Blockchain-Based Decentralized Applications for Multiple Administrative Domain Networking

Evolving networking scenarios include multi-administrative domain network services as drivers of novel business opportunities along with emerging operational challenges. As a potential approach to tackle upcoming requirements providing basic primitives to encompass analytics, automation, and distributed orchestration, we investigate blockchain-based decentralized applications (DApps) in the context of operational phases in support of multi-administrative domain networking. We present and discuss a generalized framework for multi-domain service orchestration using blockchain-based DApps and then showcase proof-of-concept prototype experiments based on best of breed open source components that demonstrate DApp functionalities as candidate enablers of multi-domain network services. We then analyze three use case scenarios pursued by ongoing work at standards development organizations, namely MEF, 3GPP, and ETSI NFV, discussing standardization opportunities around blockchain-based DApps.