Decentralized Network Architecture Research Articles

Model Complexity Reduction for ZKML Healthcare applications

Abstract Web 3.0 represents the next significant evolution of the internet that embodies the underlying decentralized network architectures, distributed ledgers, and advanced AI capabilities. Though the technologies are maturing rapidly, considerable barriers exist to high-scale adoption. The author discussed the barriers and the mitigations through specific technologies maturing to solve those issues. These include privacy-preserving technologies, off-chain and on-chain design optimizations, and the multi-dimensional approach needed in planning and adopting these technologies. As an extension, this paper discusses how one such enabler, ZKML, combines two streams of technology that are merging in unique ways to address problems in privacy and the cost of inference. The authors have conceptualized the technical and operational feasibility and implemented a reference healthcare implementation using the synthetic ICHOM in the evaluation phase in a global healthcare setting for high-volume data collection, including patient-reported outcomes. Model complexity reduction is researched and reported for the ICHOM diabetes dataset to advance the usage of ML models in global standards of healthcare data collection in network decentralized architectures for increased data protection and efficiencies.

Secured and decentralized system for e-voting with hybrid cryptography and Blockchain

Electronic voting is an efficient way of conducting the voting process, which has the characteristics of real-time data and massive data and demands high security. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for electronic voting that utilizes decentralized network architecture with Blockchain and Hybrid cryptography techniques. Our system aims to address the challenges faced in administering EVMs and ensuring high security in strong rooms, which can lead to privacy and security flaws in the voting system. Our proposed model utilizes a wireless mesh topology to enlist vote details and modernize the chain of blocks, resulting in improved data confidentiality and reduced human resources. A customized UDP packet structure is designed to avoid port scanning and network traces, while the use of port numbers is eliminated for increased security. We also incorporate a three-layer encryption stack for secure key exchanges, which ensures perfect forward secrecy and an uncompromised state of the packet. By reducing the number of threads needed for Transport layer Protocol (TCP) connections; our proposed model improves the speed and security of the existing architecture. Overall, our approach offers a highly secure and efficient electronic voting system that meets the demands of secrecy, accuracy, and neutrality in the process of voting and counting. Our proposed system has the potential to prevent poll rigging by trespassers, ensuring a fair and trustworthy electoral process.

A Survey on Edge Intelligence and Lightweight Machine Learning Support for Future Applications and Services

As the number of devices connected to the Internet has grown larger, so too has the intensity of the tasks that these devices need to perform. Modern networks are more frequently working to perform computationally intensive tasks on low-power devices and low-end hardware. Current architectures and platforms tend towards centralized and resource-rich cloud computing approaches to address these deficits. However, edge computing presents a much more viable and flexible alternative. Edge computing refers to a distributed and decentralized network architecture in which demanding tasks such as image recognition, smart city services, and high-intensity data processing tasks can be distributed over a number of integrated network devices. In this article, we provide a comprehensive survey for emerging edge intelligence applications, lightweight machine learning algorithms, and their support for future applications and services. We start by analyzing the rise of cloud computing, discuss its weak points, and identify situations in which edge computing provides advantages over traditional cloud computing architectures. We then divulge details of the survey: the first section identifies opportunities and domains for edge computing growth, the second identifies algorithms and approaches that can be used to enhance edge intelligence implementations, and the third specifically analyzes situations in which edge intelligence can be enhanced using any of the aforementioned algorithms or approaches. In this third section, lightweight machine learning approaches are detailed. A more in-depth analysis and discussion of future developments follows. The primary discourse of this article is in service of an effort to ensure that appropriate approaches are applied adequately to artificial intelligence implementations in edge systems, mainly, the lightweight machine learning approaches.

Various Blockchain Governance Games: A Review

Blockchain Governance Game (BGG) is the stochastic model for describing the innovative security enhancement of decentralized network architectures. This hybrid model provides the best strategies to prepare for preventing network failures by attackers. Strategic alliance for the Blockchain Governance Game, a successor to BGG, adds the strategic alliance to prevent attacks by adapting the concept from business domains. The multi-layered Blockchain Governance Game was developed by combining these two basic models to defend complex networks. This paper not only provides a brief summary of each game model, but also identifies two key network security applications based on BGGs that could serve as a guide for actual implementation. This review is intended to encourage people to be inspired for their future research. The author hopes to encourage readers working in related research areas who might integrate BGG models into their research.

