Secure seamless peer-to-peer (P2P) UDP communication using IPv4 LSRR option and IPv4+4 addresses

The current structure of the Internet, with hosts behind network address translation (NAT) boxes, Causes well-known problems for P2P applications. There are several proposals, e.g., STUN, UPnP, MIDCOM, TURN among others, to enable P2P UDP communication for nodes behind NAT boxes, but each technique offers a partial Solution that works in special limited cases and fails in others. In this paper, we present a framework based on the use of IPv4+4 addresses and the standard IPv4 Loose Source Record Route (LSRR) option that offers a complete solution to the secure seamless P2P UDP communication problem. Our proposal requires no changes whatsoever to end-host protocol stacks and Internet routers. The only requirement is a simple upgrade of border routers with a new LSRR-based packet forwarding algorithm for the P2P UDP traffic. We detail our implementation of a Linux-based border router that runs the proposed forwarding algorithm, and describe how applications requiring P2P UDP communication such as Voice over IP (VoIP) using SIP can benefit from our framework. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.