Internet Draft B. Ford
Document: draft-ford-midcom-p2p-03.txt M.I.T.
Expires: December 12, 2004 P. Srisuresh
Caymas Systems
D. Kegel
kegel.com
June 2004
Peer-to-Peer(P2P) communication
across Network Address Translators(NATs)
Status of this Memo
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Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2003). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
This memo documents the methods used by the current TCP/UDP based
peer-to-peer (P2P) applications to communicate in the presence of
network address translators (NATs). In addition, the memo
suggests guidelines to application designers and NAT implementers
on the measures they could take to enable immediate, wide
deployment of P2P applications with or without requiring the use
of special proxy, relay or midcom protocols.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction .................................................
2. Terminology ..................................................
3. Techniques used by NAT-friendly P2P applications .............
3.1. Relaying ................................................
3.2. Connection reversal .....................................
3.3. UDP Hole Punching .......................................
3.3.1. Peers behind different NATs ......................
3.3.2. Peers behind the same NAT ........................
3.3.3. Peers separated by multiple NATs .................
3.3.4. Assumption of P2P-friendly NAT devices enroute ...
3.4. Simultaneous TCP Open ...................................
3.5. UDP port number prediction ..............................
3.6. TCP port number prediction ..............................
4. NAT-friendly P2P application design guidelines ...............
4.1. What works with P2P NAT devices .........................
4.2. Peers behind the same NAT ...............................
4.3. Peer discovery ..........................................
4.4. Use of midcom protocol ..................................
5. P2P-friendly NAT design guidelines ...........................
5.1. Deprecate the use of symmetric NATs .....................
5.2. Add incremental Cone-NAT support to symmetric NATs ......
5.3. Simultaneous TCP Open support in Cone NATs ..............
5.4. Port preservation is not important ......................
5.5. Large timeout for P2P applications ......................
5.6. Support loopback translation ............................
5.7. Support midcom protocol .................................
6. Security considerations ......................................
6.1. IP address aliasing .....................................
6.2. Denial-of-service attacks ...............................
6.3. Man-in-the-middle attacks ...............................
6.4. Impact on NAT device security ...........................
7. Acknowledgments ..............................................
8. Informative References ........................................
1. Introduction
Present-day Internet has seen ubiquitous deployment of network
address translators (NATs). There are a variety of NAT devices in
use. The asymmetric addressing and connectivity regimes established
by the NAT devices has created unique problems for peer-to-peer
(P2P) applications and protocols, such as teleconferencing and
multiplayer on-line gaming. These issues are likely to persist even
into the IPv6 world, where a NAT is used as an IPv4 compatibility
mechanism [NAT-PT].
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Currently deployed NAT devices are designed primarily around the
client/server paradigm, in which relatively anonymous client machines
inside a private network initiate connections to public servers with
stable IP addresses and DNS names. NAT devices encountered enroute
provide dynamic address assignment for the client machines. The
anonymity and inaccessibility of the internal hosts behind a NAT
device is not a problem for applications such as web browsers, which
only need to initiate outgoing connections. This inaccessibility is
sometimes seen as a privacy benefit.
In the peer-to-peer paradigm, however, Internet hosts that would
normally be considered "clients" need to establish communication
sessions directly with each other. The initiator and the responder
might lie behind different NAT devices with neither endpoint
having a permanent IP address or other form of public network
presence. A common on-line gaming architecture, for example,
is for the participating application hosts to contact a well-known
server for initialization and administration purposes. Subsequent
to this, the hosts establish direct connections with each other
for fast and efficient propagation of updates during game play.
Similarly, a file sharing application might contact a well-known
server for resource discovery or searching, but establish direct
connections with peer hosts for data transfer. NAT devices create
problems for peer-to-peer connections because hosts behind a
NAT device normally have no permanently visible public ports on the
Internet to which incoming TCP or UDP connections from other peers
can be directed. RFC 3235 [NAT-APPL] briefly addresses this issue,
but does not offer any general solutions.
In this document, we address the P2P/NAT problem in two ways.
First, we summarize the currently known methods by which P2P
applications work around the presence of NAT devices. Second, we
offer a set of application design guidelines based on these
practices to make P2P applications operate more robustly over
currently-deployed NAT devices. Further, we suggest design
guidelines for NAT implementers so as to make the NAT device more
P2P application friendly. The objective is to enable immediate and
wide deployment of P2P applications requiring to traverse NAT
devices.
2. Terminology
Readers are urged to refer [NAT-TERM] for information on NAT
taxonomy and terminology. Traditional NAT is the most common type
of NAT device deployed. Readers may refer [NAT-TRAD] for detailed
information on traditional NAT. Traditional NAT has two main
varieties - Basic NAT and Network Address/Port Translator (NAPT).
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NAPT is by far the most commonly deployed NAT device. NAPT allows
multiple internal hosts to share a single public IP address
simultaneously. When an internal host opens an outgoing TCP or UDP
session through a NAPT, the NAPT assigns the session a public IP
address and port number so that subsequent response packets from
the external endpoint can be received by the NAPT, translated, and
forwarded to the internal host. The effect is that the NAPT
establishes a NAT session to translate the (private IP address,
private port number) tuple to (public IP address, public port
number) tuple and vice versa for the duration of the session. An
issue of relevance to P2P applications is how the NAT behaves when
an internal host initiates multiple simultaneous sessions from a
single (private IP, private port) endpoint to multiple distinct
endpoints on the external network.
Additional terms that further classify NAPT implementation are
defined in more recent work [STUN] and are summarized below.
Cone NAT
The fundamental property of Cone NAT is that it reuses port
binding assigned to a private host endpoint (identified by
the combination of private IP address and protocol specific
port number) for all sessions initiated by the private host
from the same endpoint, while the port binding is alive. Cone
NAT creates port binding between a (private IP, private port)
tuple and a (public IP, public port) tuple for translation
purposes.
For example, suppose Client A in figure 1 initiates two
simultaneous outgoing sessions through a cone NAT, from the same
internal endpoint (10.0.0.1:1234) to two different external
servers, S1 and S2. The cone NAT assigns just one public endpoint
155.99.25.11:62000 to both these sessions, ensuring that the
"identity" of the client's endpoint is maintained across address
translation. Since Basic-NAT devices do not modify port numbers
as packets traverse the device, Basic-NAT device can be viewed
as a degenerate form of Cone NAT.
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Server S1 Server S2
18.181.0.31:1235 138.76.29.7:1235
| |
| |
+----------------------+----------------------+
|
^ Session 1 (A-S1) ^ | ^ Session 2 (A-S2) ^
| 18.181.0.31:1235 | | | 138.76.29.7:1235 |
| 155.99.25.11:62000 | | | 155.99.25.11:62000 |
|
+--------------+
| 155.99.25.11 |
| |
| Any type of |
| Cone NAT |
+--------------+
|
^ Session 1 (A-S1) ^ | ^ Session 2 (A-S2) ^
| 18.181.0.31:1235 | | | 138.76.29.7:1235 |
| 10.0.0.1:1234 | | | 10.0.0.1:1234 |
|
Client A
10.0.0.1:1234
Figure 1: Cone NAT - Reuse of port binding for multiple sessions
Symmetric NAT
A symmetric NAT, in contrast, does not use port bindings.
