Crate p2p [−] [src]

General

The goal of this crate is to provide a robust and crypto-secure NAT traversal for peer to peer connection. It assumes a publicly reachable rendezvous servers are provided. The server code itself is in the crate too, so it can either be deployed as a server or used as a peer to peer client or both simultaneously - for e.g. if you run the server on a port forwarded endpoint, it will be publicly available while you could choose normal NAT traversal mechanisms to communicate with other peers.

Endpoint Independent Mapping (EIM)

Here whatever packets we send out from a local endpoint will go out of the same mapping in our NAT.

Endpoint Independent Filtering (Full Cone)

This is the least restrictive NAT. All we need to do is make sure the mapping exists. This can be done by simply going through the rendezvous handshake coded in this crate. It should have the same effect as if the port had been forwarded manually or via Internet Gateway Device Protocol through code. If both sides are full cone then we can easily establis p2p communication.

Endpoint Address & Port Dependent Filtering (Port Restricted Cone)

This is the most restrictive NAT under EIM. In this crate this is what we assume for EIMs because if we cover this then the less restrictive Endpoint Address Dependent Filtering will be automatically covered (thus covering the worst case for EIMs).

When we talk to the rendezvous servers, such a NAT allows us to talk to only one of them at a time from the same local UDP endpoint. Once we talk to them in succession we can easily find out if we are behind an EIM NAT. This is because the external address seen by all the servers will be exactly the same for the same socket on the local endpoint. Once we exchange this information with the peer (out of band), the filtering will not allow either of us to reach the other end because our routers will remember that the last remote endpoint we talked to was the last rendezvous server, thus allowing incoming traffic only from that exact endpoint. However if we now start sending packets to the peer instead using the obtained information that had been exchanged out of band, our respective routers will update the filtering to allow incoming packets from the peer (since it saw an outgoing one to them) and stop further packets from the rendezvous server, which is totally fine because our job with the rendezvous server is done. Thus p2p communication ensues.

So far so good. However some routers are unfriendlier still and pose additional problem. As we talked above, to make the router update its filtering, we need to start sending packets to the peer, they do the same and eventually both our routers have updated their filters and allow our packets through. While the filters are not updated, the router would simply see the incoming packet from the peer as unsolicited communication and drop it. The unfriendlier ones however go a step further and temporarily blacklist the peer endpoint, seeing it as a flooding attack prevention or something similar.

This poses a challange to us. If our packet has left our router for the peer but has not reached it yet and peer packet has left its router towards us in the meantime, hole-punching will succeed. However if either one of our packet reaches the other before the other's had a chance to get out of its own router, the unfriendlier routers would blacklist the endpoint. This means that even if now the packet for the peer leaves the unfriendly router, it will be received by the other end, but the packets from other end will be filtered out due to the blacklist and the more packet it sends the blacklist timers resets thus never allowing the packets through. This has effectively lead to a one way communication. If both routers were unfriendly then not even a one way communication could exist.

The above mentioned scenario was seen in some of the routers tested. To circumvent such routers this crate uses a technique to trick the routers. The problem is we don't want to reach the other end fast (thus getting ourselves blacklisted) while updating the filter at our routers. TTL (time-to-live) to the rescue. While punching hole, we start with the lowest reasonable TTL (of say 2). Note that some routers were found to drop the packet when TTL was 1 after decrementing while some still send it but drop if the the TTL reached the value of 0. With 2 it will definitely go past the first router. We put a delay, increase the TTL by 1 and send again. Both sides (peers) do this. In pracitice it's usually the 1st couple (or 3) routers that do NAT while others are non-NAT. This gives ample amount of time for the NAT-routers to update their filter to allow the peer's incoming packet in the future while not reaching the peer quickly and getting blacklisted. By the time we hit TTL of around 12, we would like reach the other end.

This crate is highly configurable while providing reasonable defaults. So if the user wants they can choose the starting TTL and the delay between bumping it up and re-transmitting. The resonable default would be to choose 3 sockets per peer, one with TTL starting 2, one with 6 and one with 64 (or OS default), so that if the fastest one was going to succeed it would do so immediately (for friendlier routers) otherwise the slower ones would eventually reach there.

Once the hole is punched the TTL is put back to the OS default and normal p2p communication can ensue. Also once the hole is punched by any socket, the others are immediately discarded so that we don't end up with a lot of reserved descriptors for a single peer.

Finally the attempt will either timeout (configurable or use the defaults in the crate) or if the TTL has reached the OS default for the platform, the attempt is considered to have failed and failure returned.

Endpoint Dependent Mapping (EDM) - Symmetric NATs

This is trickier because our external address as seen by the outsiders will change depending on the remote endpoint we are talking to, irrespective of the fact we are using the same local endpoint. That is why the recommended number of rendezvous servers is 3. Using them we can predict how our router maps our address by inspecting at the differnt addresses returned by different rendezvous servers. Most of the time a fixed delta can be predicted and that is what is used by this crate to guess what our address will be when we start hole-punching to the peer and we exchange that guessed information (out of band as usual), then start sending packets to the peer on their guessed address. This has worked for most of the routers. For filtering, it's the same as before and we proceed the same way with our guessed address.

