CPE-Controller Peer ID Connections Across NAT and Firewalls
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing network architectures face challenges in establishing direct connections between customer premise equipment (CPE) and controllers due to network address translation (NAT) or firewalls, leading to high latency, doubled communication traffic, and the need for public IPs, which also incur additional costs.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a libp2p network architecture that utilizes peer IDs for direct connections, enabling identity authentication and encrypted communication, and employing a bootstrap peer to facilitate network discovery and connection establishment, even behind firewalls or NATs, without requiring public IPs.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a relay server or VPN server is used to establish network connections between CPE and controller, then the connection can be established even behind NAT or firewall, but the network latency increases and communication traffic is doubled
Solution Approach 1:
The patent uses a relay server as an intermediary to establish connections between CPE and controller when direct connections are blocked by NAT or firewall. The relay server mediates the communication by receiving messages from one party and forwarding them to the other, enabling connection establishment in restricted network environments while accepting the trade-off of increased latency and traffic overhead.
2Reliability
If a relay server or VPN server is used to establish network connections between CPE and controller, then the connection can be established even behind NAT or firewall, but the communication traffic is doubled
Solution Approach 1:
The relay server acts as a mediator that routes all communications between CPE and controller. While this enables connection establishment behind NAT or firewall, it causes communication traffic to be doubled as messages travel from CPE to relay server and then to controller, increasing network bandwidth consumption.
3Adaptability or versatility
If public IP is changed, then the network connection needs to be reset, but maintaining connection requires additional configuration and costs
Solution Approach 1:
The relay server serves as a stable intermediary with a fixed public IP address. When the CPE or controller changes their public IPs, the relay server maintains the connection by using its own stable address as the communication anchor point, eliminating the need to reset connections and reducing configuration complexity despite the added infrastructure requirement.
Data Source
AI summary
A method for establishing network connections includes: monitoring a controller channel by a controller; generating a random peer ID for participating in the controller channel by a customer premise equipment (CPE); discovering the CPE at the controller channel, displaying the CPE on a pending connection list of the controller, and determining whether the CPE should be controlled by the controller; generating a pair of CPE's public key and CPE's private key corresponding to the CPE; transmitting the CPE's public key, the CPE's private key, and a controller's public key corresponding to the controller via the controller channel; deleting the random peer ID, and using the CPE's public key obtained from the controller channel as the CPE's peer ID.