HORNET: High-speed Onion Routing at the Network Layer

TL;DR

HORNET is a high-speed, low-latency onion routing system operating at the network layer, enabling scalable anonymous communication with minimal processing overhead and high throughput.

Contribution

It introduces a novel network-layer onion routing system that achieves over 93 Gb/s throughput using only symmetric cryptography and no per-flow state on intermediate nodes.

Findings

HORNET achieves over 93 Gb/s processing speed.

The system requires minimal processing overhead per channel.

HORNET maintains security and scalability in anonymous communication.

Abstract

We present HORNET, a system that enables high-speed end-to-end anonymous channels by leveraging next generation network architectures. HORNET is designed as a low-latency onion routing system that operates at the network layer thus enabling a wide range of applications. Our system uses only symmetric cryptography for data forwarding yet requires no per-flow state on intermediate nodes. This design enables HORNET nodes to process anonymous traffic at over 93 Gb/s. HORNET can also scale as required, adding minimal processing overhead per additional anonymous channel. We discuss design and implementation details, as well as a performance and security evaluation.