[p2p-hackers] Final version of "P2P over NAT" paper available

[David Barrett]

Heh, great validation of the results.

So if what's the latest values for the following chart:

                        NAT'd     Firewalled
                     +---------+-------------
% Able to hole punch |  82.2%  |   50-60% *
% of total internet  |   ??    |     ??
                     +---------+-------------
% Benefiting         |   ??    |     ??

* http://zgp.org/pipermail/p2p-hackers/2004-December/002215.html

Basically, I'd like to get a better understanding of what fraction of all
internet users might benefit from these techniques, estimated as the product
of the above rows.

-david

> -----Original Message-----
> From: p2p-hackers-bounces at zgp.org [mailto:p2p-hackers-bounces at zgp.org] On
> Behalf Of Alex Pankratov
> Sent: Friday, February 18, 2005 11:04 PM
> To: Peer-to-peer development.
> Subject: Re: [p2p-hackers] Final version of "P2P over NAT" paper available
> 
> Bryan,
> 
> Quoting your paper -
> 
>  > .. we find that about 82% of the NATs tested support hole punching
>  > for UDP.
>  > ..
> > The NAT Check data we gathered consists of 380 reported data points
>  > ..
> 
> I happened to have statistics for more than 16000 'data poits', and
> check this out - the rate of 'identity preserving' NAT devices suitable
> for hole punching works out to be 82.2%. *UDP* hole punching that is.
> 
> Alex
> 
> Bryan Ford wrote:
> 
> > Hi folks,
> >
> > For those interested in P2P-over-NAT issues, I just wanted to announce
> that
> > the final version of the following paper, to appear in USENIX '05, is
> now
> > available:
> >
> > Peer-to-Peer Communication Across Network Address Translators, Bryan
> Ford,
> > Pyda Srisuresh, and Dan Kegel. USENIX Annual Technical Conference, April
> > 2005.
> > (PDF) http://www.brynosaurus.com/pub/net/p2pnat.pdf
> > (HTML) http://www.brynosaurus.com/pub/net/p2pnat/
> >
> > An earlier draft of this paper was announced on this list a few months
> ago.
> > The final version includes, among other minor revisions, new "NAT Check"
> > testing results based on almost twice the number of data points as the
> > original draft.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Bryan
> >
> > ---
> >
> > Abstract:
> >
> > Network Address Translation (NAT) causes well-known difficulties for
> > peer-to-peer (P2P) communication, since the peers involved may not be
> > reachable at any globally valid IP address. Several NAT traversal
> techniques
> > are known, but their documentation is slim, and data about their
> robustness
> > or relative merits is slimmer. This paper documents and analyzes one of
> the
> > simplest but most robust and practical NAT traversal techniques,
> commonly
> > known as ``hole punching.'' Hole punching is moderately well-understood
> for
> > UDP communication, but we show how it can be reliably used to set up
> > peer-to-peer TCP streams as well. After gathering data on the
> reliability of
> > this technique on a wide variety of deployed NATs, we find that about
> 82% of
> > the NATs tested support hole punching for UDP, and about 64% support
> hole
> > punching for TCP streams. As NAT vendors become increasingly conscious
> of the
> > needs of important P2P applications such as Voice over IP and online
> gaming
> > protocols, support for hole punching is likely to increase in the
> future.
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> >
> >
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