Scalable, selective traffic proxying

Abstract

Proxy networks enable a source to send traffic to one or more targets through a set of nodes operating as proxies. However, proxy networks are typically nonselective (often by design), and do not enable a source to specify properties of the nodes selected as proxies to send traffic to the target. Presented herein are proxy network techniques that enable sources to specify node properties in a target request, and that utilize a set of node managers for respective subsets of nodes. For a target request specifying selected node properties, the node managers may select as proxies nodes having the node properties specified in the target request. Additionally, the techniques presented herein promote the flexibility of the proxy network (e.g., adding groups of nodes, expanding the variety of nodes and node properties, and sending various forms of traffic using any protocol to various topics on behalf of many and various sources).