ICMP messages. Further, as recent routers quote, in the ICMP message,\ the entire IP packet that they received, tracebox is able to detect any\ modification performed by upstream middleboxes. In addition, tracebox can often\ pinpoint the network hop where the middlebox interference occurs. We evaluate\ tracebox with measurements performed on PlanetLab nodes. Our analysis reveals\ various types of middleboxes that were not expected on such an experimental\ testbed supposed to be connected to the Internet without any restriction.

}, keywords = {middlebox, network discovery, tracebox}, doi = {10.1145/2504730.2504757}, author = {Gregory Detal and Benjamin Hesmans and Olivier Bonaventure and Yves Vanaubel and Benoit Donnet} }