ALHACF: An Anonymity-Level Selected Hierarchical Anonymous Communication Framework

With the more emphasis paid on network security and privacy, the research on anonymous communication system has developed quickly. In the past, researchers mainly focused on how to improve the anonymity, but few focused on the usability. This paper presents an anonymity-level selected hierarchical anonymous communication framework (ALHACF). In this framework, firstly the anonymity-level is selected by users according to his requirement, and then the path length and set of relay routers will be determined by the anonymity-level. The anonymity and communication performance of ALHACF are analyzed. The analysis indicates that ALHACF inherits the merit of HLLACF, and it can prevent some kinds of attack, keep good anonymity and increase the communication performance markedly.