HORNET: High-speed Onion Routing at the Network Layer
This addresses the need for scalable, high-performance anonymous communication for users requiring privacy, though it builds incrementally on existing onion routing concepts.
The paper tackles the problem of enabling high-speed end-to-end anonymous channels by introducing HORNET, a low-latency onion routing system at the network layer, achieving processing speeds over 93 Gb/s with no per-flow state on intermediate nodes.
We present HORNET, a system that enables high-speed end-to-end anonymous channels by leveraging next generation network architectures. HORNET is designed as a low-latency onion routing system that operates at the network layer thus enabling a wide range of applications. Our system uses only symmetric cryptography for data forwarding yet requires no per-flow state on intermediate nodes. This design enables HORNET nodes to process anonymous traffic at over 93 Gb/s. HORNET can also scale as required, adding minimal processing overhead per additional anonymous channel. We discuss design and implementation details, as well as a performance and security evaluation.