A Symmetric NAT assigns a new public port to each new session
traversing the NAT device. For example, suppose Client A in
figure 2 initiates two outgoing sessions from the same endpoint,
one with S1 and another with S2. The same client endpoint is
connecting to the two external servers S1 and S2. When the first
session to server S1 traverses the symmetric NAT, the symmetric
NAT assigns port 62000 to translate the client end-point. When
the second session from the same client end-point to server S2
traverses the symmetric NAT, the symmetric NAT will assign a
different port 62001 to translate the same client end-point. As
a result, server S1 sees the client endpoint as
155.99.25.11:62000, whereas server S2 sees the same client
endpoint differently as 155.99.25.11:62001. The symmetric NAT,
however, is able to differentiate between the two sessions for
translation purposes because the external endpoints involved in
the two sessions (those of S1 and S2) differ, even as the
endpoint identity of the client application is lost across the
address translation boundary.
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Server S1 Server S2
18.181.0.31:1235 138.76.29.7:1235
| |
| |
+----------------------+----------------------+
|
^ Session 1 (A-S1) ^ | ^ Session 2 (A-S2) ^
| 18.181.0.31:1235 | | | 138.76.29.7:1235 |
| 155.99.25.11:62000 | | | 155.99.25.11:62001 |
|
+---------------+
| 155.99.25.11 |
| |
| Symmetric |
| NAT |
+---------------+
|
^ Session 1 (A-S1) ^ | ^ Session 2 (A-S2) ^
| 18.181.0.31:1235 | | | 138.76.29.7:1235 |
| 10.0.0.1:1234 | | | 10.0.0.1:1234 |
|
Client A
10.0.0.1:1234
Figure 2: Symmetric NAT - Port binding not in use for sessions
Cone NAT is further classified according to how liberally the NAT
accepts incoming traffic directed to an already-established (public
IP, public port) tuple. The following Cone NAT variations are
defined in [STUN], but restated here for additional explanation.
This classification generally applies only to UDP traffic, since
NATs reject incoming TCP connection attempts unconditionally
unless specifically configured to do otherwise.
Full Cone NAT
Subsequent to establishing port binding at the start of an
outgoing session, a full cone NAT will accept incoming traffic
to the corresponding public port from ANY external endpoint on
the public network. Full cone NAT is also sometimes referred
as "promiscuous" NAT.
Address-restricted Cone NAT
Subsequent to establishing port binding at the start of an
outgoing session, Address-restricted Cone NAT will accept
incoming traffic to the corresponding public port from only
those external endpoints whose IP address match the address
of a node to which the internal host has previously sent one
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or more outgoing packets.
Port-restricted Cone NAT
Subsequent to establishing port binding at the start of an
outgoing session, Port-restricted Cone NAT will accept
incoming traffic to the corresponding public port from only
those external endpoints to which the internal host has
previously sent one or more outgoing packets. Port-restricted
Cone NAT is the true-to-spirit implementation of NAPT, as
defined.
Port-restricted Cone NAT provides internal nodes the same
level of protection against unsolicited incoming UDP traffic
as does a symmetric NAT. This is because Port-restricted Cone
NAT and Symmetric NAT have one thing in common. They both
maintain granular NAT-sessions. I.e., every single 5-tuple UDP
session permitted for traversal by the NAT is maintained within
the NAT as a NAT-session. As a result, incoming packet traffic
is limited to only those sessions for which the NAT is aware of
an outgoing NAT-session.
This is not the case with Address-restricted Cone NAT and Full
Cone NAT. NAT sessions maintained by Address-restricted Cone
NAT and Full Cone NAT are less granular. The NAT-sessions
maintained by an Address-restricted Cone NAT, for example, use
wildcard match on the external UDP port. The NAT-sessions
maintained by a Full Cone NAT, for example, use wildcard match
on the external address as well as the external UDP port. As a
result, the NAT will permit new UDP sessions initiated from an
external endpoint to the public port bound to the private
endpoint, even as the private endpoint did not originate an
outgoing session to the external endpoint. Address-restricted
Cone NAT as well as Full Cone NAT will permit traversal of the
new incoming session traffic.
Finally, we define the following new terms for classifying
P2P-relevant behavior across middleboxes. Readers are urged to
refer [MIDCOM-FW] for information on middlebox terms and
communication framework.
P2P-Application
P2P-application as used in this document is an application in
which each P2P participant registers with a public
registration server, and subsequently uses either its
private endpoint, or public endpoint, or both, to establish
peering sessions.
NAT-friendly P2P application
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NAT-friendly P2P application is a P2P application that is
designed to work effectively even as peering nodes are
located in multiple distinct IP address realms, connected
by one or more NATs.
P2P-friendly NAT
P2P-friendly NAT is a NAT device that permits the traversal
of P2P application traffic across itself. A key requirement
for a P2P-friendly NAT is the ability to maintain endpoint
identity of a P2P application host when the P2P application
is initiated. All variations of Cone NAT are good examples
of P2P-friendly NAT devices. Symmetric NAT is a good example
of a NAT device that is not P2P friendly.
Loopback translation / Hairpin translation
When a host in the private domain of a NAT device attempts to
connect with another host behind the same NAT device using
the public address of the host, the NAT device performs the
equivalent of a "Twice-nat" translation on the packet as
follows. The originating host's private endpoint is translated
into its assigned public endpoint, and the target host's public
endpoint is translated into its private endpoint, before
the packet is forwarded to the target host. We refer the above
translation performed by a NAT device as "Loopback translation".
This is also referred sometimes as "Hairpin translation".
3. Techniques used by NAT-friendly P2P applications
This section reviews in detail the currently known techniques for
implementing peer-to-peer communication over existing NAT devices,
from the perspective of the application or protocol designer. The
readers will note that the applications assume an
Address/Port-restricted Cone NAT in majority of the cases below.
3.1. Relaying
The most reliable, but least efficient method of implementing peer-
to-peer communication in the presence of a NAT device is to make the
peer-to-peer communication look to the network like client/server
communication through relaying. For example, suppose two client
hosts A and B, in figure 3, have each initiated TCP or UDP
connections to a well-known server S, which has a permanent IP
address. The clients reside on separate private networks, and
their respective NAT devices prevent either client from directly
initiating a connection to the other.
