DeToks: Decentralised Social Media using 5G NAT puncturing

Abstract

We present a decentralised alternative to the winner-takes-everything dynamics of social media platforms.

For 25 years there have been continuous attempts to decentralise file sharing, music streaming, video conferencing, and social media. 

None of these hundreds of projects to re-decentralise the Internet have reached the uptake level of YouTube and TikTok. They are rarely easy to use.

We present DeToks, a fully decentralised alternative to Youtube and Tiktok. DeToks is not dependant on any central server or cloud. DeToks is specifically designed to be as decentralised and attack-resilient as Bitcoin and Bittorrent.

Our core contribution is effortless 5G Network Address Translators (NATs) puncturing.

Direct phone-to-phone communication is not available on today's smartphones. DeToks solves this problem.

NATs and carrier-grade NATs block direct communication between smartphones. 

We procured 30+ SIMs card on European 4G/5G mobile networks and measured the carrier-grade NATs behavior. We determined the NAT types (full cone,restricted,symmetric) and their time-out settings. By leveraging provider-aware (Vodafone,Orange,Telia, etc.) NAT puncturing strategies we create direct UDP-based phone-to-phone connectivity. 

We utilise parallelism by opening at least 500 Internet datagram sockets on two devices. By relying on provider-aware IPv4 range allocations, provider-aware port prediction heuristics, high bandwidth probing, and the birthday paradox we can successfully bypass even symmetric NATs. Our communication method achieves peer-to-peer 5G connectivity at the cost of merely some initial delay and bandwidth, without any assistance from third party servers or clouds.

Detoks validates our 5G puncturing work. We demonstrate the feasibility of fully decentralized social media platforms on consumer mobile devices.