NAT traversal is messy. Oftentimes, one technique fails and the application doesn't know why it failed. Sometimes when one technique fails, the application doesn't have a good second or third or fourth choice technique. And occasionally a new technique is implemented and has to be added in without messing up all the source code. And of course, the NAT traversal has to be isolated from the core application logic.
For the above reasons, I propose that a new API (client and server) for NAT traversal be created. Something built to handle more techniques being added and something smart enough to know what technique to use. NAT traversal has to be a six phase process: Phase I: The client (Bob) gathers information on its own NAT/Firewall/Network/IP/permissions/latency/bandwidth/etc. Phase II: Bob registers this information with a central server (and maintaining an live connection with that server). This should probably be a request to put a simple object into a database. Since the information wouldn't need any joins or fancy queries (just fetch the object and occasionally add more fields to it), a noSQL database like mongodb should work fine (and might distribute better). Phase III: Bob queries the server (Who is online? Is "Alice" connected? What NAT/Firewall is Alice behind?). Plain old requests for data in a database. Phase IV: Bob asks the server to initiate a particular NAT traversal protocol with "Alice". Since Bob knows Alice's state, Bob picks the NAT traversal protocol based on the information that the server provided about Alice and then the server merely forwards the request (along with the information Alice would need to connect to Bob - the information Bob provided to the central server) Phase V: Bob and Alice execute the NAT traversal protocol. Note that this protocol may require assistance from some other server besides the main (database/web) server. Phase VI: Alice disconnects from the central server and the server deletes the data (ip address, port, NAT type, etc) that Alice posted to it. For the main server to work in virtually all network environments, it has to use TCP port 80 (or 443). The server is your fortress - everything from the network data to the hard disk is encrypted, only a few ports are open and those ports are always bound by a known services, only a few known process are allowed to run, etc. In addition there have to be a couple non-main servers for things like data replication (maintain a copy of the data in the main server) and bouncing back server-reflexive UDP/TCP packets and ICMP packets (necessary during Phase I). There should be two of these (so that clients can see if their TCP port number changes when a connection is made to two different ip addresses). Based on these six phases, an API has to be made. Since the main server has to run on port 80/443 anyway, and since it will need a database back-end, and since it is convenient to transfer information in plain text form, the entire server can be implemented as a web application. For example, a get method can be used to ask the web server for a plain text file containing information on Alice. A post method can be used for posting information about the type of NAT/Firewall/Security/etc. A web socket could be used to allow the server to push the signal to initiate NAT traversal down to the clients. Even though the server need not be a website, it could do everything through the MEAN stack or something like that. The client on the other hand just has to be able to make get/post requests and make a websocket connection. This can be done in any major programming language. From there, everything between the client and the server is plain text.
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