IMUX: Managing Tor Connections from Two to Infinity, and Beyond

Abstract

We consider proposals to improve the performance of the Tor overlay network by increasing the number of connections between relays such as Torchestra and PCTCP. We introduce a new class of attacks that can apply to these designs, socket exhaustion, and show that these attacks are effective against PCTCP. We also describe IMUX, a design that generalizes the principles behind these designs while still mitigating against socket exhaustion attacks. We demonstrate empirically that IMUX resists socket exhaustion while finding that web clients can realize up to 25% increase in performance compared to Torchestra. Finally, we empirically evaluate the interaction between these designs and the recently proposed KIST design, which aims to improve performance by intelligently scheduling kernel socket writes.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Nov 03, 2014
Accession Number
ADA621868

Entities

People

  • John Geddes
  • Nicholas Hopper
  • Rob Jansen

Organizations

  • United States Naval Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Cyber
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Abstracts
  • Algorithms
  • Computer Communications
  • Computers
  • Computing System Architectures
  • Denial Of Service Attack
  • Governments
  • Information Operations
  • Networks
  • Operating Systems
  • Packet Loss
  • Scheduling (Production)
  • Security Protocols
  • Simulations
  • Simulators
  • Transport Protocols
  • United States Government

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Computer Networking