@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} }