Title
Detecting subscribers using NAT devices in wireless data networks
Abstract
A network address translation (NAT) device can aggregate-disaggregate traffic from-to multiple computers connected to the box appearing as one computer to the rest of the network. A wireless data service subscription may be shared by using a NAT device where multiple computers can then use the wireless service at the same time. This is transparent to the service provider since all traffic comes from and goes to the same address. However, it potentially can lead to lost revenue since the current prevalence of flat rate pricing schemes means that one paid subscription can be shared by many users. Therefore, it is important for service providers to be able to detect such subscribers and take proper action, e.g., put them on a different pricing scheme or add explicit terms to their contract to disallow this practice. In this paper, we propose a novel method to identify subscribers using NAT devices in real time. The key observation is that each device generates an independent number sequence (usually increasing) to fill the identification field of IP packet headers (IPID). Our basic technique involves detecting overlapping increasing IPID subsequences as an indication of multiple devices behind a single Internet Protocol (IP) address. Our complete solution takes into account various practical issues affecting the properties of IPID sequences. © 2009 Alcatel-Lucent.
Year
DOI
Venue
2009
10.1002/bltj.v14:2
Bell Labs Technical Journal
Field
DocType
Volume
Wireless data,Revenue,Internet Protocol,Wireless,Nat,Computer science,Network address translation,Flat rate,Computer network,Service provider
Journal
14
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
2
1089-7089
1
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.40
0
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Erran Li14416311.59
Aiyou Chen219415.27
Tian Bu310.40
Scott Miller420237.09