# SCION-enabled IPFS and libp2p - Full Application Content ## Project Overview **Name:** SCION-enabled IPFS and libp2p **Tagline:** Enhancing IPFS Performance and Resilience through SCION's Path-Aware Networking **Fund:** NGI Zero Core **Period:** 2023-06 — 2026-07 **Grant Agreement No:** 101092990 **URL:** https://nlnet.nl/project/SCION-IPFS/ **Website:** https://www.netsys.ovgu.de/ **Run by:** OVGU Magdeburg (Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg) **Lab:** Networks and Distributed Systems (NetSys) Lab **Principal Investigator:** Prof. Dr. David Hausheer --- ## Abstract SCION is a clean-slate Next-Generation Internet (NGI) architecture which offers multi-path and path-awareness capabilities by design. Moreover, SCION was designed to provide route control, failure isolation, and explicit trust information for end-to-end communication. As a result, the SCION architecture provides strong resilience and security properties as an intrinsic consequence of its design. The goal in this project is to leverage the path-awareness in SCION to align the storage and lookup in IPFS with the underlying network in an optimal manner, while at the same time using SCION to establish trust between the entities. --- ## Why does this actually matter to end users? The vast amount of content on the Internet has made it increasingly challenging for users to quickly and reliably access relevant information. A key issue in managing and retrieving information in distributed systems is locating data items in a manner that ensures scalability, minimal communication complexity, and high reliability, even in the presence of adversaries. Specifically, determining where to store information so that requesters can easily find it, as well as enabling users to discover and efficiently locate desired data items, are critical challenges. ### The Problem with Centralized Approaches Centralized approaches offer fast data lookup and constant search complexity but may suffer from: - Scalability issues - Single points of failure - Trust concerns ### The Problem with Current Decentralized Approaches Decentralized approaches are more desirable, although they often come with: - Increased communication overhead - Performance limitations in current implementations like IPFS ### The SCION Advantage Recent solutions, such as IPFS, address some of these problems but still have limitations in their performance. In this project, the objective is to create a secure, reliable, and decentralized storage platform based on IPFS, that outperforms existing approaches in terms of fast, scalable content search and lookup. By leveraging path-awareness, the goal is to utilize network resources efficiently to reduce search and lookup delays while enhancing overall throughput. --- ## SCION Architecture Overview ### Key Features of SCION 1. **Multi-path Capabilities** - Simultaneous use of multiple network paths - Improved throughput and reliability - Load balancing across paths 2. **Path-awareness** - End-to-end path selection - Network topology awareness - Optimal routing decisions 3. **Route Control** - Explicit path selection - Traffic engineering capabilities - Avoidance of problematic network segments 4. **Failure Isolation** - Network failures contained to specific paths - Automatic path failover - Resilience against attacks 5. **Explicit Trust Information** - Cryptographic path verification - Trust anchors embedded in paths - Verifiable network topology ### SCION Design Principles - Clean-slate Next-Generation Internet architecture - Built-in security by design - Intrinsic resilience properties - Support for inter-domain routing --- ## IPFS Integration with SCION ### Current IPFS Limitations 1. **DHT Lookup Performance** - High latency in content discovery - Suboptimal path selection - Limited network awareness 2. **Storage Placement** - Random or proximity-based placement - No network topology awareness - Suboptimal content distribution 3. **Trust Establishment** - Limited trust verification - No path-based trust - Vulnerable to routing attacks ### SCION-Enhanced IPFS #### Optimal Content Storage - Leverage path-awareness to determine optimal storage locations - Consider network topology for content placement - Reduce lookup delays through strategic positioning #### Efficient Content Lookup - Use SCION's path information to guide DHT queries - Select optimal paths for content retrieval - Minimize communication overhead #### Trust Establishment - Use SCION's explicit trust information - Verify path authenticity - Establish trust between storage and