FINDING · DETECTION
Optimal RAD by a QoS-cautious wealthy Chinese censor (profile T1, F/ρ₀ = 5×10^6) forces 10.8% of routes onto non-valley-free (NVF) paths and 1.2% onto less-preferred routes, while still leaving 16.3% of routes traversing decoy ASes—zero routes become unreachable at this budget. The NVF and less-preferred-route fractions rise and then fall as decoy budget increases, as further RAD routing gains diminish past a crossover point.
From 2016-nasr-game — Game of Decoys: Optimal Decoy Routing Through Game Theory · §6.4 / Figure 1 · 2016 · Computer and Communications Security
Implications
- Monitor BGP route changes for NVF-path adoption as an early warning signal that a censor has begun deploying RAD—this is observable from inside the circumvention network without requiring vantage points inside the censor's AS.
- Design decoy AS sets that maximize the fraction of censor routes requiring NVF paths if RAD is applied, since the monetary cost of NVF routing deters even well-funded censors from sustaining RAD at scale.
Tags
Extracted by claude-sonnet-4-6 — review before relying.