Traceback of single IP packets using SPIE

The design of the Internet protocol makes it difficult to reliably identify the originator of an IP packet. IP traceback techniques have been developed to determine the source of large packet flows, but, to date, no system has been presented to track individual packets in an efficient, scalable fashion. We present SPIE, the Source Path Isolation Engine, a hash-based technique for IP traceback that generates audit trails for traffic within the network, and can trace the origin of a single IP packet delivered by the network in the recent past.