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Revealing Middlebox Interference with Tracebox

TitleRevealing Middlebox Interference with Tracebox
Publication TypeConference Paper
Year of Publication2013
AuthorsDetal, G., B. Hesmans, O. Bonaventure, Y. Vanaubel, and B. Donnet
Conference NameACM/USENIX Internet Measurement Conference (IMC)
Date Published10/2013
Keywordsmiddlebox, network discovery, tracebox
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.

DOI10.1145/2504730.2504757
Citation KeyDet2013
Project year: 
First year
WP(s) associated with the paper: 
WP2 - Programmable Probes
Partner(s) associated with the paper's author(s): 
Universite de Liege
Is this an OFFICIALLY supported mPlane paper?: 
Yes
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