An efficient anonymity protocol for grid computing

Abstract

As grid computing scales up in size and diversity, anonymous communications are desirable, and sometimes vital, for certain applications. However, existing anonymity protocols, when being applied to grid applications, either dramatically degrade system efficiency or cause severe performance bottlenecks. We found that a distributed and highly efficient anonymity protocol can be designed if one considers the existing trust in grids. We have designed such a protocol based on controlled anonymity, which maintains an entity's anonymity against untrustable entities. To our best knowledge, this protocol is the first one of its kind. Using the existing methods from anonymity studies, we quantitatively analyze the degree of anonymity that could be offered by this protocol, and use a simulator to confirm its efficiency advantage over the existing protocols.