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Server S
18.181.0.31:1234
|
+----------------------------+----------------------------+
| |
| ^ Relay-Req Session(A-S) ^ ^ Relay-Req Session(B-S) ^ |
| | 18.181.0.31:1234 | | 18.181.0.31:1234 | |
| | 155.99.25.11:62000 | | 138.76.29.7:31000 | |
| |
+--------------+ +--------------+
| 155.99.25.11 | | 138.76.29.7 |
| | | |
| Symmetric or | | Symmetric or |
| Cone NAT A | | Cone NAT B |
+--------------+ +--------------+
| |
| ^ Relay-Req Session(A-S) ^ ^ Relay-Req Session(B-S) ^ |
| | 18.181.0.31:1234 | | 18.181.0.31:1234 | |
| | 10.0.0.1:1234 | | 10.1.1.3:1234 | |
| |
| |
Client A Client B
10.0.0.1:1234 10.1.1.3:1234
Figure 3: Use of Client-Server sessions & relay server to emulate P2P
Instead of attempting a direct connection, the two clients can simply
use the server S to relay messages between them. For example, to
send a message to client B, client A simply sends the message to
server S along its already-established client/server connection, and
server S then sends the message on to client B using its existing
client/server connection with B.
This method has the advantage that it will always work as long as
both clients have connectivity to the server. The enroute NAT device
is not assumed to be P2P friendly. Its obvious disadvantages are that
it consumes the server's processing power and network bandwidth, and
communication latency between the peering clients is likely to be
increased even if the server is well-connected. The TURN protocol
[TURN] defines a method of implementing relaying in a relatively
secure fashion.
3.2. Connection reversal
The following connection reversal technique for a direct P2P
communication works only when one of the clients (i.e., peers) is
behind a NAT device. For example, suppose client A is behind a NAT
but client B has a globally routable IP address, as in figure 4.
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Server S
18.181.0.31:1234
|
+----------------------------+----------------------------+
| |
| ^ Relay-Req Session(A-S) ^ ^ Relay-Req Session(B-S) ^ |
| | 18.181.0.31:1234 | | 18.181.0.31:1234 | |
| | 155.99.25.11:62000 | | 138.76.29.7:1234 | |
| |
| ^ P2P Session (A-B) ^ | P2P Session (B-A) | |
| | 138.76.29.7:1234 | | 155.99.25.11:62000 | |
| | 155.99.25.11:62000 | v 138.76.29.7:31000 v |
| |
+--------------+ |
| 155.99.25.11 | |
| | |
| Address/Port | |
| Restricted | |
| Cone NAT A | |
+--------------+ |
| |
| ^ Relay-Req Session(A-S) ^ |
| | 18.181.0.31:1234 | |
| | 10.0.0.1:1234 | |
| |
| ^ P2P Session (A-B) ^ |
| | 138.76.29.7:1234 | |
| | 10.0.0.1:1234 | |
| |
Private Client A Public Client B
10.0.0.1:1234 138.76.29.7:1234
Figure 4: Force private client to initiate session for Direct-P2P
Client A has private IP address 10.0.0.1, and the application is
using TCP port 1234. This client has established a connection with
server S at public IP address 18.181.0.31 and port 1235. NAT A has
assigned TCP port 62000, at its own public IP address 155.99.25.11,
to serve as the temporary public endpoint address for A's session
with S: therefore, server S believes that client A is at IP address
155.99.25.11 using port 62000. Client B, however, has its own
permanent IP address, 138.76.29.7, and the peer-to-peer application
on B is accepting TCP connections at port 1234.
Now suppose client B would like to initiate a peer-to-peer
communication session with client A. B might first attempt to
contact client A either at the address client A believes itself to
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have, namely 10.0.0.1:1234, or at the address of A as observed by
server S, namely 155.99.25.11:62000. In either case, however, the
connection will fail. In the first case, traffic directed to IP
address 10.0.0.1 will simply be dropped by the network because
10.0.0.1 is not a publicly routable IP address. In the second case,
the TCP SYN request from B will arrive at NAT A directed to port
62000, but NAT A will reject the connection request because only
outgoing connections are allowed.
After attempting and failing to establish a direct connection to A,
client B can use server S to relay a request to client A to initiate
a "reversed" connection to client B. Client A, upon receiving this
relayed request through S, opens a TCP connection to client B at B's
public IP address and port number. NAT A allows the connection to
proceed because it is originating inside the firewall, and client B
can receive the connection because it is not behind a NAT device.
A variety of current peer-to-peer applications implement this
technique. Its main limitation, of course, is that it only works so
long as only one of the communicating peers is behind a NAT and the
NAT is P2P-friendly, such as a Cone NAT. In the increasingly common
case where both peers can be behind NATs, the method fails. Because
connection reversal is not a general solution to the problem, it is
NOT recommended as a primary strategy. NAT-friendly P2P
applications may choose to attempt connection reversal, but should
be able to fall back automatically to another mechanism such as
relaying if neither a "forward" nor a "reverse" connection can be
established.
3.3. UDP hole punching
The "UDP hole punching" technique is the most popular and effective
of all the techniques described thus far. UDP hole punching
relies on the properties of common firewalls and cone NATs to allow
appropriately designed peer-to-peer applications to "punch holes"
through the NAT device and establish direct connectivity with each
other, even when both communicating hosts lie behind NAT devices.
This technique was mentioned briefly in section 5.1 of RFC 3027 [NAT-
PROT], described in [KEGEL], and used in some recent protocols
[TEREDO, ICE]. This technique has been used primarily with UDP
applications, but not as reliably with TCP applications. Readers
may refer Section 3.4 for details on "Simultaneous TCP open", also
known sometimes as "TCP hole punching".
We will consider two specific scenarios, and how applications can be
designed to handle both of them gracefully. In the first situation,
representing the common case, two clients desiring direct peer-to-
peer communication reside behind two different NATs. In the second,
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the two clients actually reside behind the same NAT, but do not
necessarily know that they do.
3.3.1. Peers behind different NATs
Suppose clients A and B both have private IP addresses and lie behind
different network address translators as in figure 5. The
peer-to-peer application running on clients A and B and on server S
each use UDP port 1234. A and B have each initiated UDP communication
sessions with server S, causing NAT A to assign its own public UDP
port 62000 for A's session with S, and causing NAT B to assign its
port 31000 to B's session with S, respectively.
Server S
18.181.0.31:1234
|
+----------------------------+----------------------------+
| |
| ^ Relay-Req Session(A-S) ^ ^ Relay-Req Session(B-S) ^ |
| | 18.181.0.31:1234 | | 18.181.0.31:1234 | |
| | 155.99.25.11:62000 | | 138.76.29.7:31000 | |
| |
| ^ P2P Session (A-B) ^ ^ P2P Session (B-A) ^ |
| | 138.76.29.7:31000 | | 155.99.25.11:62000 | |
| | 155.99.25.11:62000 | | 138.76.29.7:31000 | |
| |
+--------------+ +--------------+
| 155.99.25.11 | | 138.76.29.7 |
| | | |
| Address/Port | | Address/port |
| Restricted | | Restricted |
| Cone NAT A | | Cone NAT B |
+--------------+ +--------------+
| |
| ^ Relay-Req Session(A-S) ^ ^ Relay-Req Session(B-S) ^ |
| | 18.181.0.31:1234 | | 18.181.0.31:1234 | |
| | 10.0.0.1:1234 | | 10.1.1.3:1234 | |
| |
| ^ P2P Session (A-B) ^ ^ P2P Session (B-A) ^ |
| | 138.76.29.7:31000 | | 155.99.25.11:62000 | |
| | 10.0.0.1:1234 | | 10.1.1.3:1234 | |
| |
Client A Client B
10.0.0.1:1234 10.1.1.3:1234
Figure 5: Coordinate simultaneous outgoing sessions for Direct-P2P
Now suppose that client A wants to establish a UDP communication
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session directly with client B. If A simply starts sending UDP
messages to B's public address, 138.76.29.7:31000, then NAT B will
typically discard these incoming messages (unless it is a full cone
NAT), because the source address and port number does not match those
of S, with which the original outgoing session was established.
