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Title: Avoiding VPN Bottlenecks: Exploring Network-Level Client Identity Validation Options
Virtual private networks (VPNs) allow organizations to support their remote employees by creating tunnels that ensure confidentiality, integrity and authenticity of communicated packets. However, these same services are often provided by the application, in protocols such as TLS. As a result, the historical driving force for VPNs may be in decline. Instead, VPNs are often used to determine whether a communicating host is a legitimate member of the network to simplify filtering and access control. However, this comes with a cost: VPN implementations often introduce performance bottlenecks that affect the user experience. To preserve straightforward filtering without the limitations of VPN deployments, we explore a simple network-level identifier that allows remote users to provide evidence that they have previously been vetted. This approach uniquely identifies each user, even if they are behind Carrier-Grade Network Address Translation, which causes widespread IP address sharing. Such identifiers remove the redundant cryptography, packet header overheads, and need for dedicated servers to implement VPNs. This lightweight approach can achieve access control goals with minimal performance overheads.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1651540
NSF-PAR ID:
10321105
Author(s) / Creator(s):
;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
EAI Conference on Heterogeneous Networking for Quality, Reliability, Security and Robustness
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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