A Blockchain-Based Decentralized Data Storage and Access Framework for PingER

Abstract

The blockchain is an innovative technology which opened doors to new applications for solving numerous problems in distributed environments. In this work, we design a blockchain-based data storage and access framework for PingER (worldwide end-to-end Internet performance measurement project) to remove its total dependence on a centralized repository. We use the permissioned blockchain and Distributed Hash Tables (DHT) for this purpose. In the proposed framework, metadata of the files are stored on the blockchain whereas the actual files are stored off-chain through DHT at multiple locations using a peer-to-peer network of PingER Monitoring Agents. This will provide decentralized storage, distributed processing, and efficient lookup capabilities to the PingER framework.