Open Access

ARTICLE

Blockchain-Based Trust Model for Inter-Domain Routing

Qiong Yang¹, Li Ma^1,2,*, Sami Ullah³, Shanshan Tu¹, Hisham Alasmary⁴, Muhammad Waqas^5,6

1 Faculty of Information Technology, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing, 100124, China
2 School of Information Science and Technology, North China University of Technology, Beijing, 100144, China
3 Department of Computer Science, Shaheed Benazir Bhutto University, Sheringal, 18050, Pakistan
4 Department of Computer Science, King Khalid University, Abha, 61421, Saudi Arabia
5 School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, Faculty of Engineering and Science, University of Greenwich, London, SE10 9LS, UK
6 School of Engineering, Edith Cowan University, Perth, WA 6027, Australia

* Corresponding Author: Li Ma. Email:

Computers, Materials & Continua 2025, 82(3), 4821-4839. https://doi.org/10.32604/cmc.2025.059497

Received 09 October 2024; Accepted 11 December 2024; Issue published 06 March 2025

Abstract

Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), as the standard inter-domain routing protocol, is a distance-vector dynamic routing protocol used for exchanging routing information between distributed Autonomous Systems (AS). BGP nodes, communicating in a distributed dynamic environment, face several security challenges, with trust being one of the most important issues in inter-domain routing. Existing research, which performs trust evaluation when exchanging routing information to suppress malicious routing behavior, cannot meet the scalability requirements of BGP nodes. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based trust model for inter-domain routing. Our model achieves scalability by allowing the master node of an AS alliance to transmit the trust evaluation data of its member nodes to the blockchain. The BGP nodes can expedite the trust evaluation process by accessing a global view of other BGP nodes through the master node of their respective alliance. We incorporate security service evaluation before direct evaluation and indirect recommendations to assess the security services that BGP nodes provide for themselves and prioritize to guarantee their security of routing service. We forward the trust evaluation for neighbor discovery and prioritize the nodes with high trust as neighbor nodes to reduce the malicious exchange routing behavior. We use simulation software to simulate a real BGP environments and employ a comparative experimental research approach to demonstrate the performance evaluation of our trust model. Compared with the classical trust model, our trust model not only saves more storage overhead, but also provides higher security, especially reducing the impact of collusion attacks.

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Keywords

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