Challenges in Network Management of Encrypted Traffic

TL;DR

This paper discusses the challenges and future directions for managing encrypted network traffic, emphasizing the need for new protocols, transparency, and improved measurement techniques to enhance network visibility and security.

Contribution

It summarizes current challenges in encrypted traffic management and offers recommendations for protocol design and architecture improvements to address these issues.

Findings

Encrypted traffic complicates network monitoring and security

Transparency and protocol design are crucial for effective management

Future protocols should support independent measurability and layered security

Abstract

This paper summarizes the challenges identified at the MAMI Management and Measurement Summit (M3S) for network management with the increased deployment of encrypted traffic based on a set of use cases and deployed techniques (for network monitoring, performance enhancing proxies, firewalling as well as network-supported DDoS protection and migration), and provides recommendations for future use cases and the development of new protocols and mechanisms. In summary, network architecture and protocol design efforts should 1) provide for independent measurability when observations may be contested, 2) support different security associations at different layers, and 3) replace transparent middleboxes with middlebox transparency in order to increase visibility, rebalance control and enable cooperation.