Ensuring Security and Energy Efficiency of Wireless Sensor Network by Using Blockchain

With the advancement of new technology, security is the biggest issue nowadays. To solve security problems, blockchain technology will be used. In recent work, most of the work has been done on homogeneous systems, but in our research, the primary focus is on the security of wireless sensor networks using blockchain. Over the last few decades, the Internet of Things (IoT) has been the most advancing technology due to the number of intelligent devices and associated technologies that have rapidly grown in every field of the world, such as smart cities, education, agriculture, banking, healthcare, etc. Many of the applications are developing by using IoT technologies for real-time monitoring. Because of storage capacity or low processing power, smart devices or gadgets are vulnerable to attack as existing cryptography techniques or security are insufficient. In this research work, firstly, we review and identify the privacy and security issues in the IoT system. Secondly, there is a solution for the security issues, which is resolved by blockchain technology. We will check the wireless sensor network to see how data work on distributed or decentralized network architecture. Wireless sensor network clustering technique was introduced by researchers for network efficiency because when the workload spreads, the system will work faster and more efficiently. A cluster comprises a number of nodes, and the cluster head manages the local interactions between the nodes in the cluster (CH). In general, cluster members connect with the cluster head, and the cluster head aggregates and fuses the data acquired in order to save energy. Before approaching the sink, the cluster heads may additionally create another layer of clusters among themselves. The clustering concept divides data traffic into several groups similar to the other data points in the same data point. In contrast, this data point is dissimilar from other data points in another group. All results are presented at the end of this study paper, in which we will see the network or nodes’ performance in the specific area of the network, how it works, and how efficient it is. Likewise, Blockchain also works in a distributed manner.

CBP2P: Cooperative Electronic Bank Payment Systems Based on Blockchain Technology

<p>The most common consumer behavior was to pay in cash at a physical store in the past. However, with the rapid development and popularization of smart handheld devices and computers, merchants have had many innovative business models in recent years. For example, the digital cryptocurrency Bitcoin has the advantages of decentralization, anonymity, and the inability to tamper with data. If these benefits are combined with the current electronic payment financial operation model, they will be highly innovative. However, blockchain technologies have been applied to decentralized network architectures. As a result, the financial system will face anonymous crime, extensive data synchronization, and time-consuming transaction processes. This paper implements a P2P electronic payment system with a hierarchical structure based on the blockchain architecture, called CBP2P (Cooperative Bank Peer-to-Peer), to improve the defects and realize an accurate electronic payment system. Through the characteristics of the blockchain and cooperation between banks, we will enhance the security and availability of the system.</p> <p> </p>

Exploring Partitioning Attacks on the Bitcoin Network

Bitcoin is the leading example of a blockchain application that facilitates peer-to-peer transactions without the need for a trusted third party. This paper considers possible attacks related to the decentralized network architecture of Bitcoin. We perform a data driven study of Bitcoin and present possible attacks based on spatial and temporal characteristics of its network. Towards that, we revisit the prior work, dedicated to the study of centralization of Bitcoin nodes over the Internet, through a fine-grained analysis of network distribution, and highlight the increasing centralization of the Bitcoin network over time. As a result, we show that Bitcoin is vulnerable to spatial, temporal, spatio-temporal, and logical partitioning attacks with an increased attack feasibility due to the network dynamics. We verify our observations through data-driven analyses and simulations, and discuss the implications of each attack on the Bitcoin network. We conclude with suggested countermeasures.