Similarly, if B simply starts sending UDP messages to A's public
address and port number, then NAT A will typically discard these
messages.
Suppose A starts sending UDP messages to B's public address, however,
and simultaneously relays a request through server S to B, asking B
to start sending UDP messages to A's public address. A's outgoing
messages directed to B's public address (138.76.29.7:31000) cause NAT
A to open up a new communication session between A's private address
and B's public address. At the same time, B's messages to A's public
address (155.99.25.11:62000) cause NAT B to open up a new
communication session between B's private address and A's public
address. Once the new UDP sessions have been opened up in each
direction, client A and B can communicate with each other directly
without further burden on the "introduction" server S.
The UDP hole punching technique has several useful properties. Once
a direct peer-to-peer UDP connection has been established between two
clients behind NAT devices, either party on that connection can in
turn take over the role of "introducer" and help the other party
establish peer-to-peer connections with additional peers, minimizing
the load on the initial introduction server S. The application does
not need to attempt to detect the kind of NAT device it is behind,
if any [STUN], since the procedure above will establish peer-to-peer
communication channels equally well if either or both clients do not
happen to be behind a NAT device. The UDP hole punching technique
even works automatically with multiple NATs, where one or both
clients are removed from the public Internet via two or more levels
of address translation.
3.3.2. Peers behind the same NAT
Now consider the scenario in which the two clients (probably
unknowingly) happen to reside behind the same NAT, and are therefore
located in the same private IP address space, as in figure 6.
Client A has established a UDP session with server S, to which the
common NAT has assigned public port number 62000. Client B has
similarly established a session with S, to which the NAT has
assigned public port number 62001.
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Server S
18.181.0.31:1234
|
^ Relay-Req Session(A-S) ^ | ^ Relay-Req Session(B-S) ^
| 18.181.0.31:1234 | | | 18.181.0.31:1234 |
| 155.99.25.11:62000 | | | 155.99.25.11:62001 |
|
+--------------+
| 155.99.25.11 |
| |
| Address/Port |
| Restricted |
| Cone NAT |
+--------------+
|
+-----------------------------+----------------------------+
| |
| |
| ^ Relay-Req Session(A-S) ^ ^ Relay-Req Session(B-S) ^ |
| | 18.181.0.31:1234 | | 18.181.0.31:1234 | |
| | 10.0.0.1:1234 | | 10.1.1.3:1234 | |
| |
| ^ P2P Session-try1(A-B) ^ ^ P2P Session-try1 (B-A)^ |
| | 10.1.1.3:1234 | | 10.0.0.1:1234 | |
| | 10.0.0.1:1234 | | 10.1.1.3:1234 | |
| |
| ^ P2P Session-try2 (A-B) ^ ^ P2P Session-try2 (B-A)^ |
| | 155.99.25.11:62001 | | 155.99.25.11:62000 | |
| | 10.0.0.1:1234 | | 10.1.1.3:1234 | |
| |
Client A Client B
10.0.0.1:1234 10.1.1.3:1234
Figure 6: Register private identity & NAT identity with Relay server.
Suppose that A and B use the UDP hole punching technique as outlined
above to establish a communication channel using server S as an
introducer. Then A and B will learn each other's public IP addresses
and port numbers as observed by server S, and start sending each
other messages at those public addresses. The two clients will be
able to communicate with each other this way as long as the NAT
allows hosts on the internal network to open translated UDP sessions
with other internal hosts and not just with external hosts. We refer
to this situation as "loopback translation," because packets arriving
at the NAT from the private network are translated and then "looped
back" to the private network rather than being passed through to the
public network. For example, when A sends a UDP packet to B's public
address, the packet initially has a source IP address and port number
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of 10.0.0.1:124 and a destination of 155.99.25.11:62001. The NAT
receives this packet, translates it to have a source of
155.99.25.11:62000 (A's public address) and a destination of
10.1.1.3:1234, and then forwards it on to B. Even if loopback
translation is supported by the NAT, this translation and forwarding
step is obviously unnecessary in this situation, and is likely to add
latency to the dialog between A and B as well as burdening the NAT.
The solution to this problem is straightforward, however. When A and
B initially exchange address information through server S, they
should include their own IP addresses and port numbers as "observed"
by themselves, as well as their addresses as observed by S. The
clients then simultaneously start sending packets to each other at
each of the alternative addresses they know about, and use the first
address that leads to successful communication. If the two clients
are behind the same NAT, then the packets directed to their private
addresses are likely to arrive first, resulting in a direct
communication channel not involving the NAT. If the two clients are
behind different NATs, then the packets directed to their private
addresses will fail to reach each other at all, but the clients will
hopefully establish connectivity using their respective public
addresses. It is important that these packets be authenticated in
some way, however, since in the case of different NATs it is entirely
possible for A's messages directed at B's private address to reach
some other, unrelated node on A's private network, or vice versa.
3.3.3. Peers separated by multiple NATs
In some topologies involving multiple NAT devices, it is not
possible for two clients to establish an "optimal" P2P route between
them without specific knowledge of the topology. Consider for
example the situation, depicted in figure 7.
