RAVEN - Stateless Rapid IP Address Variation for Enterprise Networks - Protecting Client Privacy via Stateless IP Changes

Aug 25, 2026

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Enterprise networks face growing threats to client privacy through IP-based identification and traffic analysis. Existing approaches such as NAT provide limited protection while requiring per-flow state, and even flow-level anonymization can fail against connection-level grouping and webpage fingerprinting. RAVEN (Rapid Address Variation for Enterprise Networks) is a network-based privacy solution that rapidly and unpredictably changes clients’ public IP addresses. It breaks packet association within a single connection using QUIC-based seamless migration and stateless line-rate address changes in programmable switches, reducing adversarial attack precision against webpage fingerprinting.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages17

Reading Time43 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Client privacy threats in enterprise networks

Limits of existing solutions (NAT, Tor, iCloud Private Relay)

Connection- and packet-level unlinkability motivation

RAVEN approach

Stateless rapid IP address variation

Division of labor with QUIC and programmable switches

Implementation and evaluation

Test IPv6 deployment

Defense against webpage fingerprinting

RAVEN: Stateless Rapid IP Address Variation for Enterprise Networks Liang Wang Princeton University [lw19@princeton.edu](lw19@princeton.edu) Hyojoon Kim Princeton University [hyojoonk@cs.princeton.edu](hyojoonk@cs.princeton.edu) Prateek Mittal Princeton University [pmittal@princeton.edu](pmittal@princeton.edu) Jennifer Rexford Princeton University [jrex@cs.princeton.edu](jrex@cs.princeton.edu) ABSTRACT Enterprise networks face increasing threats against the privacy of their clients. Existing enterprise services like Network Address Translation (NAT) offer limited privacy protection, at the cost of requiring per-flow state. In this paper, we introduce RAVEN (Rapid Address Variation for Enterprise Networks), a network-based privacy solution that is complementary to application-layer defenses. RAVEN protects privacy by frequently changing the client’s public IP address. With RAVEN, a client is not limited to using a single IP address at a given time, or even for a given connection. RAVEN goes further, breaking the association between packets that belong to the same connection by frequently changing the client’s IP address within a single connection. RAVEN achieves this through a novel division of labor: the client uses a transport protocol, like QUIC, that supports seamless connection migration, and decides when to switch its IP address, while the enterprise network actually changes the client’s IP address in a stateless manner at line rate and ensures end-to-end packet delivery. We implement RAVEN using QUIC and off-the-shelf programmable switches. We deploy RAVEN in a test IPv6 network and evaluate its defense against webpage fingerprinting attacks. Even with a strong adversary, the average precision of the best adaptive attacks drops from 0.96 to 0.84, with a 0.5% degradation in client throughput. When RAVEN changes IP addresses at unpredictable frequency, the precision of the best attacks falls to 0 . 78—the same effectiveness as WTF-PAD. KEYWORDS privacy, traffic analysis, programmable data plane, P4, QUIC 1 INTRODUCTION Clients in an enterprise network (e.g., campus, corporate, or access network) are exposed to many attacks that threaten their privacy in today’s connected world. For example, an Internet Protocol (IP) address can be used to identify a client and device communicating on the Internet, enabling client activity and location tracking [13, 27, 42, 48, 53, 69–71, 73] . The problem will become more severe as enterprise networks adopt IPv6, where each client may get a This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license visit [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ or](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ or) send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA. Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies 2023(3), 194–210 © 2023 Copyright held by the owner/author(s) . [https://doi.org/10.56553/popets-2023-0077](https://doi.org/10.56553/popets-2023-0077) persistent, publicly-routable IPv6 address that makes it easier for an adversary to locate a client and analyze its traffic [13, 27, 53] . How can an enterprise network protect the privacy of its clients? Most solutions today are client-driven. For example, clients can use services like Tor [16]. Apple also launched the iCloud Private Relay service [3], enabling Apple device users to protect their privacy by directing their traffic through two or more private relays. However, Private Relay cannot be applied to clients that do not allow much customization or control, such as Internet-of-Things devices. Can an enterprise network play a more active role and provide a fundamental solution that is less client-or device-dependent? A common practice is Network Address Translation (NAT) which can change IPs per client (or even per flow) . Address Hiding Protocol (AHP) [49] and Lightweight Anonymity and Privacy (LAP) [32] improve on NA

FAQs

What problem does RAVEN address in enterprise networks?

RAVEN addresses privacy threats where clients can be identified and tracked using public IPs and traffic patterns, enabling attacks such as webpage fingerprinting and traffic analysis grouping.

How does RAVEN improve on NAT and related techniques?

RAVEN changes IP addresses rapidly and can break packet association within a single connection, doing so statelessly at line rate, instead of relying on per-flow state like traditional NAT-style defenses.

What role do QUIC and programmable switches play in RAVEN?

QUIC is used by the client to support seamless connection migration, while enterprise programmable switches perform stateless IP changes and ensure end-to-end packet delivery.

Aug 25, 2026

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