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International Symposium on Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium

PETS 2009: Privacy Enhancing Technologies pp 73–93Cite as

Scalable Link-Based Relay Selection for Anonymous Routing

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 5672))

Abstract

The performance of an anonymous path can be described using many network metrics – e.g., bandwidth, latency, jitter, loss, etc. However, existing relay selection algorithms have focused exclusively on producing paths with high bandwidth. In contrast to traditional node-based path techniques in which relay selection is biased by relays’ node-characteristics (i.e., bandwidth), this paper presents the case for link-based path generation in which relay selection is weighted in favor of the highest performing links. Link-based relay selection supports more flexible routing, enabling anonymous paths with low latency, jitter, and loss, in addition to high bandwidth. Link-based approaches are also more secure than node-based techniques, eliminating “hotspots” in the network that attract a disproportionate amount of traffic. For example, misbehaving relays cannot advertise themselves as “low-latency” nodes to attract traffic, since latency has meaning only when measured between two endpoints. We argue that link-based path selection is practical for certain anonymity networks, and describe mechanisms for efficiently storing and disseminating link information.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Pennsylvania,  

    Micah Sherr, Matt Blaze & Boon Thau Loo

Authors
  1. Micah Sherr
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  2. Matt Blaze
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  3. Boon Thau Loo
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, University Avenue West, N2L 3G1, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    Ian Goldberg

  2. Department of Computer Science, Purdue University, 305 North University Street, IN 47907-2107, West Lafayete, USA

    Mikhail J. Atallah

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© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Sherr, M., Blaze, M., Loo, B.T. (2009). Scalable Link-Based Relay Selection for Anonymous Routing. In: Goldberg, I., Atallah, M.J. (eds) Privacy Enhancing Technologies. PETS 2009. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5672. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-03168-7_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-03168-7_5

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-03167-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-03168-7

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