Network decentralisation concerns the distribution of relevant control, authority or indispensable dependencies across independently operated participants. It is a property relative to a specified decision or service: distributed forwarding can coexist with centralised naming, credentials or application data. Counting physical servers is insufficient.
Construct a service with replicas in ten locations, all controlled by the same operator and all requiring that operator's account authority. The physical deployment is distributed, but control and the account dependency remain centralised. Increasing the number of sites leaves that counterexample intact. To assess decentralisation, state which operators can independently authorise participation, change protocol behaviour or preserve service when another operator fails.
Articles by others on the same topic
There are currently no matching articles.