Application-Agnostic Puncturing of Network Address Translation (NAT) Services

A computing device including:

• at least one processing device;
• and
• at least one non-transitory memory device coupled to the at least one processor, and containing machine-readable instructions designed to cause the computing device to implement a method including:
• executing, by the first device, a virtual private network (VPN) interface to establish a VPN session to a VPN server for each first-device-side Internet Protocol (IP) network address selected for communication with the second device over an IP routing path requiring NAT puncturing for traffic to pass through in one or both directions between the first device and a device that will become the second device;
• implementing, by the first device, a message broker interface to receive via a message broker of one or more message brokers at least one connection request message from the second device and to return to the second device via a message broker of the one or more message brokers one or more connection response messages containing one or more external IP addresses and associated ports of the first device obtained from a first publicly-available server having a capability of determining and returning to the first device one or more external IP addresses and associated ports for the first device's IP network address(es) selected for possible use in communicating with the second device;
• receiving at the first device, via a message broker of the one or more message brokers, informing data including one or more external IP addresses and associated one or more ports obtained from the first publicly-available server or from a second publicly-available server having a capability of determining and returning one or more external IP addresses and associated ports for IP network address(es) and selected by the second device for possible use in communicating with the first device;
• generating and sending, by the first device, at least one puncturing packet from a socket associated with at least one of the first-device-side VPN sessions over a respective selected first-device-side IP network address and associated port toward a selected second-device IP network address and associated port identified in the informing data, thereby causing creation of at least one NAT mapping rule for at least one NAT through which IP traffic between the first device and the second device needs to pass, wherein the at least one mapping rule results in puncturing the at least one NAT by permitting subsequent bidirectional IP traffic to be communicated between a respective IP pair comprising the selected first-device-side IP address and associated port and the selected second-device IP network address and associated port, without using Traversal Using Relays around NAT (TURN).

A non-transitory storage medium containing machine-readable instructions designed to be executed by a computing device to thereby cause the computing device to implement a method including:

• executing, by the first device, a virtual private network (VPN) interface to establish a VPN session to a VPN server for each first-device-side Internet Protocol (IP) network address selected for communication with the second device over an IP routing path requiring NAT puncturing for traffic to pass through in one or both directions between the first device and a device that will become the second device;
• implementing, by the first device, a message broker interface to receive via a message broker of one or more message brokers at least one connection request message from the second device and to return to the second device via a message broker of the one or more message brokers one or more connection response messages containing one or more external IP addresses and associated ports of the first device obtained from a first publicly-available server having a capability of determining and returning to the first device one or more external IP addresses and associated ports for the first device's IP network address(es) selected for possible use in communicating with the second device;
• receiving at the first device, via a message broker of the one or more message brokers, informing data including one or more external IP addresses and associated one or more ports obtained from the first publicly-available server or from a second publicly-available server having a capability of determining and returning one or more external IP addresses and associated ports for IP network address(es) and selected by the second device for possible use in communicating with the first device;
• generating and sending, by the first device, at least one puncturing packet from a socket associated with at least one of the first-device-side VPN sessions over a respective selected first-device-side IP network address and associated port toward a selected second-device IP network address and associated port identified in the informing data, thereby causing creation of at least one NAT mapping rule for at least one NAT through which IP traffic between the first device and the second device needs to pass, wherein the at least one mapping rule results in puncturing the at least one NAT by permitting subsequent bidirectional IP traffic to be communicated between a respective IP pair comprising the selected first-device-side IP address and associated port and the selected second-device IP network address and associated port, without using Traversal Using Relays around NAT (TURN).