Studying the Anonymity Trilemma with a Discrete-event Mix Network Simulator

Abstract

In this work, we present a discrete event mix network simulator, that allows analysing how anonymity, latency, and bandwidth overhead are affected by various design choices (i.e., network topology, mixing technique, volume of traffic, packet size or use of cover traffic). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first such simulator as work on it began in 2017 to analyze the Loopix mix network, and the code of our simulator is available under an open-source license. To demonstrate the capabilities of our simulator, we perform an empirical analysis of the impact of core design choices on anonymity, scalability and latency in Elixxir, HOPR and Nym, currently deployed mix network infrastructures that make a variety of different choices in their design.