# Enhancing Border Gateway Protocol Security Using Public Blockchain
## 5 Discussion  
The results shown in the previous section prove that it is possible to use this architecture to manage AS border routers and increase BGP security. It is possible to control any AS border router connected to our architecture remotely and automatically. In our use case, the main objective is the management of the configuration of prefixes that verifiably belong to the AS. Routers can then advertise these prefixes to peers. If it is necessary to add or delete prefixes, a verified user adjusts the relevant records stored in the blockchain. Local routers then download new prefixes and modify their local BGP configuration to reflect the adjustments. This means that part of the configuration of an AS border router can be decentralized, distributed, immutable, and provenance of all prefixes configurated and announced are known. These properties can help defend against BGP hijacking, and reduce the number of fraudulent BGP announcements and local misconfigurations.  
The first and second scenarios endeavour to evaluate the performance of the proposed architecture using time for modifications to distribute. Looking at the results, we find out that the current block time [22] influences the operation's duration. Furthermore, our transaction may not be mined in the first block after uploading it to the pool of pending transactions. It may be mined in one of the subsequent blocks. We can influence this allocation into blocks and motivate miners by fine-tuning the gas price of our transaction. Therefore, we use the setting \"fast_gas_price_strategy\" from library Web3.py, which ensures the mining of the transaction within 60 s. Note that downloading the subconfiguration to routers from blockchain has little influence on the duration time of the whole operation.  
Figure 6: Time duration distribution of setting new prefixes for the router  
Figure 7: Gas consumption.  
The final scenario focuses on the gas consumption of the operation uploading of the subconfiguration. Gas consumption per transaction slowly increases in an approximately linear fashion with raising the number of prefixes in the subconfig. On the other hand, the most expensive operation is with only one prefix. At first, the cost sharply falls per prefix, and then it is approximately constant. Therefore, it is cheaper to aggregate multiple prefixes into one transaction. The average gas consumption is 3,710,704 gas units. The current price of 1 gas unit is 26 gwei [23]. Therefore, the cost of the operation is equal to 22.38 dollars.  
The use of the blockchain in any architectures has some disadvantages. The verification of a transaction in a network requires to agree with a majority of participants. Most of the public blockchain networks use consensus algorithms that consume the amount of computational power and energy. It has negatively affected the environment and sustainability values [24]. We believe that a fundamental improvement will come with the release of Ethereum 2.0 [25]. It replaces consensual algorithm proof of work by proof of stake that reduces consumption energy [26]. The other way to support sustainable energy management is by increasingly using alternative energy resources by miners such as solar energy [24].  
The blockchain size can grow huge over time. Currently, it requires over 290 GB of storage [27]. The block size is also limited; therefore, it can restrictive to store original data into the blockchain. It is practical to use decentralized storage systems such as the InterPlanetary File System with blockchain. It stores the hash of the original data in the chain, instead of the data itself [28; 29].  
Despite these limitations, it is beneficial to use blockchain in our architecture and others. It provides high security for the architecture, and there is already an infrastructure for deploying our application.