The Internet has evolved from a fault-tolerant infrastructure to support both social networking and a semantic web for machine users. Trust in the data, and the infrastructure, has become increasingly important as cyber threats and privacy concerns rise. Communication services become increasingly delivered through virtualized, software-defined infrastructures, like overlays across multiple infrastructure providers. Increasing recognition of the need for services to be not only fault-tolerant but also censorship-resistant while delivering an increasing variety of services through a complex ecosystem of service providers drives the need for decentralized solutions like blockchains. Service providers have traditionally relied on contractual arrangements to deliver end-to-end services globally. Some of the contract terms can now be automated through smart contracts using blockchain technology.
Blockchain network management
This is a complex distributed environment with multiple actors and resources. The trend from universal service to service fragmentation, already visible in the increasing IoT deployments using blockchains, is expected to continue in 6G. Virtualization of the infrastructure with NFV-SDN make prevalent the concepts of network overlays, network underlays, network slices. In the 6G era, it seems that service providers will need to provide network management service assurance beyond availability including aspects such as identities, trustworthiness, and censorship resistance.
Blockchains are not only proposed for use at a business services level but also in the operation of the network infrastructure including dynamic spectrum management, SDN and resource management, metering and IoT services. Traditional approaches to network management have relied on client–server protocols and centralized architectures. The range of services offered over 6G wireless that need to be managed is expected to be larger than the variety of services over existing networks. Scaling delivery may also require additional partners to provide the appropriate market coverage. Management of 6G services needs to support more complex services in a more complex commercial environment, and yet perform effectively as the services and infrastructure scale.
Digital transformation at both network operators and many of their customers has led to a software-defined infrastructure for communication services, based on virtualized network functions. Decentralized approaches for network management have gained increasing attention from researchers. The operators increased need for mechanisms to assure trust in data, operations and commercial transactions while maintaining business continuity through software and equipment failures, and cyberattacks provide further motivations for blockchain-based approaches. These architectural trends towards autonomy, zero touch and zero trust are expected to continue as a response to networking requirements. Blockchain infrastructures seem to provide an approach address some of these requirements.
Blockchain-enabled decentralized network management is disruptive change to existing network management processes. The scope and scale of the 6G network management challenge supports the need for these types of network management architectures. Both technical and commercial or organization challenges remain before the wider adoption of these technologies. Blockchain-enabled decentralized network management provides a promising framework for considering the operational and administrative challenges expected in 6G communications infrastructure.