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Server S
18.181.0.31:1234
|
^ Relay-Req Session(A-S) ^ | ^ Relay-Req Session(B-S) ^
| 18.181.0.31:1234 | | | 18.181.0.31:1234 |
| 155.99.25.11:62000 | | | 155.99.25.11:62001 |
|
+--------------+
| 155.99.25.11 |
| |
| Address/Port |
| Restricted |
| Cone NAT X |
| (Supporting |
| Loopback |
| Translation) |
+--------------+
|
+----------------------------+----------------------------+
| |
| ^ Relay-Req Session(A-S) ^ ^ Relay-Req Session(B-S) ^ |
| | 18.181.0.31:1234 | | 18.181.0.31:1234 | |
| | 192.168.1.1:30000 | | 192.168.1.2:31000 | |
| |
| ^ P2P Session (A-B) ^ ^ P2P Session (B-A) ^ |
| | 155.99.25.11:62001 | | 155.99.25.11:62000 | |
| | 192.168.1.1:30000 | | 192.168.1.2:31000 | |
| |
+--------------+ +--------------+
| 192.168.1.1 | | 192.168.1.2 |
| | | |
| Address/Port | | Address/Port |
| Restricted | | Restricted |
| Cone-NAT A | | Cone-NAT B |
+--------------+ +--------------+
| |
| ^ Relay-Req Session(A-S) ^ ^ Relay-Req Session(B-S)^ |
| | 18.181.0.31:1234 | | 18.181.0.31:1234 | |
| | 10.0.0.1:1234 | | 10.1.1.3:1234 | |
| |
| ^ P2P Session (A-B) ^ ^ P2P Session (B-A) ^ |
| | 155.99.25.11:62001 | | 155.99.25.11:62000 | |
| | 10.0.0.1:1234 | | 10.1.1.3:1234 | |
| |
Client A Client B
10.0.0.1:1234 10.1.1.3:1234
Figure 7: Use of Loopback translation to facilitate Direct-P2P
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Suppose NAT X is a large industrial Cone NAT deployed by an internet
service provider (ISP) to multiplex many customers onto a few public
IP addresses, and NATs A and B are small consumer NAT gateways
deployed independently by two of the ISP's customers to multiplex
their private home networks onto their respective ISP-provided IP
addresses. Only server S and NAT X have globally routable IP
addresses; the "public" IP addresses used by NAT A and NAT B are
actually private to the ISP's addressing realm, while client A's and
B's addresses in turn are private to the addressing realms of NAT A
and B, respectively. Each client initiates an outgoing connection to
server S as before, causing NATs A and B each to create a single
public/private translation, and causing NAT X to establish a
public/private translation for each session.
Now suppose clients A and B attempt to establish a direct peer-to-
peer UDP connection. The optimal method would be for client A to
send messages to client B's public address at NAT B,
192.168.1.2:31000 in the ISP's addressing realm, and for client B to
send messages to A's public address at NAT B, namely
192.168.1.1:30000. Unfortunately, A and B have no way to learn these
addresses, because server S only sees the "global" public addresses
of the clients, 155.99.25.11:62000 and 155.99.25.11:62001. Even if A
and B had some way to learn these addresses, there is still no
guarantee that they would be usable because the address assignments
in the ISP's private addressing realm might conflict with unrelated
address assignments in the clients' private realms. The clients
therefore have no choice but to use their global public addresses as
seen by S for their P2P communication, and rely on NAT X to provide
loopback translation.
3.3.4. Assumption of P2P-friendly NAT devices enroute
The UDP hole punching technique has a caveat in that it works only
if the traversing NAT is a P2P-friendly NAT, such as a Cone NAT.
When a symmetric NAT is encountered enroute, P2P application is
unable to reuse an already-established translation endpoint for
communication with different external destinations and the
technique would fail. However, Cone NATs are widely deployed in
the Internet. That makes the UDP hole punching technique broadly
applicable; nevertheless a substantial fraction of deployed NATs
are symmetric NATs and do not support the UDP hole punching
technique.
3.4. Simultaneous TCP Open
Simultaneous TCP open (also known sometimes as TCP hole punching)
technique is used in some cases to establish direct peer-to-peer
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TCP connections between a pair of nodes that are both behind
P2P-friendly NAT devices that implement Cone NAT behavior on
their TCP traffic. Most TCP sessions start with one endpoint
sending a SYN packet, to which the other party responds with a
SYN-ACK packet. It is permissible, however, for two endpoints to
start a TCP session by simultaneously sending each other SYN
packets, to which each party subsequently responds with a
separate ACK. This procedure is referred as "simultaneous TCP
Open" technique. However, "Simultaneous TCP Open" is not
implemented correctly on many systems, including NAT devices.
If a NAT device receives a TCP SYN packet from outside the private
network attempting to initiate an incoming TCP connection, the
NAT device will normally reject the connection attempt by either
dropping the SYN packet or sending back a TCP RST (connection reset)
packet. In the case of SYN timeout or connection reset, the P2P
endpoint will continue to resend a SYN packet, until the peer did
the same from its end.
When a SYN packet arrives with source and destination addresses and
port numbers that correspond to a TCP session that the NAT device
believes is already active, then the NAT device will allow the
packet to pass through. In particular, if the NAT device has just
recently seen and transmitted an outgoing SYN packet with the same
addresses and port numbers, then it will consider the session
active and allow the incoming SYN through. If clients A and B can
each initiate an outgoing TCP connection with the other client
timed so that each client's outgoing SYN passes through its local
NAT device before either SYN reaches the opposite NAT device,
then a working peer-to-peer TCP connection will result.
In reality, this technique may not work reliably with many Cone
NAT devices for the following reason(s). If either client's SYN
packet arrive at the opposite NAT device too quickly (before the
peer had a chance to send the SYN packet), then the remote NAT
device may reject the SYN with a RST packet. This could cause
the local NAT device in turn to close the new NAT-session
immediately or initiate end-of-session timeout (refer section
2.6 of [NAT-TERM]) so as to close the NAT-session at the end of
the timeout. As each client continues SYN retransmission
attempts, the remote NAT device might not let the SYNs through
because either the NAT-session is closed or the NAT session is
in end-of-session timeout state and would not let the SYN
packets through. Either way, TCP connection is not established.
Hence, this technique is mentioned here only for historical
reasons.
3.5. UDP port number prediction
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A variant of the UDP hole punching technique exists that allows
peer-to-peer UDP sessions to be created in the presence of some
symmetric NATs. This method is sometimes called the "N+1"
technique [BIDIR] and is explored in detail by Takeda [SYM-STUN].
The method works by analyzing the behavior of the NAT and attempting
to predict the public port numbers it will assign to future sessions.
Consider again the situation in which two clients, A and B, each
behind a separate NAT, have each established UDP connections with a
permanently addressable server S, as depicted in figure 8.
Server S
18.181.0.31:1234
|
+----------------------------+----------------------------+
| |
| ^ Relay-Req Session(A-S) ^ ^ Relay-Req Session(B-S) ^ |
| | 18.181.0.31:1234 | | 18.181.0.31:1234 | |
| | 155.99.25.11:62000 | | 138.76.29.7:31000 | |
| |
| |
+--------------+ +-------------+
| 155.99.25.11 | | 138.76.29.7 |
| | | |
| Symmetric | | Symmetric |
| NAT A | | NAT B |
+--------------+ +-------------+
| |
| ^ Relay-Req Session(A-S) ^ ^ Relay-Req Session(B-S) ^ |
| | 18.181.0.31:1234 | | 18.181.0.31:1234 | |
| | 10.0.0.1:1234 | | 10.1.1.3:1234 | |
| |
Client A Client B
10.0.0.1:1234 10.1.1.3:1234
Figure 8: Use Peer's Symmetric-NAT Identity to predict P2P port
NAT A has assigned its own UDP port 62000 to the communication
session between A and S, and NAT B has assigned its port 31000 to
the session between B and S. By communicating through server S, A
and B learn each other's public IP addresses and port numbers as
observed by S. Client A now starts sending UDP messages to port
31001 at address 138.76.29.7 (note the port number increment), and
client B simultaneously starts sending messages to port 62001 at
address 155.99.25.11. If NATs A and B assign port numbers to new
sessions sequentially, and if not much time has passed since the
A-S and B-S sessions were initiated, then a working bi-directional
communication channel between A and B should result. A's messages
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to B cause NAT A to open up a new session, to which NAT A will
(hopefully) assign public port number 62001, because 62001 is next
in sequence after the port number 62000 it previously assigned to
the session between A and S. Similarly, B's messages to A will
cause NAT B to open a new session, to which it will (hopefully)
assign port number 31001. If both clients have correctly guessed
the port numbers each NAT assigns to the new sessions, then a
bi-directional UDP communication channel will have been
established as shown in figure 9..