There are unfriendly routers in this category too in which the mapping is random and unrelated to any deltas/offsets. Such cases are currently not supported by this crate (though there is some work in pipeline to alleviate that too using a whole lot of sockets in a hope of getting one of them right). However it will be detected and will be logged (if logging is turned on) to the user and connection attempt to the peer will be discarded.

Hairpinning

Some routers disallow hairpinning. This means if people in two different LANs are under the same NAT, both their external addresses would be similar. When non-hairpinning routers see this, a packet with source and destination containing IP's they know are allocated by them from the pool (although source and destination endpoints maybe quite different), they will discard and not route it further. This is really a tough one and currently there is no solution to this in this crate.

Secure communication

Finally all communication is crypto-secure. When two peers exchange information out of band it involves exchanging public asymmetric keys. All messages between peers (including handshake) are encrypted and signed with different nonces each time, so cannot be spoofed.

The message to the rendezvous servers includes our public key so the message they send back is encrypted. This prevents some routers/firewalls from identifying it's a rendezvous attempt by looking at the message body and thus either mangling or discarding the packet. Such routers/firewalls seem to scan for socket addresses and if it matches the ones in the router's pool they try to figure out it's a rendezvous/STUN attempt. With encrypted contents there is no chance of such detection, so we are safe there.

TCP

With TCP some the challanges are greater. The usual process is going through the same rendezvous as with UDP above. While one UDP socket did fine for communicating with all the servers and then hole punching to peer, TCP is connection oriented and thus we need multiple sockets. We will bind a connector per server and then a connector to the peer. While beginning to hole punch to the peer we will also additionally bind a listener to the same exact local endpoint.

TCP connection can be established either via normal connector-listener pair, in which one side is active (sends SYNs) while the other is passive (reacts to SYNs by sending SYN-ACKs), or via lesser know TCP Simulataneous Connect in which both sides actively send SYNs and both establish the connection because when they see a SYN in response to a SYN they know the other side also wants to establish the connection and then it materialises. If there is an active connector and a listener bound to the same local endpoint on either side (like stated above), there is a better chance of establishing a connection. If SYN is sent by peer 1 to 2 punching a hole (updating the filter) in 1's router for 2 and similarly sent by 2 for 1 then when they reach each other's routers they are let through and TCP Simulataneous Connect kicks in. If one of the SYNs reached the other end before the other's SYN could leave its router, it will be dropped as an unsolicited communication by the router. If the connect times out and then the other sends the connect SYN, the first peer's listener will accept it, thus increasing the connection chances.

One of the challange here is that the peer router not on drops the SYN silently (which is good for us) but additionally sends an RST. This could have bad effects. One is our router might close the hole (update the filter to not allow remote traffic from peer any more) because it realises that the connection has been closed. This mean we will have to continually send SYNs to re-enliven the hole even though we get RSTs and our connector exits. So the connect logic sort of happens in a busy loop consuming resources.

The other challenge is worse - some routers simply discard the incoming SYNs thus making it impossible to do a TCP hole punch (or at-least until someone can show a cleverer way to outsmart the router).

Combined with non-hairpinning and blacklisting (aggressive flood attack prevention), we can quickly see why TCP NAT traversal is more difficult than UDP.

Crate Design

This crate is async and currently written using pure mio. The user is free to choose their own event loop scheme. To work with user's async code, this crate has certain expectations. It is expected that the user code implements our Interface trait which is passed ubiquitously throughout the code here. Through this trait we are able to specify our requirement from the user code. For e.g. most code in this crate go through several states (like in a State Pattern) before reaching the final stage where we indicate via the callbacks we take, whether the operation succeeded or failed. These intermediate states must be preserved and notified to appropriately function. So we ask the user to provide us a way to preserve our state (via insert_state()), retrieve (state()), remove it (remove_state()) because we completely manage our states and not burden the user code with it, and so on. This is what we ask via Interface trait.

Just like we expect user to give us an expected Interface we ourselves implement NatState trait. This trait allows the user to call our various states on appropriate events from the Poll. Any registered state can be actively terminated by user by invoking NatState::terminate(). Similarly other functions in that trait.

Handle
HolePunchInfo
HolePunchMediator
NatMsg	A message that can be sent to the event loop to perform an action.
NatTimer	The timer state used by this crate.
RendezvousInfo
UdpRendezvousServer

Enums

NatError

Nat-traversal's universal error type.

Traits

Interface	The main trait that our users should implement.
NatState	The main trait that we implement.

Type Definitions

GetInfo
HolePunchFinsih
Res	Result type used by this crate.