Federation in Dynamic Environments: Can Blockchain Be the Solution?

Deploying multi-domain network services is becoming a need for operators. However, achieving that in a real operational environment is not easy and requires the use of federation. Federation is a multi-domain concept that enables the use and orchestration of network services/resources to/from external administrative domains. In this article, we first characterize the federation concept and involved procedures, and then dive into the challenges that emerge when federation is performed in dynamic environments. To tackle these challenges, we propose the application of blockchain technology, identifying some associated high-level benefits. Last, we validate our proposed approach by conducting a small experimental scenario using Tendermint, an application-based blockchain.