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Server S
18.181.0.31:1234
|
|
+----------------------------+----------------------------+
| |
| ^ Relay-Req Session(A-S) ^ ^ Relay-Req Session(B-S) ^ |
| | 18.181.0.31:1234 | | 18.181.0.31:1234 | |
| | 155.99.25.11:62000 | | 138.76.29.7:31000 | |
| |
| ^ P2P Session (A-B) ^ ^ P2P Session (B-A) ^ |
| | 138.76.29.7:31001 | | 155.99.25.11:62001 | |
| | 155.99.25.11:62001 | | 138.76.29.7:31001 | |
| |
+--------------+ +-------------+
| 155.99.25.11 | | 138.76.29.7 |
| | | |
| Symmetric | | Symmetric |
| NAT A | | NAT B |
+--------------+ +-------------+
| |
| ^ Relay-Req Session(A-S) ^ ^ Relay-Req Session(B-S) ^ |
| | 18.181.0.31:1234 | | 18.181.0.31:1234 | |
| | 10.0.0.1:1234 | | 10.1.1.3:1234 | |
| |
| ^ P2P Session (A-B) ^ ^ P2P Session (B-A) ^ |
| | 138.76.29.7:31001 | | 155.99.25.11:62001 | |
| | 10.0.0.1:1234 | | 10.1.1.3:1234 | |
| |
Client A Client B
10.0.0.1:1234 10.1.1.3:1234
Figure 9: Use Port Prediction on Symmetric NATs to setup Direct-p2p
Clearly, there are many things that can cause this trick to fail.
If the predicted port number at either NAT already happens to be in
use by an unrelated session, then the NAT will skip over that port
number and the connection attempt will fail. If either NAT sometimes
or always chooses port numbers non-sequentially, then the trick will
fail. If a different client behind NAT A (or B respectively) opens
up a new outgoing UDP connection to any external destination after A
(B) establishes its connection with S but before sending its first
message to B (A), then the unrelated client will inadvertently
"steal" the desired port number. This trick is therefore much less
likely to work when either NAT involved is under load.
Since in practice a P2P application implementing this trick would
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still need to work if the NATs are cone NATs, or if one is a cone NAT
and the other is a symmetric NAT, the application would need to
detect beforehand what kind of NAT is involved on either end [STUN]
and modify its behavior accordingly, increasing the complexity of the
algorithm and the general brittleness of the network. Finally, port
number prediction has no chance of working if either client is behind
two or more levels of NAT and the NAT(s) closest to the client are
symmetric. For all of these reasons, it is NOT recommended that new
applications implement this trick. This technique is mentioned here
only for historical and informational purposes.
3.6. TCP port number prediction
This is a variant of the "Simultaneous TCP open" technique that
allows peer-to-peer TCP sessions to be created in the presence of
some symmetric NATs.
Unfortunately, this trick may be even more fragile and timing-
sensitive than the UDP port number prediction trick described
earlier. First, even as both NAT devices implement Cone NAT
behavior on the TCP traffic, all the same things can go wrong
with each side's attempt to predict the public port numbers
that the respective NATs will assign to the new sessions can
happen with TCP port prediction as well. In addition, if either
client's SYN arrives at the opposite NAT device too quickly, then
the remote NAT device may reject the SYN with a RST packet,
causing the local NAT device in turn to close the new session
and make future SYN retransmission attempts using the same port
numbers futile. For this reason, this trick is mentioned here
only for historical reasons. It is NOT recommended for use by
applications.
4. NAT-friendly P2P application design guidelines
4.1. What works with P2P NAT devices
Since UDP hole punching is the most efficient existing method of
establishing direct peer-to-peer communication between two nodes
that are both behind NATs, and it works with a wide variety of
existing NATs, it is recommended that applications use this
technique if efficient peer-to-peer communication is required,
but be prepared to fall back on simple relaying when direct
communication cannot be established.
4.2. Peers behind the same NAT
In practice there may be a fairly large number of users who
have not two IP addresses, but three or more. In these cases,
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it is hard or impossible to tell which addresses to send to
the registration server. The applications should send all its
addresses, in such a case.
4.3. Peer discovery
Applications sending packets to several addresses to discover
which one is best to use for a given peer may become a
significant source of 'space junk' littering the net, as the
peer may have chosen to use routable addresses improperly as
an internal LAN (e.g. 11.0.1.1, which is assigned to the DOD).
Thus applications should exercise caution when sending the
speculative hello packets.
4.4. Use of midcom protocol
If the applications know the NAT devices they would be traversing
and these NAT devices implement the midcom protocol ([MIDCOM]),
applications could use the midcom protocol to ease their way
through the NAT devices.
For example, If midcom protocol is supported on the NAT devices
enroute, a midcom client for a P2P application might exercise
control over port binding (or address binding) parameters such as
lifetime, maxidletime, and directionality so the applications can
both connect to external peers as well as receive connections
from external peers. Midcom client for a P2P application, for
instance, might set directionality of the corresponding TCP or
UDP port binding(s) to be bi-directional within the NAT device.
A bi-directional TCP/UDP port binding will allow inbound as well
as outbound TCP/UDP sessions through the NAT device. This could
in turn, eliminate a substantial amount of external server
intervention for setting up the peer-to-peer communication
across hosts behind the NAT devices. When the application no
longer needs the binding, the application could simply
dismantle the binding, also using the midcom protocol.
TCP based P2P applications can benefit particularly from the use
of midcom protocol, as the existing "Simultaneous TCP Open"
technique is not highly reliable.
5. P2P-friendly NAT design guidelines
This section discusses considerations in the design of network
address translators, as they affect peer-to-peer applications.
The primary and most important recommendation for NAT designers
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is that they maintain address or port bindings in the NAT
implementations. When a node on the private network initiates
connection to a new external destination, using the same source
IP address and TCP/UDP port as an existing translated TCP/UDP
session, the NAT should ensure that the new TCP/UDP session
reuses the address/port binding of the existing session.
5.1. Deprecate the use of symmetric NATs
Symmetric NATs gained popularity with client-server applications
such as web browsers, which only need to initiate outgoing
connections. However, in the recent times, P2P applications such
as Instant messaging and audio conferencing have been in wide
use. Symmetric NATs do not support port binding and are not
suitable for P2P applications. For this reason, a NAT will be
more P2P-friendly if it deprecated the use of symmetric NAT
function.
