Blockchain and Networking

Wed Jan 24 00:30:13 UTC 2018

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 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 23, 2018 at 9:39 AM, John R. Levine <johnl at 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
>