JACS: amalgamation Blockchain and Connectionless Network Services

4 min readOct 30, 2020

JACS is a new communications stack that is totally different than the TCP/IP stack. JACS is the result of combining Blockchain and Connection-Less Network Services (CLNS), with its 160-bits NSAP addresses. There are many drivers behind the creation of JACS, like: IPv4 address depletion, centralized address allocation and Internet routing system security.

as we know BlockChain is the technology behind cryptocurrencies such as BitCoin and Ethereum, and is becoming a popular mechanism for secure storage of arbitrary information.

The other point of tangency is potential uses of BlockChain technology for networking. Of course, service providers may be amenable to payment via Bitcoin, or even using BlockChains for creation and maintenance of SLAs or tracking service calls; but here we are searching for true networking applications of BlockChain technology.

One potential use for distributed ledgers in networking has to do with addressing. All connectionless networks require network-unique addresses, and in all known networks the uniqueness is enforced by some centralized entity (e.g., the IEEE sells MAC addresses, IANA and the RIRs allocate IP addresses, ICANN and the TLDs provide URLs). Unfortunately, centralized entities aren’t perfect — they are dictatorial (e.g., may not be fair in allocating addresses, might charge excessively for them, etc.), can be compromised, and are usually slow. Is it possible to build an administrator-free purely distributed mechanism for address allocation based on BlockChain?

The answer to that question has been known for some time to be affirmative. BlockChain has been used to allocate identifiers for overlay networks (e.g., NameCoin), enabling mapping arbitrary addresses to IP addresses. Thus, for example, we could replace the hierarchical DNS system with a BlockChain that allows anyone to choose a URL, checks for uniqueness, and later can map the URL to the desired IP address.

However, this solution is limited to addresses that act only as identifiers — not locators. Can we use BlockChain for large standalone infrastructure networks? The problem lies in scaling. For small networks all we have to do is to store the location of each unique address (like the table in an Ethernet switch). Large IP networks rely on subnetworking indicated by address prefixes, which at first glance seems to require at least some centralization of address allocation.

Of course the Internet is already divided into autonomous systems, each representing some aggregation of CIDR addresses. So, a separate BlockChain per AS would maintain scalability, and could go hand-in-hand with a mobility scheme; and if these addresses are treated as ephemeral, then a ledger would be a natural way of supervising them. An alternative would be a single global BlockChain for suffixes (of course these could be arbitrary strings, not limited to bits) to which the user prepends a prefix according to location. Note that both of these alternatives might be vulnerable to DoS attacks on the address infrastructure.

Even if we could perform decentralized address allocation using BlockChain technology, that doesn’t mean that proof-of-work-based BlockChain is the ideal solution to this problem. As we have mentioned, proof-of-work is notoriously wasteful and relies on finding sufficient financial incentives. It is not clear that a ledger (rather than a database) is required for this application. In addition, BlockChain technology is so new that many of the complex (legal, security, financial) policy problems that it raises have yet to be resolved.

Now, what makes JACS the most ideal solution for these ongoing circumstances? First, using the protocol, their vision is to enable a Web 3.0 evolution through a decentralized data communication stack. It uses blockchain to assign and administer globally unique addresses that offer security.

JACS.tech, a decentralized infrastructure for Internet 3.0 services and application, could play the needed role of the global platform perfectly suited for the emergence of the aspired Fintech ecosystem of the countries aiming leading roles in the financial technology marathon. Not only that public blockchain mechanism will ensure eventual global reach will be achieved but the concept of using early adopters as enablers within almost a near-live sandbox ecosystem will naturally come in place.

BlockChain can also be applied to other uses of ledgers, perhaps with less waste and in a more stable manner. Is BlockChain the answer to any questions in networking? Only time will tell.