A novel authentication and authorization scheme in P2P networking using location-based privacy

In recent years, peer-to-peer (P2P) network has reached popularity in file sharing as it is a distributed and decentralized network architecture. As there is no centralized authority, there arise various attacks, which lead to insecurity in the network. Thus, the security issues of the P2P networks are to be considered with more care. This paper proposes an authentication and authorization approach, named fuzzy enabled advanced encryption standard (AES)-based multi-level authentication and authorization to offer security against various kinds of attacks that occur in the P2P networks. Here, the authentication is carried out with the security factors, namely location profile, one-time password, spatial information, session password, a hashing function, and so on. Initially, the user and the server are registered in the authentication process, and then, hashing functions and AES are used to perform multi-level authorization and authentication processes. Thus, the proposed scheme improves the security of the P2P network. Using the proposed system, the hit ratio obtained is 0.9, and the success rate is 0.7666.

Securing Online Knowledge Systems by Blockchain: a proposed solution for model Online Defence Information System

Information systems offer a range of services by amalgamating information, technology, people, and organizations to serve business needs to solve problems, and disseminate knowledge within and in public. Certain unclassified but restricted information could also be made available on these systems/platforms to a class of pre-authenticated registered users. The model Online Defence Information System (ODIS) (https://www.odisys.in) is one such system that is the basis of discussion in the paper. It is designed and developed as an important knowledge resource for defence community. An expert can also contribute by making online submissions of tacit knowledge for the benefit of society. The system is built on the centralized networking architecture and is based on trust management (trust of content and platform). Given the security vulnerabilities rising proportionally with computational power, it has been established that a centralized system is more likely to see malicious attacks than a decentralized system. Paper explores the solution to counter apparent vulnerabilities and draws an analytic comparison with “blockchain”, decentralized network architecture. The paper gives an overview of ODIS's architecture, development and design methodologies and challenges, and a solution that offers safety, security, authenticity and verifiability of contents on the system such as ODIS.

An Effective Randomization Framework to POW Consensus Algorithm of Blockchain (RPoW)

Blockchain technology has become a buzzword due to its intuitive applications and its decentralized network architecture. Blockchain is a decentralized system that uses peer -to - peer networking and appropriate consensus algorithm for secure and reliable transactions and records them all in an immutable ledger as chain of blocks. The world got introduced to the blockchain technology, when Satoshi Nakamoto released Bitcoin in 2009[2]. Though this technology is famous for being the backbone of cryptocurrencies, it has got into various industry domains and many applications have been developed using blockchain [11]. The consensus algorithm used in Blockchain architecture influences how agreement is made to add a new block among all the nodes in the network. PoW (Proof of work) is the consensus algorithm applied in the Bitcoin network architecture and many other blockchain applications. PoW requires each node to solve a cryptographic puzzle with adjusted difficulty, to get the privilege to add a new block to the current chain. The first node that solves the puzzle will have this privilege and some reward. Proof-of-Work (PoW) uses extensive amounts of electric power and steep computing hardware as an effect of their consensus procedure [1]. This proposed work presents an effective randomization framework that reduces the execution time required to calculate the hash value. The number of instruction-set required to compute the PoW consensus is also reduced. This approach helps in maintaining a fair decentralized network to construct blockchain applications.

The Politics of Networking a Nation

Comparative network histories illustrate how politics shape the design of technological systems. This essay compares efforts to build national computer networks in the Soviet Union and Chile. It argues that networks in practice cannot be categorized neatly as distributed, centralized, or de-centralized, nor is there any correlation between freedom and distributed or de-centralized network architectures. The essay uses this observation to suggest that the distributed network configuration of today’s Internet does not automatically increment freedom of information or flatten the ways in which governments and enterprises exert their power and influence.

A trustworthy and energy-aware routing protocol in software-defined wireless mesh networks

