OceanStore: Toward Global Scale, Self-Repairing, Secure, and Persistent Storage

The peer-to-peer revolution seems to promise that the vast, untrusted, and unreliable resource of the Internet can lead to desirable properties such as security, availability, and 1000-year durability. In this talk, we will examine how this might be possible. We will examine the mechanisms of OceanStore, a utility infrastructure designed to span the globe and provide continuous access to persistent information. The OceanStore model involves hundreds or thousands of service providers cooperating to provide service. To achieve its properties, OceanStore exploits the power of aggregates -- many elements working together. Since OceanStore is comprised of untrusted servers, data is protected through redundancy and cryptographic techniques. To improve performance, data is allowed to be cached anywhere, anytime. Its routing infrastructure is self-repairing and utilizes path redundancy and continuous monitoring to adapt to regional outages and denial of service attacks. Monitoring also enhances performance through pro-active movement of data. This talk will describe the mechanisms of OceanStore and discuss the status of its implementation.