A P2P-friendly NAT must implement Cone NAT behavior, allowing
applications to establish robust P2P connectivity using the
TCP/UDP hole punching techniques. Ideally, a P2P-friendly NAT
should allow applications to make P2P connections via both
TCP and UDP.
5.2. Add incremental Cone NAT support to Symmetric NATs
One way for a symmetric NAT device to extend support to P2P
applications would be to divide its assignable port
namespace, reserving a portion of its ports for one-to-one
sessions and a different set of ports for one-to-many
sessions.
Further, a NAT device may be explicitly configured with
applications and hosts that need the P2P feature, so the
NAT device can auto-magically assign a P2P port from the
right port block.
5.3. Simultaneous TCP Open support in Cone NATs
A Cone NAT will be more P2P friendly if the Cone NAT maintained
port bindings for TCP endpoints in addition to port bindings for
UDP endpoints. TCP port bindings on a Cone NAT will increase the
NAT's ability to support TCP based P2P application deployment.
Further, a NAT device will be more P2P friendly for TCP
applications, if the NAT device implemented end-of-session
timeout for TCP NAT-sessions (refer section 2.6 of [NAT-TERM])
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and supported "Simultaneous TCP Open" (refer section 3.4).
Supporting "Simultaneous TCP Open" on a Cone NAT will allow TCP
based P2P applications to reliably establish P2P connections
even as they traverse the NAT.
5.4. Port preservation is not important
Some NATs, when establishing a new TCP or UDP session, attempt to
assign the same public port number as the corresponding private port
number, if that port number happens to be available. For example, if
client A at address 10.0.0.1 initiates an outgoing UDP session with
a datagram from port number 1234, and the NAT's public port number
1234 happens to be available, then the NAT uses port number 1234 at
the NAT's public IP address as the translated endpoint address for
the session.
This behavior might be beneficial to some legacy TCP/UDP
applications that expect to communicate only using specific TCP/UDP
port numbers. However, applications needing to traverse NAT devices
might not want to depend on this behavior since it is only possible
for a NAT to preserve the port number if at most one node on the
internal network is using that port number.
In addition, a NAT should NOT try to preserve the port number in a
new session if doing so would conflict with an existing port
binding. For example, suppose client A at internal port 1234 has
established a session with external server S, and NAT A has created
a port binding to public port 62000, because public port number
1234 on the NAT was not available at the time. Now, suppose port
number 1234 on the NAT subsequently becomes available, and while the
session between A and S is still active, client A initiates a new
session from the same internal port (1234) to a different external
node B. In this case, because a port binding has already been
established between client A's port 1234 and the NAT's public port
62000, this binding should be preserved and the new session should
reuse the port binding (to port 62000). The NAT should not assign
public port 1234 to this new session just because port 1234 has
become available. Such a behavior would not be likely to benefit the
application in any way since the application has already been
operating with a translated port number, and it would break any
attempts the application might make to establish peer-to-peer
connections.
5.5. Large timeout for P2P applications
A P2P-friendly NAT device might be configured with a large
idle-timeout in the order of 5 minutes (300 seconds) or more
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for P2P applications. The idle-timeout is in reference to the
port bindings and NAT-sessions maintained by the NAT device
for P2P applications. NAT implementers are often tempted to
use a shorter idle timeout, as they are accustomed to doing
for non-P2P applications. But, short timeouts are problematic
for P2P applications. Consider a P2P application that involved
16 peers. With short idle timeouts, the applications might
flood the network with keepalive packets every 10 seconds to
avoid NAT timeouts. This is so because an application might
send keepalives 5 times as often as the NAT device's timeout
just in case the keepalives are dropped in the network.
5.6. Support loopback translation
A NAT will be more P2P-friendly if it supported loopback
translation. Loopback translation support would allow hosts
behind a p2p-friendly NAT to communicate with other hosts behind
the same NAT device through their public, possibly translated
endpoints. Support for loopback translation might be particularly
useful in the case of large-capacity NATs deployed as the first
level of a multi-level NAT scenario. As described in section
3.3.3, hosts behind the same first-level NAT but different
second-level NATs do not have a way to communicate with each
other by TCP/UDP hole punching, even if all the NAT devices
preserve endpoint identities, unless the first-level NAT also
supports loopback translation.
5.7. Support midcom protocol
A NAT will be more P2P-friendly if it supported midcom protocol,
because midcom protocol places the control of NAT resources in
the hands of the midcom client rather than the NAT device itself.
The midcom client will utilize the application level knowledge to
control NAT resources so as to permit the applications through the
NAT device. A P2P application end-point may optionally play the
role of midcom client for itself. Midcom client for a P2P
application, for instance, might set the corresponding TCP or UDP
port binding(s) bi-directional within the P2P-friendly NAT device.
A bi-directional TCP/UDP port binding will allow inbound as well
as outbound TCP/UDP sessions through the NAT device.
Readers may refer the midcom working group [MIDCOM] to monitor
the status of Midcom protocol specification.
6. Security considerations
The guidelines outlined in this document do not inherently
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create new security issues, for either the NAT-friendly P2P
applications or the P2P-friendly NAT devices. Nevertheless,
new security risks may be likely if the techniques described
are not adhered to with sufficient care. This section describes
security risks the applications could inadvertently create in
attempting to support P2P communication across NAT devices.
Also described are implications for the security policies of
P2P-friendly NAT devices.
6.1. IP address aliasing
NAT-friendly P2P applications must use appropriate authentication
mechanisms to protect their P2P connections from accidental
confusion with other P2P connections as well as from malicious
connection hijacking or denial-of-service attacks. NAT-friendly
P2P applications effectively must interact with multiple distinct
IP address domains, but are not generally aware of the exact
topology or administrative policies defining these address
domains. While attempting to establish P2P connections via
TCP/UDP hole punching, applications send packets that may
frequently arrive at an entirely different host than the
intended one.
For example, many consumer-level NAT devices provide DHCP
services that are configured by default to hand out site-local
IP addresses in a particular address range. Say, a particular
consumer NAT device, by default, hands out IP addresses starting
with 192.168.1.100. Most private home networks using that NAT
device will have a host with that IP address, and many of these
networks will probably have a host at address 192.168.1.101 as
well. If host A at address 192.168.1.101 on one private network
attempts to establish a connection by UDP hole punching with
host B at 192.168.1.100 on a different private network, then as
part of this process host A will send discovery packets to
address 192.168.1.100 on its local network, and host B will send
discovery packets to address 192.168.1.101 on its network. Clearly,
these discovery packets will not reach the intended machine since
the two hosts are on different private networks, but they are very
likely to reach SOME machine on these respective networks at the
standard UDP port numbers used by this application, potentially
causing confusion, especially if the application is also running
on those other machines and does not properly authenticate its
messages.
