Middlebox

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A middlebox is a device in the Internet that provides transport policy enforcement. Examples of these devices include firewalls, network address translators (both within and between address families), signature management for intrusion detection systems, and multimedia buffer management.

Firewalls and NATs present problems for many Internet protocols, especially when UDP packets need to travel across the firewalls and NATs. The Internet Engineering Task Force is working on standardizing a protocol to allow these problems to be addressed.

Three approaches are discussed in [1]:

  • a "Call Agent" using a MIDCOM MIB and/or Simple Middlebox Control (SIMCO) protocol
  • Smart Middlebox: Self-configuring firewall modules
  • Path-Coupled Signaling, to be developed and standardized at the IETF. This would involve the NSIS Transport Layer Protocol (NTLP) from the Next Steps in Signalling (NSIS) working group.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

This computer network-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.