Tunneling with service discovery: a remote access model and implementation

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a new model, “Tunneling with Service Discovery”, for accessing local network services from a remote network. The model enables the splicing of local network services from multiple remote networks so that users can transparently access the advertised services as if they were local services. This model consists of splicing networks and relaying services, and is different from the existing remote access technologies such as VPN and SoftEther(Virtual Private Ethernet Environment). In this model, a server makes use of Service Discovery, and dynamically collects and updates the information about available local network services. A client on a remote network talks to the server, obtains the service information, maps these remote services onto its local services, and then, registers the mapped services on its local Service Discovery. Therefore, all hosts on the client’s network are able to use the relayed services as pseudo local services. The model also allows One-way Access, Multi-Network Access and Multi-Stage Access without requiring any network reconfiguration. As an implementation of this model, we have developed “RNSplicer” that splices local network services provided by Multicast DNS (mDNS). RNSplicer works with all types of services provided by Bonjour (Rendezvous), a standard service discovery technology employed by Mac OS X and Darwin.