Impacts of Encryption Everywhere (any solution?)

Tue Jun 19 15:33:50 UTC 2018

On Tue, Jun 19, 2018 at 10:53 AM, Lee Howard <lee.howard at retevia.net> wrote:
> On 06/17/2018 02:53 PM, Brad wrote:
>> While I agree there are unintended consequences every time advancements
>> are made in relation to the security and stability of the Internet- I
>> disagree we should be rejecting their implementations. Instead, we should
>> innovate further.
>
>
> I look forward to your innovations.

The innovation I'd like to see is a multi-level streaming cache.
Here's the basic idea:

Define a network protocol such as "mlcache"

mlcache://data.netflix.com/starwars/chunk12345 is a chunk of some
video that netflix has. It's encrypted. The client got the decryption
key for that chunk and instructions on how to load the chunks in what
order in an authenticated http connection.

The client does not connect to data.netflix.com. Instead, it probes an
anycast IP address to find the nearest cache. If there is no cache,
then it falls back on contacting data.netflix.com directly.

If the cache probe returned a unicast IP address for a nearby cache
then the client asks the cache to retrieve that chunk instead. If lots
of folks using the cache are watching that particular video, the cache
can supply the chunk without asking netflix for it again.

If the cache doesn't have the chunk, it contacts the next cache
upstream. If there is no next cache upstream, it contacts
data.netflix.com directly.

The cache is not application-specific. Anything willing to talk the
cache protocol can use it to fetch chunks of data from any server.

In principle this should work for live streams too. The head end
server either replies "not yet" or holds the request open until the
next chunk of data is available. The cache requests the chunk once and
supplies it to all clients once retrieved. Keep the chunks small
enough that the caching process delays the live stream by a second or
two, no different than the television broadcasts do.

Regards,
Bill Herrin

-- 
William Herrin ................ herrin at dirtside.com  bill at herrin.us
Dirtside Systems ......... Web: <http://www.dirtside.com/>