1BIT: Persistent Path Validation with Customized Noise Signal Characteristics

Path-aware networks have garnered significant attention as an emerging research area. It allows network senders to actively select or influence transmission paths to meet specific requirements, which necessitates the support of path validation mechanisms. Supported by the path-aware networking research group under the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), path validation plays a crucial role in enhancing end hosts' control over packet forwarding. However, existing methods face trade-offs among security, protocol header overhead, and computational cost, forming a ''trilemma.'' Drawing inspiration from persistent validation in zero-trust architecture, we propose the 1BIT protocol. This protocol reduces protocol header overhead by more than 57% while providing robust data flow security. The packet demand for path fault detection is reduced by more than 72%, and fault locations can be precisely identified. By employing hash algorithms and few binary operations, the 1BIT protocol achieves high throughput and supports routers capable of adapting to high-speed, multi-interface environments. On a 16-core CPU, the 1BIT protocol can handle throughput exceeding 100 Gbps. This lightweight and efficient solution introduces anomaly signal detection techniques into the field of path validation. Benefiting from in-depth research on anomaly signal detection, this technology offers a richer set of solutions for path validation and lays the foundation for future research and implementation in areas such as multi-path validation and path privacy protection.