Diffusion: Zero Cost Information Dissemination

Packet headers and trailers exhibit considerable coding redundancy from both a theoretical and a practical standpoint. Diffusion exploits this redundancy to create an additional communication channel between hosts as a by-product of normal packet transfers. This channel is zero cost: the number and size of packets transfered does not change. Dissemination of dynamic resource information is a natural user of such a channel.

People

  • Peter Dinda
  • Jack Lange
  • Brian Cornell

    • Talks

  • Exploiting Packet Header Redundancy for Zero Cost Dissemination of Dynamic Resource Information (LCR 2002) (ppt)

    • Papers

  • B. Cornell, J. Lange, and P. Dinda, An Implementation of Diffusion in the Linux Kernel, Technical Report NWU-CS-02-12, Department of Computer Science, Northwestern University, September, 2002. (pdf)

  • P. Dinda, Exploiting Packet Header Redundancy for Zero Cost Dissemination of Dynamic Resource Information, Proceedings of the 6th Workshop on Languages, Compilers, and Run-time Systems for Scalable Computers, Washington, DC, 2002, TO APPEAR. (pdf)

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    SpyTalk Demo

    SpyTalk allows users (spies) to communicate surreptitiously using Diffusion techniques. SpyTalk looks like the Unix talk program, the great grand-daddy of all instant messaging programs. In addition to user messages, SpyTalk hosts exchange load information.

    The following screen shot shows a typical SpyTalk screen. In this example, SpyTalk data is being piggybacked on existing IP packets traveling between the two hosts. No additional packets are being sent and no packets are enlarged. The necessary packet stream is being provided by having one of the two hosts repeatedly ping the other. However, any IP packets traveling between the hosts could provide SpyTalk's surreptitious communication channel.

    The Diffusion techniques are implemented as a pair of Linux kernel modules that export send and receive interfaces via the /proc filesystem. SpyTalk itself is implemented as a Perl program that sends and receives using the /proc interfaces. SpyTalk was written by Brian Cornell. The Diffusion Modules were written by Brian and Jack Lange.

    LoadBanner Demo

    The LoadBanner client shows the current load of all hosts on the local area network that are running the LoadBanner server. The LoadBanner server piggybacks load measurements on ARP request packets. A host broadcasts an ARP request to the network whenever it needs to send a packet and has no ARP entry in its cache for the destination address. ARP entries expire from the cache after some time. Because ARP requests are broadcast, all the hosts on the LAN see them. The hosts running the LoadBanner client extract the load information and display it. As with SpyTalk, the packet editing takes place in the Diffusion kernel modules which the LoadBanner client and server talk to via /proc interfaces.

    Codes

    The Linux implementation of Diffusion, which includes kernel modifications, kernel modules, the /proc interface, the C API, SpyTalk, and LoadBanner is available.
  • Diffusion Version 0.9

    • Acknowledgement

    This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. ANI-0093221, including a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Supplement. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation (NSF).
    Peter Dinda
    Last modified: Mon Jul 17 13:51:30 CDT 2006