Scalability Analysis of Zero Trust Network Access in Bandwidth-Constrained Networks

12 pages•Published: August 6, 2026

Jumpei Kawahara, Yuya Tarutani and Atsuko Miyaji

Abstract

In recent years, with the spread of teleworking and the expansion of public cloud computing, traditional perimeter-based security models that separate internal and external networks have become insufficient for adequate defense. Perimeter-based security models using traditional VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) and similar technologies have faced challenges: Once authenticated, they permit broad access to the internal network, and attacks on VPN devices directly expose the connected network to risk. Consequently, Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA), based on the Zero Trust principle of not trusting any communication regardless of boundary presence, is gaining attention. ZTNA is recognized as a solution to the problems inherent in traditional network models by strictly controlling access for all communications, regardless of whether they originate inside or outside the organization, thereby minimizing user access.
However, ZTNA requires queries to an authorization server for every communication. In large-scale network environments, this leads to challenges such as increased processing load for access control and communication delays due to the rising number of queries. Furthermore, discussions on ZTNA have primarily focused on its concept and security model, with insufficient evaluation from the perspective of network performance.
This research constructs a ZTNA verification environment using the network emulator Mininet to evaluate network performance. Specifically, it adopts a structure using Envoy Proxy for the data plane and Open Policy Agent (OPA) for the authorization engine. As evaluation parameters, we measure the impact of the network distance (communication delay) between Envoy and OPA on the round-trip time (RTT) of packets during the authorization process, as well as changes in throughput and system load when increasing the number of concurrent authorization requests (session count).

Keyphrases: network security, scalability, zero trust network access

In: Tung-Tso Tsai, Huy Kang Kim, Yujue Wang and Akira Yamada (editors). Proceedings of The 21st Asia Joint Conference on Information Security, vol 111, pages 123-134.

Links:	https://easychair.org/publications/paper/S8Vq
	https://doi.org/10.29007/k9gn

BibTeX entry

@inproceedings{AsiaJCIS2026:Scalability_Analysis_Zero_Trust,
  author    = {Jumpei Kawahara and Yuya Tarutani and Atsuko Miyaji},
  title     = {Scalability Analysis of Zero Trust Network Access in Bandwidth-Constrained Networks},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of The 21st Asia Joint Conference on Information Security},
  editor    = {Tung-Tso Tsai and Huy Kang Kim and Yujue Wang and Akira Yamada},
  series    = {EPiC Series in Computing},
  volume    = {111},
  publisher = {EasyChair},
  bibsource = {EasyChair, https://easychair.org},
  issn      = {2398-7340},
  url       = {/publications/paper/S8Vq},
  doi       = {10.29007/k9gn},
  pages     = {123-134},
  year      = {2026}}

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