Decentralized internet number resource management system based on blockchain technology

Internet is an important infrastructure that has been evolving for decades. Border gateway protocol (BGP) is the de facto interdomain routing protocol on the internet and connects autonomous systems (ASes) around the world. The BGP uses internet number resources (INR), including internet protocol (IP) prefixes and autonomous system numbers for addressing and routing. However, BGP has been vulnerable to the INR misusage threat recently, which causes a common type of anomaly called prefix hijacking. In prefix hijacking, a malicious AS originates the victim AS's prefixes to blackhole or intercept the victim's data traffic. The existing security solution, called resource public key infrastructure (RPKI), provides INR ownership and prefix-to-AS mapping information through a centralized infrastructure. ASes can extract and use the information from RPKI to prevent prefix hijacking. However, this solution has three typical drawbacks. First, the centralized architecture of RPKI causes single-point failures. Second, to obtain consistent INR information from RPKI, ASes need a long convergence time owing to the disorderly distribution of information. Third, ASes incur high interaction cost for extracting real-time INR information frequently.

To solve the above mentioned shortcomings, this study proposes a decentralized internet number resource management system (DINRMS) based on blockchain technology. The proposed system adopts a hierarchical architecture consisting of an autonomy layer and an arbitration layer. DINRMS partitions all ASes on the internet into groups that form the autonomy layer. The arbitration layer comprises the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, five Regional Internet Registries and representatives elected by each group in the autonomy layer. Each entity in DINRMS has nearly the same impact on the system and the single-point failure of an entity does not lead to a serious global breakdown. The architecture of the proposed system overcomes the poor scalability of blockchain technology, which cannot be applied to efficient global INR information management on the internet. A blockchain is maintained within each group to record the INR ownership and prefix-to-AS mapping information of the respective groups. Entities within a group use information from third parties, such as the Whois Lookup tool, to check the consistency of INR ownership information. For prefix-to-AS mapping information, entities within a group use routing data from public route collectors to check the consistency and then vote on the legitimacy of the information. Subsequently, the entities judge the legitimacy of the information according to the majority rule. The arbitration layer maintains the global INR ownership information in the form of group granularity and prefix-to-AS mapping information. This information is sourced from representatives elected by each group in the autonomy layer for mutual supervision and endorsement. The arbitration layer is responsible for arbitrating usage conflicts related to INR. The DINRMS proposes a heuristic INR information push mechanism based on the architecture and dynamics of INR information. The mechanism decides to push INR information to ASes if a long time has passed since the last information push or if many information items have not been pushed.

Experiments results show that DINRMS provides secure and trusted INR information for interdomain routing. In addition, the degree of centralization of DINRMS is 60% less than that of RPKI in terms of the Gini coefficient. Moreover, DINRMS reduces the convergence time and interaction overhead by more than 50%.

DINRMS manages INRs based on blockchain technology using a decentralized approach. The hierarchical and grouping architecture of DINRMS improves system scalability. The efficient push mechanism based on the dynamics of INR information shortens the convergence time and reduces the interaction overhead for ASes to obtain consistent INR ownership and mapping information.