onionforward

Onionforward is a term used in discussions of onion routing to describe the mechanism or component responsible for forwarding onion-encapsulated messages from one relay to another, within an onion network or across interoperable onion networks. It refers to the process of transferring traffic through successive nodes without revealing the sender’s or final destination, preserving the layered encryption that characterizes onion routing.

In practice, onionforward can denote software modules, protocols, or configurations that implement the hop-to-hop forwarding logic. A typical onionforward path consists of multiple relays, each responsible for peeling one layer of encryption and routing the payload toward the next hop. The design emphasizes incremental trust, where each relay learns only its immediate successor and not the full path.

Uses and motivations include enabling interoperability between different onion routing implementations, increasing resilience by enabling cross-network paths, and providing research infrastructure for studying anonymous communication. Onionforward concepts also appear in academic discussions about scalable anonymity architectures and overlay networks.

Security and privacy considerations are central. Properly implemented onionforward preserves anonymity by limiting information exposure at each hop, but risks such as traffic analysis, timing correlation, and misconfiguration can reduce effectiveness. Operational requirements include careful key management, path selection policies, and monitoring to detect misroutes or abuse.

Related topics include onion routing, Tor, mix networks, and privacy-preserving networking.