This risk due to aliasing is therefore present even without a
malicious attacker. If one endpoint, say host A, is actually
malicious, then without proper authentication the attacker could
cause host B to connect and interact in unintended ways with
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another host on its private network having the same IP address
as the attacker's (purported) private address. Since the two
endpoint hosts A and B presumably discovered each other through
a public server S, and neither S nor B has any means to verify
A's reported private address, all P2P applications must assume
that any IP address they find to be suspect until they successfully
establish authenticated two-way communication.
6.2. Denial-of-service attacks
P2P applications and the public servers that support them must
protect themselves against denial-of-service attacks, and ensure
that they cannot be used by an attacker to mount denial-of-service
attacks against other targets. To protect themselves, P2P
applications and servers must avoid taking any action requiring
significant local processing or storage resources until
authenticated two-way communication is established. To avoid being
used as a tool for denial-of-service attacks, P2P applications and
servers must minimize the amount and rate of traffic they send to
any newly-discovered IP address until after authenticated two-way
communication is established with the intended target.
For example, P2P applications that register with a public rendezvous
server can claim to have any private IP address, or perhaps multiple
IP addresses. A well-connected host or group of hosts that can
collectively attract a substantial volume of P2P connection attempts
(e.g., by offering to serve popular content) could mount a
denial-of-service attack on a target host C simply by including C's
IP address in their own list of IP addresses they register with the
rendezvous server. There is no way the rendezvous server can verify
the IP addresses, since they could well be legitimate private
network addresses useful to other hosts for establishing
network-local communication. The P2P application protocol must
therefore be designed to size- and rate-limit traffic to unverified
IP addresses in order to avoid the potential damage such a
concentration effect could cause.
6.3. Man-in-the-middle attacks
Any network device on the path between a P2P client and a
rendezvous server can mount a variety of man-in-the-middle
attacks by pretending to be a NAT. For example, suppose
host A attempts to register with rendezvous server S, but a
network-snooping attacker is able to observe this registration
request. The attacker could then flood server S with requests
that are identical to the client's original request except with
a modified source IP address, such as the IP address of the
attacker itself. If the attacker can convince the server to
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register the client using the attacker's IP address, then the
attacker can make itself an active component on the path of all
future traffic from the server AND other P2P hosts to the
original client, even if the attacker was originally only able
to snoop the path from the client to the server.
The client cannot protect itself from this attack by
authenticating its source IP address to the rendezvous server,
because in order to be NAT-friendly the application must allow
intervening NATs to change the source address silently. This
appears to be an inherent security weakness of the NAT paradigm.
The only defense against such an attack is for the client to
authenticate and potentially encrypt the actual content of its
communication using appropriate higher-level identities, so that
the interposed attacker is not able to take advantage of its
position. Even if all application-level communication is
authenticated and encrypted, however, this attack could still be
used as a traffic analysis tool for observing who the client is
communicating with.
6.4. Impact on NAT device security
Designing NAT devices to preserve endpoint identities does not
weaken the security provided by the NAT device. For example, a
Port-restricted Cone NAT is inherently no more "promiscuous"
than a Symmetric NAT in its policies for allowing either
incoming or outgoing traffic to pass through the NAT device.
As long as outgoing TCP/UDP sessions are enabled and the NAT
device maintains consistent binding between internal and external
TCP/UDP ports, the NAT device will filter out any incoming TCP/UDP
packets that do not match the active sessions initiated from
within the enclave. Filtering incoming traffic aggressively while
maintaining consistent port bindings thus allows a NAT device to
be P2P friendly without compromising the principle of rejecting
unsolicited incoming traffic.
Maintaining consistent port binding could arguably increase the
predictability of traffic emerging from the NAT device, by revealing
the relationships between different UDP sessions and hence about
the behavior of applications running within the enclave. This
predictability could conceivably be useful to an attacker in
exploiting other network or application level vulnerabilities.
If the security requirements of a particular deployment scenario
are so critical that such subtle information channels are of
concern, however, then the NAT device almost certainly should not be
configured to allow unrestricted outgoing TCP/UDP traffic in the
first place. Such a NAT device should only allow communication
originating from specific applications at specific ports, or
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via tightly-controlled application-level gateways. In this
situation there is no hope of generic, transparent peer-to-peer
connectivity across the NAT device (or transparent client/server
connectivity for that matter); the NAT device must either
implement appropriate application-specific behavior or disallow
communication entirely.
7. Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank Henrik, Dave, and Christian Huitema
for their valuable feedback.
8. Informative References
[NAT-TERM] P. Srisuresh and M. Holdrege, "IP Network Address
Translator (NAT) Terminology and Considerations", RFC
2663, August 1999.
[NAT-TRAD] P. Srisuresh and K. Egevang, "Traditional IP Network
Address Translator (Traditional NAT)", RFC 3022,
January 2001.
[STUN] J. Rosenberg, J. Weinberger, C. Huitema, and R. Mahy,
"STUN - Simple Traversal of User Datagram Protocol (UDP)
Through Network Address Translators (NATs)", RFC 3489,
March 2003.
[NAT-APPL] D. Senie, "Network Address Translator (NAT)-Friendly
Application Design Guidelines", RFC 3235, January 2002.
[NAT-PROT] M. Holdrege and P. Srisuresh, "Protocol Complications
with the IP Network Address Translator", RFC 3027,
January 2001.
[NAT-PT] G. Tsirtsis and P. Srisuresh, "Network Address
Translation - Protocol Translation (NAT-PT)", RFC 2766,
February 2000.
[MIDCOM-FW]P. Srisuresh, J. Kuthan, J. Rosenberg, A. Molitor, and
A. Rayhan, "Middlebox communication architecture and
framework", RFC 3303, August 2002.
[BIDIR] Peer-to-Peer Working Group, NAT/Firewall Working Committee,
"Bidirectional Peer-to-Peer Communication with Interposing
Firewalls and NATs", August 2001.
http://www.peer-to-peerwg.org/tech/nat/
[KEGEL] Dan Kegel, "NAT and Peer-to-Peer Networking", July 1999.
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http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~dank/peer-nat.html
[TCP] "Transmission Control Protocol", RFC 793, September 1981.
[MIDCOM] Middlebox Communication (midcom) working group,
http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/midcom-charter.html
[TURN] J. Rosenberg, J. Weinberger, R. Mahy, and C. Huitema,
"Traversal Using Relay NAT (TURN)",
draft-rosenberg-midcom-turn-01 (Work In Progress),
March 2003.
9. Author's Address
Bryan Ford
Laboratory for Computer Science
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
77 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02139
Phone: (617) 253-5261
E-mail: baford@mit.edu
Web: http://www.brynosaurus.com/
Pyda Srisuresh
Caymas Systems, Inc.
11799-A North McDowell Blvd.
Petaluma, CA 94954
Phone: (707) 283-5063
E-mail: srisuresh@yahoo.com
Dan Kegel
Kegel.com
901 S. Sycamore Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90036
Phone: 323 931-6717
Email: dank@kegel.com
Web: http://www.kegel.com/
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