P4-TURNet: Enabling NAT Traversal through P2P Relay Networks and Programmable Switches

The growing popularity of high throughput and low latency applications introduces new challenges in adapting the current network design practices to fit these requirements. With the advent of software-defined and programmable networks, there are new opportunities to optimize the operation of established mechanisms, such as peer-to-peer (P2P) communication. In this paper, we propose P4-TURNet, a new system that enables NAT traversal by managing multiple programmable switches that act as P2P relay servers. We discuss how P4-TURNet can be employed to provide massive communication at scale to achieve restrictive performance requirements. We evaluate the system in a simulated environment and find that it enables a TURN server to handle 400 times more simultaneous users compared to traditional on-server packet relaying.