A First Look at the Prevalence and Persistence of Middleboxes in the Wild

peer reviewedRecent years have seen an uprise in the development of middleboxes functionalities (CGNATs, proxies, accelerators, etc), participating so in the ossification of the Internet. In parallel, various solutions have been developed to detect or circumvent unwanted middleboxes interferences such as UDP-based middlebox-proof transports (Google's QUIC, PLUS), middlebox-proof extensions to TCP (HICCUPS, TCPcrypt), and middlebox traversal mechanisms (STUN, ICE, PLUS). All those solutions make the assumption of ubiquitous middleboxes. However, a view of their actual deployment in the wild, in IPv4 wired networks, is missing. In particular, knowing how autonomous systems (ASes) deploy middleboxes in terms of prevalence and persistence would provide additional relevant information to Internet topology models. In this paper, we aim at filling this gap. Based on a large-scale measurement campaign, we highlight different characteristics of middlebox deployment within ASes to elicit middleboxes profiles