Hybrid Wireless Mesh Networks (HWMNs) were proposed to address the challenges in wireless communications to support mobile applications across different domains. Due to the multi-hop and decentralized network architecture, HWMNs are naturally susceptible to various security threats, especially internal attacks. Therefore, HWMNs must be able to detect anomalies, provide secure routing and protect user privacy through the cooperation among nodes. However, the existing routing protocols for HWMNs cannot ensure the security to protect the users privacy effectively. Moreover, traditional HWMNs are vertically integrated where the control and data planes of mesh routers are bundled together, which makes it complex and difficult to configure the network according to predefined security policies, and to adaptively respond to various dynamic security threats. Software-Defined Wireless Mesh Networks decouple the control plane and data plane of routers and thus enable a more flexible and efficient configuration of security policies. Taking up this opportunity to address the aforementioned challenges, this paper proposes a privacy-aware, secure and energy-aware green routing (PSGR) protocol that can defend against internal attacks, achieve stronger privacy protection and reduce energy consumption in Software-Defined HWMNs. The elaborate theoretical analysis verify that the PSGR protocol can implement the security and privacy protection against internal attacks effectively and efficiently. Simulation results demonstrate a superior performance of PSGR in terms of packet delivery ratio, network throughput and energy efficiency compared to the existing PA-SHWMP, PASER, and HWMP protocols in the presence of Blackhole/Grayhole attacks and wormhole attacks.

Giants, Dwarfs and Decentralized Alternatives to Internet-Based Services: An Issue of Internet Governance?

This paper discusses some of the results of a five-year-long (and on-going) investigation of alternative approaches to the design of Internet services, based on decentralized network architectures. In particular, the paper focuses on the implications of this research for the study of Internet governance, inasmuch as architectural changes affect the repartition of competences and responsibilities between service providers, content producers, users and network operators; contribute to the shaping of user rights, of the ways to produce and enforce law; reconfigure the boundary between public and private uses of the internet as a global facility. The paper argues that delving into the tensions between the dwarfs and the giants of the Net – the tensions between different technical and organizational architectures, and their political consequences – helps to disengage from what is often a predominantly institutional view of Internet governance, to give the due emphasis to its less visible arrangements, its materiality and its practice.

Fronthaul and backhaul requirements of flexibly centralized radio access networks

Cloud radio access networks promise considerable benefits compared to decentralized network architectures, but they also put challenging requirements on the fronthaul and backhaul network. Flexible centralization can relax these requirements by adaptively assigning different parts of the processing chain to either the centralized baseband processors or the base stations based on the load situation, user scenario, and availability of fronthaul links. In this article, we provide a comprehensive overview of different functional split options and analyze their specific requirements. We compare these requirements to available fronthaul technologies, and discuss the convergence of fronthaul and backhaul technologies. By evaluating the aggregated fronthaul traffic, we show the benefits of flexible centralization and give guidelines on how to set up the fronthaul network to avoid over- or under-dimensioning.

Giants, Dwarfs and Decentralized Alternatives to Internet-based Services: An Issue of Internet Governance

This article discusses some of the results of a five-year-long (and ongoing) investigation of alternative approaches to the design of internet services, based on decentralized network architectures. In particular, the paper focuses on the implications of this research for the study and the practice of internet governance, inasmuch as architectural changes affect the repartition of responsibilities between service providers, content producers, users and network operators; contribute to the shaping of user rights, of the ways to produce and enforce law; reconfigure the boundary between public and private uses of the internet as a global facility. I argue that delving into the tensions between the dwarfs and the giants of the Net – between different technical and organizational architectures, and their political consequences – helps us to disengage from what is often a predominantly institutional view of internet governance, and give due emphasis to its less visible, infrastructure-embedded arrangements, its materiality and its practice.

Filtering in Oz: Australia's Foray into Internet Censorship

Australia's decision to implement Internet censorship using technological means creates a natural experiment: the first Western democracy to mandate filtering legislatively, and to retrofit it to a decentralized network architecture. But are the proposed restrictions legitimate? The new restraints derive from the Labor Party's pro-filtering electoral campaign, though coalition government gives minority politicians considerable influence over policy. The country has a well-defined statutory censorship system for on-line and off-line material that may, however, be undercut by relying on foreign and third-party lists of sites to be blocked. While Australia is open about its filtering goals, the government's transparency about what content is to be blocked is poor. Initial tests show that how effective censorship is at filtering prohibited content - and only that content - will vary based on what method the country's ISPs use. Though Australia's decisionmakers are formally accountable to citizens, efforts to silence dissenters, outsourcing of blocking decisions, and filtering's inevitable transfer of power to technicians undercut accountability. The paper argues Australia represents a shift by Western democracies towards legitimating Internet filtering and away from robust consideration of the alternatives available to combat undesirable information.