Customer-Facing Relay (CFR): Enhancing Source Privacy in Encrypted Transport and CDN Scenarios

Encrypted Client Hello (ECH) improves destination privacy by encrypting the Server Name Indication in TLS, but the customer source identity-- typically the IP address and network metadata--remains observable to intermediaries such as CDNs, hosting providers, and recursive resolvers. This document introduces the _Customer-Facing Relay (CFR)_, a lightweight, transport-agnostic relay operated by access providers to decouple customer identity from encrypted destinations. By forwarding opaque encrypted payloads (TCP or UDP) without terminating TLS or QUIC, a CFR complements ECH encryption to strengthen source privacy and reduce metadata correlation.