A Study of VoIP Performance in Anonymous Network - The Onion Routing (TOR)

Information technology is developing rapidly, especially in the field of computer science, telecommunications and information systems. In the early days of telecommunications, voice networks could not be combined with data networks. However, more recently it became possible to integrate data, audio and video services onto a single network, known as a multimedia network. The capabilities of the Internet are also rapidly increasing, and now, in addition to data packets (email, web browsing) the Internet transfers audio and video packets. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a multimedia service. This technology can be used to transmit audio, video, and data packets. Consequently, it is becoming the most preferred communications technology. VoIP will eventually replace the use of traditional telephony – Public Switched Telephone Networks (PSTN), although the switchover process is challenging. A chief concern it that, while PSTN transmits audio packets over a closed network, VoIP sends audio packets using an open network – the Internet. In PSTN, eavesdroppers must have direct access to physical network to obtain information from communications. Whereas with VoIP, eavesdroppers can monitor data packets from they are connected to the Internet. Hence, security and privacy are important considerations when switching to VoIP systems. One solution is anonymous systems, which can be used to implement security and privacy protocols. However, this typically reduces the Quality of Service (QoS) of the VoIP. This empirical research study examines VoIP performance in an anonymous network – The Onion Routing (Tor). Two scenarios are implemented using the real Tor network to investigate three QoS metrics for VoIP: latency, jitter and packet loss.  As recommended, latency in VoIP should be less than 400 ms, jitter should be less than 50 ms and packet loss should not be more than 5%. In addition, the research calculates the probability of attackers in the two scenarios implemented and evaluate Tor network forecasting. Experiments were conducted in reference to two scenarios. The first scenario is VoIP calls routed through a Tor network with three Tor relays (default Tor). And the second scenario is VoIP calls routed through a Tor network with two Tor relays. Experiments were performed in three periods; December 2012, July 2013, and October 2013. During each experimental time period, a hundred calls were captured for each scenario. Experimental results show that the QoS of VoIP over the two Tor relays was better than the VoIP over the three Tor relays. However, a probability of attackers calculation found that the VoIP with three Tor relays returned better anonymity than that with two Tor relays. The best results were returned over the experimental period in July 2013, when the acceptable calls using two Tor relays reached 64 calls at 5% packet loss. Meanwhile, the worst experimental results were returned in October 2013, when acceptable calls numbered 11 using three Tor relays at 1% packet loss. At the end of 2013, the actual data for relay numbers and bandwidth approached forecast result with time series analysis. Meanwhile, the numbers of Tor users differed from the Tor users forecast. In August 2013, Tor users increased dramatically; this is attributed to the fact that BotNet attack was using the Tor network to attack their target leading to a fivefold increase.