RON: Resilient Overlay Networks

1
RON Resilient Overlay Networks

• MIT/LCS
• Hari Balakrishnan
• M. Frans Kaashoek
• Robert Morris
• http//nms.lcs.mit.edu/projects/ron

2
Problem Internet badly suited to
mission-critical applications.
A
A
Internet takes bad path
Network Problem
B
B

• Commercial peering architecture
• Directly conflicts with robustness.
• Ignores many existing alternate paths.
• The Internets Global scale
• Prevents sophisticated algorithms.
• Route selection uses fixed, simple metrics.
• Routing isn't sensitive to path quality.

3
Solution Resilient Overlay Network (RON)
A
A
RON Uses Better Path
Network Problem
B
B

• One RON per distributed app.
• RON nodes in different ASs form an overlay
  network.
• RON nodes run application-specific routing
  protocol among themselves.
• Application data is tunneled over reliable,
  secure transport between RON nodes.

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Advantages

• Better robustness.
• Less susceptible to DoS attacks.
• Wider choice of routes.
• Route selection tailored to application needs.
• Better security.
• Traffic is encrypted and authenticated.
• Routing protocol is authenticated.
• Single administrator for entire RON.
• Better responsiveness.
• Application-specific routing metrics for QoS.

5
Research Questions

• How to design overlay networks?
• Self-configuration.
• Understanding performance of underlying net.
• How to design robust, responsive routing
  protocols?
• Fast fail-over.
• Sophisticated metrics.
• Application-directed path selection.
• Solutions take advantage of RON properties.
• Just one RON per application.
• Each RON run by a single administrator.

6
Building the RON Prototype
RON Router
Topology Manager
Performance Database
Active Prober
TCP
UDP
Data Path
Control Path
Resource Manager
IP

• Explore end-to-end Internet performance.
• Simulate RON path selection algorithms.
• Deploy a realistic RON using
• Co-located hosts on different backbones.
• End-system API for application-directed routing.
• Test prototype using multi-party, secure
  video-conferencing.