Trading Bandwidth For Crypto: NOIA Brings New Tech, Cisco Partnership To Programmable Internet Space

Domas Povilauskas, co-founder and CEO at the blockchain and AI internet infrastructure company NOIA Network Limited, told Benzinga his firm aims to shape the future of the internet.

About NOIA

The company's genesis was with an experienced team of network engineers who leveraged new technologies to improve existing networking infrastructures, Povilauskas told Benzinga. 

“We started with content delivery networks and then we came up with the content blockchain delivery network where people are sharing their instant connections and you can use their capacity, on their computers, to basically deliver the internet content more efficiently." 

This was the beginning of NOIA’s Decentralized Distributed P2P Content Delivery Network venture. After securing new funding and growing its team of experts, the firm launched NOIA Cache, an open source technology.

This technology attracted thousands of members into the community via the installation of over 5,000 network nodes that helped deliver content to a number of websites, the CEO said. 

"Then we kind of had to stretch ourselves to survive the winter. We got into segment routing, a protocol introduced by one of our top network engineers." 

This was a tipping point for the firm, he said. Infrastructure participants trade spare bandwidth, via a digital token, in the Decentralized Internet Transit Exchange, or DITEX. 

A Problem And Solution

Initially, fragmentation was built into internet infrastructure, creating network capacity, density and size inconsistencies.

In 1994, Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), designed for ISP routers, allowed for the identification of any path, to any IP address, through a series of independently operated networks.

BGP, by design, is limited. The protocol only forwards traffic to neighboring routers. As a result, network changes disrupt connection paths.

To solve the aforementioned issue, NOIA said it integrated IPv6 — the newest version of internet protocol that expands packet size and allows for the addition of header information — with its segment routing technology, to deliver SRv6.

The combination adds routing information to each packet of transferred data, establishing a network that can be programmed at the packet level.

“This is how you get better, more efficient and basically more superior routing,” Povilauskas said.

In addition, NOIA, with partners like Cisco Systems Inc. CSCO, looks to make a further impact with hardware and routing rule standardization for independently operated networks.

“We are working with the Cisco team on segment routing development," the CEO said. "Our coding will be included on every segment routing codebase." 

Making A Case For Distributed Ledger Tech

Today's internet infrastructure does not provide a central point of topology.

Distributed ledger technologies allow for the establishment of a decentralized IP address storage database, Povilauskas said.

"The distributed ledger would connect all available internet connections into one database."

Adding to this is NOIA’s effort to introduce DITEX, a digital marketplace where SRv6 router IP addresses are exposed and bandwidth capacity can be purchased.

The result: a faster, more efficient network that is agnostic to politics.

NOIA aims to spearhead a programmable internet by creating a globally accessible software refined network via segment routing, IPv6 and distributed ledger technologies, the CEO said. 

The more efficient network will run on a blockchain that settles bandwidth sharing via the trading of cryptocurrency, he said. 

NOIA has more than 7,000 nodes globally, he said. 

"We see NOIA as becoming an accommodation of [the] internet, which would enable this alternative programmable internet to run on top of the current internet infrastructure, and that foundational structure would support and maintain that new internet." 

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