Content-based Fine-grained Flow Management Supporting Out-of-Path Transparent Add-ons

TL;DR

This paper introduces a content-based, fine-grained flow management system supporting out-of-path transparent add-ons, enabling flexible packet processing while preserving network transparency and session integrity in edge networks.

Contribution

It proposes a novel content-based flow control method and an out-of-path transparent add-on architecture, addressing limitations of conventional transparent add-ons.

Findings

Effective flow management with minimal network delay impact

Successful implementation of content masking and anonymization approaches

Preservation of TCP session integrity through dynamic rewriting

Abstract

This study aims to realize a mechanism for packet processing in the edge domain while maintaining network transparency, in order to accommodate diverse service requirements in smart communities. Since conventional flow control, which operates on a per-packet basis, lacks flexibility, we propose a content-based fine-grained flow management method that enables control at the level of individual content segments within packets. In addition, we introduce an out-of-path transparent add-on architecture to address the limitations of conventional transparent add-ons, which assume the presence of processing resources on the main path. The proposed system implements one approach for selective content masking and two approaches for out-of-path anonymization. Furthermore, we develop a mechanism for dynamically rewriting Ack and Seq numbers to preserve TCP session integrity. The proposed approaches were implemented and evaluated on Mininet, and the results demonstrate that effective flow management can be achieved with minimal impact on network delay while maintaining network transparency.