Lost In the Edge : Finding Your Way With Signposts

The de facto architecture of today’s Internet services all but removes users’ ability to establish inter-device connectivity except through centrally controlled “cloud” services. Whilst undeniably convenient, the centralised data silos of the cloud remain opaque and an attractive target for attackers. A range of mechanisms exist for establishing secure peer-to-peer connections, but are inaccessible to most users due to the intricacy of their network configuration assumptions. Users effectively give up security, privacy and (when peers are both on the same LAN) low-latency simply to get something useable. We observe that existing Internet technologies suffice to support efficient, secure and decentralized communication between users, even in the face of the extreme diversity of edge connectivity and middlebox intervention. We thus present Signpost, a system that explicitly represents individual users in a network-wide architecture. Signpost DNS servers create a “personal CDN” for individuals, securely orchestrating the many different available techniques for establishing device-to-device connectivity to automatically select the most appropriate. A DNS API gives application compatibility, and DNSSEC and DNSCurve bootstraps secure connectivity.