ITor-SDN: Intelligent Tor Networks-Based SDN for Data Forwarding Management

Tor (The Onion Routing) network was designed to enable users to browse the Internet anonymously. It is known for its anonymity and privacy security feature against many agents who desire to observe the area of users or chase users’ browsing conventions. This anonymity stems from the encryption and decryption of Tor traffic. That is, the client’s traffic should be subject to encryption and decryption before the sending and receiving process, which leads to delay and even interruption in data flow. The exchange of cryptographic keys between network devices plays a pivotal and critical role in facilitating secure communication and ensuring the integrity of cryptographic procedures. This essential process is time-consuming, which causes delay and discontinuity of data flow. To overcome delay or interruption problems, we utilized the Software-Defined Network (SDN), Machine Learning (ML), and Blockchain (BC) techniques, which support the Tor network to intelligently speed up exchanging the public key via the proactive processing of the Tor network security management information. Consequently, the combination network (ITor-SDN) keeps data flow continuity to a Tor client. We simulated and emulated the proposed network by using Mininet and Shadow simulations. The findings of the performed analysis illustrate that the proposed network architecture enhances the overall performance metrics, showcasing a remarkable advancement of around 55%. This substantial enhancement is achieved through the seamless execution of the innovative ITor-SDN network combination approach.