Tango or Square Dance? How Tightly Should we Integrate Network Functionality in Browsers?

The question at which layer network functionality is presented or abstracted remains a research challenge. Traditionally, network functionality was either placed into the core network, middleboxes, or into the operating system -- but recent developments have expanded the design space to directly int...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2022-10
Main Authors: Davidson, Alex, Frei, Matthias, Gartner, Marten, Haddadi, Hamed, Jordi Subirà Nieto, Perrig, Adrian, Winter, Philipp, Wirz, François
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Questions
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The question at which layer network functionality is presented or abstracted remains a research challenge. Traditionally, network functionality was either placed into the core network, middleboxes, or into the operating system -- but recent developments have expanded the design space to directly introduce functionality into the application (and in particular into the browser) as a way to expose it to the user. Given the context of emerging path-aware networking technology, an interesting question arises: which layer should handle the new features? We argue that the browser is becoming a powerful platform for network innovation, where even user-driven properties can be implemented in an OS-agnostic fashion. We demonstrate the feasibility of geo-fenced browsing using a prototype browser extension, realized by the SCION path-aware networking architecture, without introducing any significant performance overheads.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.2210.04791