It ain’t much, but it’s honest work
2026
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MORP4: A Dynamic Network Telescope
Iliana Xygkou, Jithin K. Sojan, Dhruv Rauthan, and 6 more authors
In 23rd USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI 26), May 2026
A network telescope passively monitors traffic reaching Inter- net address space that is not assigned to any hosts but is adver- tised to the global routing system. This traffic is by definition unsolicited. For more than two decades, network telescopes have enabled research breakthroughs by allowing global vis- ibility into a wide range of Internet phenomena. However, telescopes are afflicted by two main issues: progressive ero- sion, due to the increasing scarcity and commercial value of address space, and blacklisting. To overcome these issues, we propose MORP4, a programmable data-plane framework implementing a “dynamic” network telescope. MORP4 accu- rately and adaptively tracks unused space of an organization’s network with configurable time and space granularity and captures only traffic directed towards unused addresses at line rate. We provide an implementation in P4 and Python/C++, and deploy it on a Tofino switch. We show that it can de- tect unused IPv4 address space at the finest granularity (/32) while operating at line rate as well as providing an effective approach for operating a telescope in the IPv6 domain.
2023
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Performance Measurement of Distributed Storage on Edge Devices
Priyam Loganathan, Dhruv Rauthan, Animesh Trivedi, and 1 more author
In 15th International Conference on Communication Systems & Networks (COMSNETS), Jan 2023
Edge computing and storage have been proposed as an alternative to current cloud computing infrastructures to address the latter’s limitations. However, edge computing services and support for applications based on edge infrastructures are still in the incipient stages. There are numerous storage services for efficient data storage in the cloud. In contrast, few such services exist at the edge. We look at the performance of a cloud storage service Cassandra when deployed on an edge network. In this paper, we analyze Cassandra’s performance in three different networks. We vary Cassandra’s attributes and the overall conditions in each network to simulate a real-world scenario and study the effect on the total time taken for a particular request. We (a) establish trends for different configurations, (b) discuss the reasoning behind them, and (c) suggest optimal configurations for the networks used, which are important for deploying Cassandra in an edge setting.
2022
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Covert Communication in Software Defined Wide Area Networks
Dhruv Rauthan
Technische Universität Berlin, Dec 2022
Software defined wide area networks (SD-WANs) have become increasingly popular in recent years due to their ability to provide efficient and secure communication across large geographical areas. However, the use of SD-WANs also presents potential security risks, including the possibility of developing covert channels between network hosts for malicious purposes. We analyse an open-source SD-WAN implementation, and investigate possible avenues for developing a covert timing channel in SD-WANs. We achieve this through surveying existing SD-WAN architectural literature and inspecting network traffic during simulations replicating specific network events. Our findings highlight the need for further research in this area to better understand the security implications of SD-WANs.