nanog mailing list archives

Re: Blockchain and Networking


From: "K. Scott Helms" <kscotthelms () gmail com>
Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2018 19:30:13 -0500

That sounds like giving up an awful lot of utility for a (at least in most
places) something that's an exceedingly rare corner case.  The other
problem is that even if the record is immutable there's nothing that
prevents governments from being coercive in other ways.  At the end of the
day there's no technology that prevents authoritarian governments from
behaving badly.

On Tue, Jan 23, 2018 at 6:27 PM, Jimmy Hess <mysidia () gmail com> wrote:

On Tue, Jan 23, 2018 at 9:39 AM, John R. Levine <johnl () iecc com> wrote:


the problem isn't keeping the database, it's figuring out who can make
authoritative statements about each block of IP addresses.

That is an inherently hierarchical question since all IP blocks originally
trace back to allocations from IANA.


Well;  It's a hierarchical question only because the current registration
scheme is defined in
a hierarchical manner.  If  BGP were being designed today,  we could
choose  256-Bit  AS numbers,
and allow  each mined or staked block to yield a block of AS numbers
prepended by some
random previously-unused 128-bit GUID.

However,  a blockchain could also be used to allow an authority to make a
statement representing
a resource that can be made a non-withdrawable statement ---  in other
words,  the authority's role
or job in the registration process is to originate the registration,  and
after that is done:
their authoritative statement is accepted ONCE per resource.

The registration is permanent ---  the authority has no ongoing role and no
ability to later make
a new conflicting statement about that same resource,   and   the
authority  has  no operational role
except to originate new registrations.

This would mean that a foreign government could not coerce the authority
to  "cancel"  or mangle
a registration to meet a political or adversarial objective of disrupting
the ability to co-ordinate networks,
since the  number registry is an authority of  limited power:  not an
authority of complete power.


We can have arguments about the best way to document the chain of
ownership, and conspiracy theories about how the evil RIRs are planning
to
steal our precious bodily flu^W^WIPs, but "put it in a blockchain!"
Puhleeze.
R's,
John


--
-JH



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