Refraction networking, also known as decoy routing, is a research
anti-censorship approach that would allow users to circumvent a censor without using any individual proxy servers.
Instead, it implements proxy functionality at the core of partner networks, such as those of
Internet service providers
An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise privatel ...
, outside the censored country. These networks would discreetly provide censorship circumvention for "any connection that passes through their networks." This prevents censors from selectively blocking proxy servers and makes censorship more expensive, in a strategy similar to
collateral freedom
Collateral freedom is an anti-censorship strategy that attempts to make it economically prohibitive for censors to block content on the Internet. This is achieved by hosting content on cloud services that are considered by censors to be "too impor ...
.
The approach was independently invented by teams at the
University of Michigan
, mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth"
, former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821)
, budget = $10.3 billion (2021)
, endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
, the
University of Illinois
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the University ...
, and
Raytheon BBN Technologies
Raytheon BBN (originally Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc.) is an American research and development company, based next to Fresh Pond in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States.
In 1966, the Franklin Institute awarded the firm the Frank P. Brown ...
. There are five existing protocols:
Telex
The telex network is a station-to-station switched network of teleprinters similar to a Public switched telephone network, telephone network, using telegraph-grade connecting circuits for two-way text-based messages. Telex was a major method of ...
, TapDance, Cirripede, Curveball, and Rebound.
These teams are now working together to develop and deploy refraction networking with support from the
U.S. Department of State
The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the Federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government responsible for the country's fore ...
.
See also
*
Domain fronting
Domain fronting is a technique for Internet censorship circumvention that uses different domain names in different communication layers of an HTTPS connection to discreetly connect to a different target domain than is discernable to third parties ...
References
External links
Official website
Internet privacy software
Anonymity networks
Computer security
Secure communication
Internet censorship
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