lookup entities --- ## Research Objectives ### Primary Goals 1. **Performance Enhancement** - Reduce IPFS lookup latency - Improve content retrieval throughput - Optimize network resource utilization 2. **Resilience Improvement** - Leverage SCION's failure isolation - Enable automatic path failover - Enhance network robustness 3. **Trust Enhancement** - Implement path-based trust verification - Establish secure entity relationships - Prevent routing attacks ### Technical Challenges 1. **DHT Integration** - Modify IPFS DHT to use SCION path information - Implement path-aware peer selection - Optimize routing table management 2. **Content Placement** - Develop topology-aware storage algorithms - Balance load across network paths - Consider latency and bandwidth factors 3. **Trust Framework** - Design trust verification mechanisms - Implement cryptographic path validation - Establish entity authentication --- ## Methodology ### Phase 1: Analysis and Design - Analyze current IPFS performance bottlenecks - Study SCION's path-awareness capabilities - Design integration architecture ### Phase 2: Implementation - Implement SCION-enabled IPFS modifications - Develop path-aware DHT algorithms - Create trust verification framework ### Phase 3: Evaluation - Benchmark performance improvements - Test resilience under failure scenarios - Validate trust establishment ### Phase 4: Optimization - Fine-tune algorithms based on results - Optimize for real-world deployment - Prepare for production use --- ## Expected Outcomes ### Technical Contributions 1. **SCION-IPFS Integration** - Modified IPFS implementation with SCION support - Path-aware DHT operations - Enhanced content routing 2. **Performance Improvements** - Reduced lookup latency - Increased throughput - Better resource utilization 3. **Trust Framework** - Path-based trust verification - Secure entity authentication - Attack-resistant routing ### Research Contributions 1. **Publications** - Academic papers on SCION-IPFS integration - Performance evaluation results - Trust framework analysis 2. **Open Source** - Publicly available implementation - Documentation and tutorials - Community contributions --- ## Evaluation Metrics ### Performance Metrics - Content lookup latency - Data retrieval throughput - Network resource utilization - Storage placement efficiency ### Resilience Metrics - Failure recovery time - Path failover success rate - Network partition tolerance - Attack resistance ### Trust Metrics - Trust verification success rate - Authentication latency - Security property validation - Trust establishment overhead --- ## Related Work ### IPFS Improvements - IPFS performance optimization studies - DHT improvement proposals - Content routing enhancements ### SCION Research - SCION architecture papers - Path-aware networking studies - Trust establishment research ### P2P Systems - libp2p development - Decentralized storage systems - Content distribution networks --- ## Timeline ### Year 1 (2023-2024) - Literature review and analysis - Architecture design - Initial implementation ### Year 2 (2024-2025) - Core implementation - Performance testing - Trust framework development ### Year 3 (2025-2026) - Optimization and refinement - Evaluation and validation - Publication and dissemination --- ## Team ### Networks and Distributed Systems (NetSys) Lab - **Location:** Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg, Germany - **Head:** Prof. Dr. David Hausheer - **Focus Areas:** - Software-defined networking - Network functions virtualization - Decentralized and overlay networks - Security and economic aspects ### Research Areas - Economic and secure management of networking resources - Fixed and mobile software-defined network infrastructures - Networked and distributed systems --- ## Impact ### Academic Impact - Advancement of SCION and IPFS research - New insights into path-aware networking - Trust establishment in decentralized systems ### Practical Impact - Improved IPFS performance for real-world applications - Enhanced resilience for distributed storage - Better trust models for P2P systems ### Community Impact - Open source contributions - Knowledge sharing through publications - Collaboration with IPFS and SCION communities --- ## Themes - Data and AI - NGI Zero Core --- ## Funded By This project was funded through the NGI0 Core Fund, a fund established by NLnet with financial support from the European Commission's Next Generation Internet programme, under the aegis of DG Communications Networks, Content and Technology under grant agreement No 101092990.